Chapter 6 Phenomenology and Ethnomethodology

Question 1

Phenomenology

Answer 1

It means to study phenomena.
Branch of Philosophy and influenced by Psychology.
*It’s basically how people actively produce & sustain meanings.
*studies structures of experiences and consciousness ranging from perception, thought, emotion, and language

Question 2

Life World (Husserl)

Answer 2

preexisting assumptions as people experienced them and created meanings in consciousness.

Question 3

bracketing (Husserl)

Answer 3

a systematic process of narrowing perception and cognition by sidestepping existing assumptions about the external world.

Question 4

Intersubjectivity (Schutz)

Answer 4

Shared stocks of knowledge or a shared consciousness among individuals.

Question 5

Explain how Schutz’s intersubjectivity connects to Max Weber

Answer 5

Intersubjectivity allows us to come to know one another.

• Weber explained both objective and subjective dimensions of social life
• Schutz expanded Versteren concept and interpretive sociology.
• Social action oriented toward past, present and future behavior
• Weber neglected to state if action was in progress or completed and Schutz explains this

Question 6

Stocks of Knowledge (Schutz)

Answer 6

Relatively unconscious, taken-for-granted experiences or knowledge that provide actors with rules for interpreting interaction, social relationships, organizations, institution, and the physical world.

Question 7

Recipes (Schutz)

Answer 7

Knowledge from experiences or shared stocks of knowledge that are implicit instructions for everyday life.

Question 8

Typifications (Schutz)

Answer 8

The process by which people consider a generic characteristics that’s relevant for their particular interactive goal.
The way we create standards of social construction (types) based on standard assumptions.

Question 9

umwelt

Answer 9

Directly experienced social reality

• result of face to face interactions.
• these are personal and there is a high degree of intimacy

Question 10

mitwelt (World of Contemporaries)

Answer 10

realm of indirectly experienced social reality.

*People are experienced as “types” within larger social structures, rather than individual actors

Question 11

Umwelt and Mitwelt connect to Stocks of Knowledge

Answer 11

• Umwelt and mitwelt are terms used to differentiate between various realms of social experience based on level of intimacy/immediacy.
• Have different biographically articulated stocks of knowledge.
• but we also give different weight or value to the elements in different situations

Question 12

Habitualization (Berger & Luckmann)

Answer 12

The process by which the flexibility of human actions is limited, as repeated actions become routinized.
Ex. I wake up in the morning, take a shower, get dressed, do my hair, eat breakfast and then brush my teeth. I did this as a child and it became routine.

Question 13

Institutionalization (Berger & Luckmann)

Answer 13

The process by which there is a reciprocal typification of a routinized or habitualized action by types of actors.

Question 14

Difference between Habitualization and Institutionalization

Answer 14

Habitualizatoin limits/controls actions as does institutionalization.
*Institutions control human conduct by setting up predefined rules which people act by.

Question 15

Externalization (Berger & Luckmann)

Answer 15

The process by which human activity and society attain the character of objectivity (also objectivation)

Question 16

Objectivation (Berger & Luckmann)

Answer 16

The process by which human activity and society attain the character of the objectivity.
*The characteristic of being objective/fair and without bias.

Question 17

Reification (Berger & Luckmann)

Answer 17

The extreme step in the process of externalization (also called objectivation) in which human activity and society attain the character of objectivity to such an extent that the real relationship between humans and their world is reversed in consciousness.

Question 18

Explain relationship between reification and Marx’s work

Answer 18

Relates to Marx’s Theory of alienation - reification

• In that the ruling class ideas maintain dominance through the use of religion.
• The proletariats accept ruling class ideologies and reified facts and truths
• Marx’s reification as delusion
• Berger and Luckmann see reification as part of human condition.

Question 19

Explain objectivation and how it connects to Emile Durkheim’s study of social facts and religion and symbols

Answer 19

• Ties to shared cultural systems that are vital to social life.
• That is shared meanings and categories are sacred canopy. Essential to social existence and similar to how symbols tied individuals together in a system.
• symbols are vital to togetherness and so is significance for Berger and Luckmann
• People engage in interaction with each other through language process

Question 20

Internalization (Berger & Luckmann)

Answer 20

The process by which the individual subjectivity is attained.

Question 21

Explain how the process of socialization is connected with internalization

Answer 21

The objectivated social world is retrojected into consciousness in course socialization.

• When people are born, they encounter significant others, who play role in socialization.
• In this process socialization, individuals learn to stock knowledge as preexisting objective reality.

Question 22

Primary socialization (Berger & Luckmann)

Answer 22

The first socialization that we learn in our childhood and sets up the ground work all other socialization.
Ex. We learn to behave, and have manners which help us learn how to behave around others in society later. Umwelt.

Question 23

Secondary socialization (Berger & Luckmann)

Answer 23

The processes of socialization that provides us with the skills and habits needed to take part in society.
Ex. Obtaining a job. The individual learns the skills he or she needs to perform a job and be a productive part of society. Mitwelt

Question 24

Ethnomethodology

Answer 24

It’s the study of methods people use to make sense fo what others say or do.

Question 25

Breaching experiments

Answer 25

Experiments designed to study everyday interaction through disrupting normal procedures in order to expose them.
Ex. Person A: I had a flat tire.
Person B. What do you mean you had a flat?

Question 26

Three characteristics of an effective breaching experiments

Answer 26

1. Makes it difficult/impossible for the subject to interpret the current situation.
2. It makes the actors reconstruct the natural facts.
3. It keeps actors from arriving at a consensus.

Question 27

Accounting practices (Garfinkle)

Answer 27

A process whereby individuals attempt to order and make sense of their everyday world by constructing and attributing motives from past to present.

Question 28

indexicality (Garfinkle)

Answer 28

Words, expressions, and practical actions have different meanings in different contexts.

Question 29

Lifeworld (Schutz)

Answer 29

The world of existing assumptions as they are experienced and made meaningful in consciousness.
*it’s the things that happen in our lives and we make meaningful to us.
Ex. Marriage, we give it meaning to us personally.

Question 30

Social Facts (4)

Answer 30

1. Treat society social facts.
2. Understand culture exist, external to us.
3. society is coercive in nature.
4. social facts continue on.