The Meaning of Social Theory in the View of Phenomenology: Alfred Schutz
Who was Alfred Schutz, and why was his work on social theory and phenomenology so important? This is an important question that must be answered here, and will be answered, but there are other issues that must be examined as well. It is important to have an understanding of social theory and an understanding of phenomenology before Schutz is discussed too thoroughly, or what kind of contribution he made will not be as evident. Since he is no longer living, what he has done can only be discussed in the context of the past, up until the year he died, which was 1959. However, many of the works that bear his name and involve him very strongly were published after that time. This would indicate that those that published these works found that they were still very relevant. This is similar to the way that Aristotle and others are still very relevant - they might have lived a long time ago, but the work that they did and the information that they provided was of such quality that it has survived all of these long years. The work of Schutz appears to have a similar feel to it and it looks as though the work that Schutz had done in the past will continue to be relevant well into the future. This is important for
1996, Collected Papers IV, ed. H.Wagner and G. Psathas, in collaboration with F. Kersten, Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1989, (with A. Gurwitsch), Philosophers in Exile: The Correspondence of Alfred Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch, 1939-1959, ed., R.Grathoff, trans., J.C. Evans, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. This natural scientific approach also depended on an individual assuming that the object of social science must be examined first or an individual would be left to assume that the methods that were created for the natural sciences would be appropriate to the study that was being undertaken (Barber, 2002). Schutz worked at first attempting to clarify what social reality actually was and indicated how various individuals worked to sustain the reality that they had by working to understand the motives that other individuals had (Barber, 2002). Having a mutual understanding was very important to Schutz and took place without these particular individuals in question penetrating another individual's privacy or reducing an individual to the status where he or she responded only to stimuli as an animal would (Barber, 2002). iii.the analyst: someone who shares my system of relevances, who has collected information and organized that information in conformity with that system of relevance; and (Embree, 1997)
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 8933
Approximate Pages = 36 (250 words per page double spaced)
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