Schutz

Hum Stud (2009) 32:263289 DOI 10.
1007/s10746-009-9120-6 RESEARCH PAPER
Typication in Society and Social Science: The Continuing Relevance of Schutzs Social Phenomenology
Kwang-ki Kim Tim Berard
Published online: 10 December 2009 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009
Abstract This paper examines Alfred Schutzs insights on types and typication. Beginning with a brief overview of the history and meaning of typication in interpretive sociology, the paper further addresses both the ubiquity and the necessity of typication in social life and scientic method. Schutzs contribution itself is lacking in empirical application and grounding, but examples are provided of ongoing empirical research which advances the understanding of types and typication. As is suggested by illustrations from scholarship in the social studies of social science, studies of social identity associated with membership categorization analysis, and constructionist social problems theory, typication can be found to be central to social research whether it is taken up as a largely unacknowledged resource or whether it is addressed by different names. The overview and illustrations suggest the continuing, widespread, and indeed foundational relevance of Schutzs insights into types and typication. Keywords Alfred Schutz Types Ideal types Intersubjectivity Phenomenology Social phenomenology Typication
Introduction Typication is one of the most important concepts in the phenomenological sociology of Alfred Schutz, who in turn was one of the most important gures in twentieth century sociological theory and philosophy of the social sciences.
K. Kim Department of Social Studies, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 702-701, South Korea e-mail: ingan1113@hanmail.net T. Berard (&) Department of Justice Studies, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242-0001, USA e-mail: tjberard@alumni.reed.edu
123
264
K. Kim, T. Berard
Although both Schutz and his contributions to the social sciences have been widely neglected, typication is not for this reason any less important to social relations and social sciences. Schutzs understanding of typication as an inherently social phenomenon was a seminal and pivotal contribution to the social sciences, while at the same time retaining the original philosophical and epistemological interests of phenomenology in the foundations of human understanding, common to philosophical phenomenology. Although the relevance of Schutzian phenomenology has not been lost upon subsequent phenomenological sociologists, and various scholars associated with ethnomethodology, social constructionism, symbolic interactionism, and related interpretive sociologies, Schutzian insights including insights into typication still stand to make much wider contributions to the social sciences and their philosophy.
Precursors of Schutzs Concept of Typication Originally a philosophical concern in Edmund Husserls transcendental phenomenology, typication became in Schutzs thought a central concept for the social sciences. Whereas Husserl often thought of the ego in isolation from others, in keeping with a phenomenology of subjectivity, Schutz focused his attention on the social aspect of human nature. Schutz accordingly adopted and expanded Husserls notion of intersubjectivity in such a way that this concept bridged phenomenological philosophy with questions of social existence and social relations, foundational issues for the social sciences. We thus speak of Schutzs contributions as comprising a social phenomenology or phenomenological sociology, rather than a phenomenology centered on subjectivity and transcendence (see also Wanderer 2005, p. 127). In order to incorporate the social aspects of human experience into his phenomenological sociology, Schutz needed to address the fundamental question of how individuals can relate with and communicate with each other. Typication turns out to be a central concept in these respects. Schutzs interest in typication was clearly informed by, but also clearly went beyond, the interpretive sociology of Weber, including especially Webers treatment of ideal types. Weber offered a denition of sociology and social action which privileged meaning and interpretation as essential sociological phenomena; he dened sociology as a science concerning itself with the interpretive understanding of social action (1956, p. 4), and dened action in terms of subjectively meaningful behavior. Furthermore, Weber denes social relationships in terms of meaningful behavior, emphasizing the mutual orientation of the actions of a plurality of actors (1956, p. 26). In discussing the methodological foundations of his sociology, Weber begins with distinguishing between different types of meaning (1956, p. 4), and later distinguishes between types of understanding (1956, p. 8). Schutz credits Weber, in fact, for being the rst to raise interpretive sociology to the rank of a science (1967, p. 241). In this achievement, Webers discussion of ideal types was clearly central; ideal types in Webers work are objective scientic constructs used to delineate essential features of social phenomena, including social phenomena dened partly in terms of subjective meaning, such as types of religious ethics or types of political
123
Typication in Society and Social Science
265
legitimacy. When Schutz argues that all social sciences are objective meaningcontexts of subjective meaning-contexts (1967, p. 241), it was in large part Webers method of idealtypical analysis he was building upon in offering an objective, scientic approach to questions of subjectivity and meaning. Schutz does distinguish himself from Weber on many points, however, including the understanding of typication. Schutz notes that, it is the interests of the subject and his particular vantage point which denes the borderline between that which he takes for granted and that which is problematic for him (1967, p. 216). Despite Schutzs great indebtedness to Weber, Schutz and Weber had quite different interests, and subsequently turned their attention to quite different questions, with Weber interested primarily in broadly macro-sociological topics of comparativehistorical sociology and Schutz much more consistently and explicitly interested in exploring foundational issues such as the relevance of meaning and interpretation for the social sciences. Weber therefore took for granted much that was problematic for Schutz, with respect to how exactly the topics and methods of the social sciences relate to the subjective meanings and experiences common to the life-world (see also Wagner 1983, p. 124). These differences are observable clearly in the different approaches to ideal types. For Weber, ideal types serve as heuristic tools for social scientists, and they are discussed as social scientic constructs, in keeping with his interest in macro-sociological studies including the causal analysis of issues in comparative-historical sociology; types are not discussed as a social phenomena (see also Psathas 2005). For Schutz, typication occurs in the rst instance within the life-world itself. Typication in the social sciences may be, or should be, more explicit and more rigorous (see, e.g., Schutz 1962, p. 282; 1967, p. 10), but it is to be understood as a variant on an endemically common-sense mode of apprehending the life-world; social-scientic typication is a special case of a more general type, involving analytic modications of the more basic and more common phenomena of type-formation in the life-world (see, e.g., Schutz 1967, p. 224). This more general understanding of the role of typication, including difcult questions about how typication in the social sciences is related to typication in everyday life, sets up a radically distinctive phenomenological sociology in which typication is much more than a subjective process and much more than a scientic tool, but becomes a central topic for the social sciences. Reecting the dual inuence of Husserlian transcendental phenomenology and Weberian interpretive (verstehende) sociology, Schutzs understanding of typication retains the phenomenological interest in foundational epistemological questions while expanding the scope of the social sciences in recognition of the insight that commonsense knowledge and reasoning is of much more than philosophical interest. Indeed, such subjective phenomena are constitutive of the subject matter of the social sciences, as sciences of meaningful social phenomena. In what follows, the importance of typication as a topic for the social sciences will be addressed in terms of both the ubiquity of typication and the necessity of typication in the lifeworld, leading to further comments on how typication becomes a central topic for the social sciences in Schutzs phenomenological sociology and philosophy of social science. Subsequently, Schutzs treatment of typication is critically addressed with respect to its lack of empiricism, leading to a
123
266
K. Kim, T. Berard
suggestive and illustrative discussion of typication after Schutz and typication as a sensitizing concept for future social science.
Meaning of Typication in Schutzs Phenomenology Schutz refers to typication in a wide variety of contexts, and by this term he means to refer to an aspect of human experience and knowledge which is remarkably broad; the phenomena of typication should be understood in relation to, and as overlapping with, what Schutz refers to as schemes of experience and interpretive schemes (see, e.g., 1967, pp. 84, 187; 1964, p. 46), thought constructs, abstraction, generalization, formalization, idealization (see, e.g., 1962, p. 5), anonymization (1964, p. 47), and objectivation, among other terms. These terms all relate to the structurization of our immediate experience (see e.g., 1962, p. 274) or the imposition upon the perceptual eld an organizational form which that eld does not possess in its own right (1962, p. 276). Typications mediate the apprehension of subjects and objects in the life-world (see, e.g., 1964, p. 42). The vast scope and importance of typication is suggested when Schutz observes that the world, as has been shown by Husserl, is from the outset experienced in the pre-scientic thinking of everyday life in the mode of typicality (1962, p. 59). What this means, more concretely, is suggested when Schutz writes that the unquestioned outer world is from the outset experienced not as an arrangement of individual unique objects dispersed in space and time, but as mountains, trees, animals, fellow-men (1962, p. 74). Similarly, he writes Husserl has shown that, from the outset, the prepredicative experience of the life-world is fundamentally articulated according to types. We do not experience the world as a sum of sense data, nor as an aggregate of individual things standing in no relations to one another. We do not see colored spots and contours, but rather mountains, trees, animals, in particular birds, sh, dogs, etc. (1966, p. 125) The experience of the world in a typied manner involves, then, an equalization of traits and a disregarding of differences (1964, p. 234), such that unique phenomena are understandable and understood as instances of already familiar types.1 It is this very broad, very foundational sense that Maurice Natanson suggests when he equates typications with the taken for granted idealizations which structure daily life (Natanson 1962, pp. xliiixliv). This is no overstatement or exaggeration; Schutz himself speaks of socially approved systems of typications as ways of life (Schutz 1964, p. 236). Typication therefore should not be understood merely as an abstract concept in the philosophy of social science, but also as a quite foundational practice underlying socially competent perception, understanding, and social
1
It is also true and signicant that typication imposes conceptual boundaries where there could otherwise be a perception of similarity or continuity, as is especially clear in the application of social classication systems onto a more or less continuous range of values, as in the color spectrum, or onto a multi-dimensional eld where multiple classication criteria could be applied, as with distinctions between Protestant sects, or divisions of an urban ecology into neighborhoods.
123
267
interaction generally. The understanding of typication in terms of its conceptual meaning or theoretical signicance requires as its complement an appreciation of typication-use or typication-in-use, in acknowledgement of the eminently practical nature of typication, whether considered psychologically or sociologically.
Ubiquity of Typication It should go without saying that since typications are understood as structuring human experience and daily life, they are ubiquitous in both human understanding and social relations; they structure or mediate our experience of a wide variety of worldly phenomena. Indeed, Schutz discusses an imposing variety of typications, including in many places personal types and course of action types (e.g., Schutz 1962, p. 148), but also typical objects and typical relations (Schutz 1962, p. 279), typical results and typical means (Schutz 1962, p. 349; 1964, pp. 12, 236), typical solutions for typical problems (1962, p. 348; 1964, pp. 102, 236237), typical precepts for typical behavior (1962, p. 348), typical motives and typical situations (1964, pp. 1213, 32), typical actions and typical reactions (1964, pp. 18, 102), and typical sequences and typical relations (1964, p. 73). Natanson observes that all of the elements of this world have their horizons of typicality (1962, p. xl). Schutz also mentions the importance of typication for addressing a wide range of sociological topics and problems, including rational action (1962, p. 33; see also Ebeling 1999), the rationalization of the modern life-world, in the Weberian sense (1964, p. 71), the sociology of knowledge (1962, p. 149), causality in human affairs (1962, p. 75; 1966, p. 111), social control (1964, p. 238; see also Thomason 1982, pp. 102103), and of course social roles (1964, p. 237; see also McKinney 1969, p. 1). The variety of types of typication within the scope of sociology, and the variety of sociological issues related to typication, both suggest that typication is ubiquitous. Indeed, typications are just as ubiquitous as is language in human understanding and human relations. Schutz writes: The typifying medium par excellence by which socially derived knowledge is transmitted is the vocabulary and the syntax of everyday language. The vernacular of everyday life is primarily a language of named things and events, and any name includes a typication and generalization referring to the relevance system prevailing in the linguistic in-group which found the named thing signicant enough to provide a separate term for it. The pre-scientic vernacular can be interpreted as a treasure-house of ready made pre-constituted types and characteristics (1962, p. 14) Later in the same work, Schutz revisits this topic and adds further, By naming an experienced object, we are relating it by its typicality to preexperienced things of similar typical structure, and we accept its open horizon referring to future experiences of the same type, which are therefore capable of being given the same name (1962, p. 285). Thus typication and language are inseparable phenomena,
123
which is another evidence of the tremendous ubiquity of typication (see also Dreher 2003). The above observations stand in contrast to a common misunderstanding of
269
ve attitude of daily life, such epistemological selection and interpretation are not na explicit and deliberative, but implicit and taken-for-granted, hence the phrasing of pre-selection and pre-interpretation. Typications are exactly such commonsense constructs, functioning as skills (Wiggins and Schwartz 1988, p. 215) or tools (Cox 1978, p. 16) for understanding ones surroundings in a meaningful and culturally competent manner. Most importantly for phenomenological social science, although again overlapping with the previous levels of analysis, typication is again necessary for communication and social relations more generally. Schutz observes: To be successful, any communicative process must involve a set of common abstractions or standardizations. We mentioned the idealization of the congruency of the system of relevances which leads to the superseding of the thought objects of private experience by typifying constructs of public objects of thought. Typication is indeed that form of abstraction which leads to the more or less standardized, yet more or less vague, conceptualization of common-sense thinking and to the necessary ambiguity of the terms of the ordinary vernacular. This is because our experience, even in what Husserl calls the prepredicative sphere, is organized from the outset under certain types Most of the communicative signs are language signs, so the typication required for sufcient standardization is provided by the vocabulary and the syntactical structure of the ordinary vernacular of the mother tongue. (1962, p. 323) In this regard, Schutz speaks of systems of relevances and typications as part of the social heritage, which not only facilitates practical action and the predictable, complementary performances of role-related behaviors, but also functions as both a scheme of interpretation and as a scheme of orientation for each member of the ingroup and constitutes therewith a universe of discourse among them (1964, p. 237). Schutz continues, observing that successful human interaction is greatly facilitated by the establishment of a congruency between the typied scheme used by the actor as a scheme or orientation and by his fellow-men as a scheme of interpretation, and that this occurs when the scheme of typication is standardized, and the system of pertinent relevances institutionalized (1964, p. 238). Parenthetically, one can consider Harold Garnkels early ethnomethodological breaching experiments as empirical demonstrations that acting and speaking in atypical manners, e.g., acting as a boarder in ones own home, or trying to barter at the supermarket, undermines successful human interaction. In fact these studies were reported following an explicit acknowledgement that Garnkel was furthering Schutzs project of clarifying the nature and operation of the seen but unnoticed background expectancies which constitute the attitude of daily life (Garnkel 1967, pp. 3575). Most generally, then, typications are essential for facilitating communication and interaction, especially as typications are understood relationally in the context of social systems of typications, in turn related to social systems of relevances. These and similar points are suggested repeatedly. Schutz notes the importance of typications for enabling what he calls the common-sense praxis of everyday life
123
270
K. Kim, T. Berard
(1962, p. 326; see also 1962, p. 145). Natanson rightly relates this role of typication with the foundational importance of intersubjectivity (Natanson 1962, p. xlii), foundational for both Schutzs work and for society itself. This role of typication should be understood also in the context of Schutzs understanding of the social life-world, which he characterizes as a system of reciprocal social relations, all of them built up by mutual subjective interpretations of the actors within it (1964, p. 16). The term mutual subjective interpretations could seem to be an oxymoron, but it is the essential role of social typications to allow subjective interpretations to become also mutual interpretations, facilitating intersubjective communication and interaction (see also 1962, p. 117). It is in this sense that socially derived knowledge becomes an element of the form of social life, and as such forms both a common schema of interpretation of the common world and a means of mutual agreement and understanding (1966, p. 120). Thus Schutz observes that the common social world of intersubjectivity and intersubjective social relations is built on the basis of reciprocal acts of positing meaning and of interpretation of meaning, which ultimately provide the foundation for all social and cultural phenomena (1962, p. 135). It is precisely the typied nature of meaning and interpretation which allows them to become reciprocal and intersubjective, and therefore foundational for social relations and society generally.
The Relevance of Typication for the Social Sciences Natanson, in his editors introduction to the rst volume of Schutz Collected Papers, nicely suggests the relevance and importance of typication for the social sciences in two brief observations, one closely following the other. Natanson observes that intersubjectivity is the clue to social reality and shortly later notes that Schutzs approach to intersubjectivity is by way of a descriptive analysis of the typications of the commonsense world (1962, pp. xxxxxxi). It is crucial to recognize, in the rst instance, that typication is in many respects and in important respects a social, intersubjective phenomena, even though it certainly has subjective and psychological dimensions. Schutz writes, for example, that the typicality of the life-world is by no means my private affair, but that of the socialized subjectivity. It is the concrete typicality of the world valid for all of us (1966, p. 113; see also 1964, p. 9). The notion of socialized subjectivity is also suggested when Schutz observes that This whole system of types under which any social group experiences itself has to be learned by a process of acculturation (1962, p. 350). In somewhat more detail, Schutz observes that typications have a social foundation, that they: are either socially derived or socially approved or both and are handed down by the typifying medium par excellence, namely, common language all knowledge taken for granted has a highly socialized structure, that is, it is assumed to be taken for granted not only by me but by us, by everyone
123
271
(meaning every one who belongs to us).2 This socialized structure gives this kind of knowledge an objective and anonymous character: it is conceived as being independent of my personal biographical circumstances. (1962, p. 75) Typication is a central phenomenon for the social sciences not only because typications are foundational for society, but also because typications are foundational for the social sciences. Indeed, Schutzs primary concern in many different writings is to explore and provide an adequate account of the foundations of the social sciences, and typication is a central insight and argument in these respects. Conventional paradigms of social science may take for granted the social reality which is the proper object of the social sciences, leaving unclaried and presupposed their own foundation, including the phenomena of intersubjectivity, interaction, intercommunication, and language (1962, p. 53). It is in this sense that Schutz agrees with Weber that the problem of the ideal type is the central problem of all the social sciences (Schutz 1967, p. 226). The ideal type is exactly that variety of analytic construct which is capable of incorporating and analyzing the typied nature of social relations and social meanings. Although Schutz is often understood as a theorist or a sociologist of knowledge, his concerns were also in a very important sense methodological concerns, dealing with the basis for social scientic knowledge, as is suggested by his interest in reexamining the basis of Webers interpretive (verstehende) sociology. Typication is central to the methodology of the social sciences in at least two respects, each of them fundamental. In one respect, social science must be concerned to understand typication and its role in social understanding and social relations. Schutz writes that the rst task of the methodology of the social sciences is the exploration of the general principles according to which man in daily life organizes his experiences, and especially those of the social world (1962, p. 59). He argues also that the clarication of the categories of common-sense thinking within everyday life is indispensable for the proper foundation of all the social sciences (1962, p. 356; see also pp. 21, 117). This is not only because typication is important as a topic of the social sciences, but also because it is inevitably relied upon as a methodological resource (compare Zimmerman and Pollner 1970); The construction of the categories and models of the social sciences is founded on the pre-scientic common-sense experience of social reality, which makes the explication of commonsense experience a starting point for social scientic study (Schutz 1962, p. 21). In a second but complementary respect, social science engages in typication as a method. The methodology involved is most familiar under the name of ideal typical analysis, attributed to Weber, although a proper reading of Schutz reveals that types and typication are basic features of social scientic methodology, not at all limited
cf. the ethnomethodological notion of member, referring to any someone with typical competences in a given culture, understanding and using typical ethnomethods of practical action and practical reasoning. The member is essentially a typical individual for means of cultural and linguistic understanding, as in the notions of man on the street, or speaker of a natural language. Schutz at times writes of members in a similar if not identical sense (1964, p. 95).
123
272
K. Kim, T. Berard
to those familiar with Webers analytic and empirical work related to ideal types. Schutz writes that The thought objects constructed by the social scientists refer to and are founded upon the thought objects constructed by the common-sense thought of man living his everyday life among his fellow-men. Thus, the constructs used by the social scientists are, so to speak, constructs of the second degree, namely constructs of the constructs made by the actors on the social scene (1962, p. 6; see also 1967, p. 140) The importance of typication for social science can perhaps be suggested by means of an analogy referring to Schutzs foundational concerns in a very literal manner. What Schutz is involved in can be seen as a type of excavation, an exploration of structures of meaning which lay beneath the surface of conventional social scientic reasoning, not only informing them in a sense but underlying them in a foundational sense. Conventional social science, in neglecting phenomenological insights, not only fails to display any interest in understanding the taken-for-granted cultural presuppositions and knowledge upon which it rests, but it also uses and builds upon and therefore further obscures its foundations. In a sense conventional social science sits on an archaeological site and endeavors to build up rather than to excavate, using materials and tools it doesnt understand to build structures on a foundation of unknown composition, which becomes harder to access and understand the more it is buried by the invented structures built over top. A further concern about typication and the social sciences has to do with the relation between typication as a social phenomenon and typication as a scientic method. Given that typication is not only a scientic method, but also a commonsense method of understanding, and given that it is the common-sense meanings which are constitutive of the social phenomena which are the subject of the social sciences (e.g., 1967, p. 9), the typifying constructs of the social sciences in many cases have to refer to and be consistent with typications of the life-world (1962, pp. 27, 43, 5859, 62; see also Wagner 1983, p. 140). This aspect of scientic methodology, an issue of validity, is best known with respect to Schutz in terms of adequacy at the level of meaning (e.g., 1967, p. 224): social scientic constructs and explanations can be evaluated in terms of how adequately they deal with the relevant meanings existing in society. As Natanson suggests, the scientist must arrange a rendezvous between the system of typications of mundane reality and the principles of typication disclosed by science (1970, p. 75). Existing social meanings, however subjective in nature, deserve respectful attention, not as theories or hypotheses, but as topics, as social facts, to use Durkheims language. There is a danger of substituting for the real social world a ctional social world, if social science is not attuned to questions of subjective and intersubjective meaning (Schutz 1964, pp. 5, 8). A related problem is the risk of dwelling on abstract macro-social patterns and being satised with this intellectual shorthand to the extent that the possibility, and the value, of studying immediate, concrete human activity is forgotten (see Schutz 1964, pp. 8485). There is also a danger of uncritically admitting common-sense assumptions into social science, a danger which Schutz saw as especially acute for sociology. These unexamined assumptions, Schutz
123
273
warned, have a way of taking their revenge (1967, p. 9). Jack Douglas puts this danger rather well when he characterizes conventional sociology as an as if science, treating their objective measurements as if they were independent of common-sense understandings of everyday life (1970, p. 26). The problem and alternative are clearly expressed when Douglas suggests, sociologists of everyday life found the social sciences on their heads and have turned them upright; they have nally begun the task of starting with rst things rst rather than presupposing adequate answers to all the fundamental questions and going on from there (1970, p. 12). The respectful attention to subjective and intersubjective meanings advocated by Schutz should be understood not as leading away from objective analysis, but as specifying in what way social science can be objective. Schutz was committed to scientic ideals of universality and objectivity of social knowledge (see e.g., 1962, pp. 49, 52), but was committed also to discovering methodological principles which would be at once objective and appropriate for application to subjectively and intersubjectively meaningful phenomena (see, e.g., 1964, p. 5). He argues that the theme of all sciences of the social world is to constitute an objective meaningcontext out of subjective meaning-contexts; his primary challenge was to address the question: How are sciences of subjective meaning-context possible? (1967, p. 223). He suggested the direction that social sciences must take when he notes that subjective meaning-contexts can be comprehended in objectivating and anonymizing constructions, specically by means of ideal types (1967, p. 223). Now, since it is typifying experience, social science is an objective-meaning-context whose object, however, is subjective meaning-contexts (to be precise, the typical subjective processes of personal ideal types) (1967, p. 224). Elsewhere Schutz suggests that It is indeed the particular problem of the social sciences to develop methodological devices for attaining objective and veriable knowledge of a subjective meaning structure (1962, p. 36). Typication is important precisely in this context: typication as a socialscientic method allows for anonymous and objective knowledge of social phenomena which are themselves subjective and intersubjective. Objectivity in the context of the social sciences takes on a domain-specic meaning in Schutzs phenomenology, and certainly does not commit us to reify social reality as an ostensibly pre-given realm lled with pre-given phenomena of pre-given meaning. Objectivity in social science refers not to objects and meanings independent of human subjects, but rather to a variety of understanding which is different than subjective understanding, which is anonymous and impersonal; such an approach arguably makes objectivity in the social sciences an extreme or formal variety of inter-subjectivity (see, e.g., 1967, pp. 123, 135), consistent with insights from the philosophy and sociology of science (e.g., Kuhn 1970; Lynch 1993), emphasizing the inherently social nature of knowledge. In addition to suggestions about the relation between subjective and objective meaning, an appreciation of the foundational role and importance of typication in society and social science also can be seen to be vitally important in providing a viable understanding of micro/macro relations. Particularly, Schutzs understanding of typication offers an approach to collective categories (e.g., groups and
123
274
K. Kim, T. Berard
institutions) which avoids reication (see also Dreher 2003, p. 156). Schutz refers to the eminent danger within the social sciences that their idealizations, specically their typologies, will not be considered as methods but as true being (1962, p. 138; see also 1962, pp. 34). As Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann have put it, Social structure is the sum total of these typications and the recurrent patterns of interaction established by means of them (1966, p. 33). The concern to avoid reication is also relevant to understanding and describing social action, which is reied when meanings are thought to be independent of the action of understanding (Schutz 1967, p. 42). Typication, as Schutz discusses it, therefore raises and addresses a number of foundational and central themes for social science. Typication can be understood as a primary topic of inquiry and a primary method of inquiry. The relation between scientic typications and mundane typications becomes a central issue of explanatory adequacy or validity. Typication is also a central element of objectivity; it is a key for understanding the relation between micro and macro social phenomena, between intersubjective communication and understanding, and the regularities and institutions of the life-world. Schutz was convinced that such issues were basic, foundational problems for the social sciences (see, e.g., Natanson 1962, p. xlvii; Schutz 1964, p. 88).
Undeveloped Aspects of Schutzs Treatment of Typication Schutzs treatment of typication could have been more organized, and certainly left room for development. Schutzs insights could have been expressed in a more focused and accessible manner, especially as they developed after the Phenomenology of the Social World, in which ideal types were discussed explicitly, repeatedly, and in some depth, albeit in a somewhat opaque style. The four-volume edited series of Schutzs collected papers is far from the ideal venue for disseminating his insights relating to typication, although that is where many of them were published; comments on typication or relevant to typication are scattered throughout an extensive corpus organized with respect to other topics. The same could be said for other aspects of Schutzs thought, however, and in this context it is worth focusing on aspects of Schutzs treatment of typication, specically, which Schutz did not fully develop. It is our suggestion that, while his theoretical understanding of typication is uniquely insightful and of great signicance, the general neglect of empirical questions and empirical research constitutes a shortcoming insofar as his thought was addressed to the social sciences (see also; Douglas 1970, p. 34; Heritage 1984, pp. 7172; Psathas 2005; Roberts 2006, p. 84; Wagner 1983, pp. 132134). Specically, Schutz did not effectively express how his insights relate to particular types of empirical research in the social sciences, and he did not pursue his insights by means of empirical research, which could have provided his work with empirical as well as philosophical grounding, and might have led to signicant renements in his understanding of typication as well. For example, John Heritage notes that Schutzs writings dont provide an account of the normative constraints relevant for
123
275
the understanding of social action and social organization (pp. 7374). It was largely through the marriage of phenomenological sensibilities and empirical research that Garnkels ethnomethodology was able to progress on these and related topics. The potential for phenomenological insights to inform empirical research, and in turn to be informed by empirical research, became apparent in later developments including ethnomethodology and social constructionism, which largely adopted phenomenological insights as starting points, and symbolic interactionism, which was not an offshoot but has drawn from or been combined with phenomenological sociology in some of its manifestations. Although Schutz did apply his theoretical insights to several specic ideal types in a manner that approaches empirical research in some respects, even here the distinction between his own analysis and empirical analysis is clear and noteworthy. In his published analyses of the stranger, the home-comer, and the well informed citizen (1964, pp. 91134), Schutz offered thoughtful, insightful discussions of types of people and types of situations, such as the immigrant experiencing a new culture, and a veteran returning home from war, discussions which are presumably grounded in some combination of personal experience and second- or third-hand knowledge from journalistic or academic accounts. But the empirical basis or warrant for his analyses is very clearly not Schutzs concern, as empirical data and methodological issues are almost entirely neglected in these essays. These applications of Schutzs phenomenological sociology can be very rewarding in some ways, but not as empirical research or illustrations of empirical methods. This neglect was obviously by choice, as any scholar or journalist could easily have identied and referred to a much wider empirical basis, and displayed more concern to relate the content of the analysis to the real-worldly experiences or data by which it was informed. Even if Schutz was emphasizing altogether different issues, and arguably didnt need to provide empirical warrants for his analyses, the avoidance of empirical data and methodology in these essays does suggest a focus in which empirical research and empirical methods are at best marginal concerns, and this is unfortunate for the purposes of a phenomenological sociology. By contrast, it should be immediately apparent that empirical research can and has been done on social groups and on social experiences related to immigration, on veterans of foreign wars, and on the social distribution of knowledge, and it should not be surprising that empirical research yields many insights which would not be achieved otherwise, no matter how brilliant or experienced a scholar might be. For example, the idea of the social distribution of knowledge which Schutz discusses by contrasting the type of knowledge held by the man on the street, the well-informed citizen, and the expert, can be quite difcult to reconcile with his observation elsewhere that people tend to assume a reciprocity of perspectives rather than an incongruence of perspectives. The empirical research of Tim Berard on discrimination disputes (e.g., Berard 2005) illuminates features of the social distributions of knowledges and perspectives which allow Schutzs two observations to be understood as complementary in an incredibly rich and signicant manner, rather than contradictory. Discrimination disputes frequently pit against each other different individuals or parties with different types or amounts of knowledge, such as a citizen and a cop, an applicant and an employer, or (in Berard
123
276
K. Kim, T. Berard
2005) a university spokesperson and an academic. In this context a laypersons assumption of a reciprocity of perspectives with respect to the importance of race or gender for explaining actions can lead to perceptions and accusations of discrimination, where the opposite assumption, the assumption of an incongruence of perspectives, would provide for the sensibility of inquiring into whether the controversial actions in question may have been informed by expert knowledge or specialized relevances. The examination of actual discrimination disputes reveals that defense accounts in response to allegations of discrimination frequently claim or imply that the accused was acting on the basis of some specialized knowledge or motivation either unknown to, or unappreciated by, the accuser. Such defense accounts at once illustrate that members of a culture can be observed to orient to differentials in the social distribution of knowledge as their own practical concern, and illustrate that members can be observed to practically manage the assumption of the reciprocity of perspectives in such a manner as to ironically suggest that an accusation is based on an understandable but false assumption, and is hence merely subjective. These insights, which reconcile a seeming contradiction in Schutzs theoretical offerings and shed much-needed light on an important topic in policy analysis, would have been very unlikely to occur in an armchair or from a distance (see e.g., Schutz 1964, p. 98), and were in fact achieved in a cumulative fashion drawing upon professional experience across a variety of settings and analysis of data from a variety of settings. Another issue in relating philosophical phenomenology with empirical sociology turns out to be the proper level of analysis, with respect to the meanings of particular actors or actions in particular situations, or the meanings of typical actors or typical actions in typical situations. On the one hand, Schutzs phenomenology recognized the subjective nature of meaning and understanding, consistent with the individualistic tendency of phenomenological philosophy. On the other hand, Schutzs primary concern was addressed towards the social sciences, and in this regard he was concerned to emphasize the importance of intersubjectivity, language, and other social dimensions of meaning and understanding. Although typication is certainly relevant for understanding subjective meaning at the individual level, typication has a special importance for the social sciences in that it enables inter-subjective communication and understanding, hence enabling social relations, and it also enables knowledge of a general nature, an abstract nature, and an objective nature, above and beyond personal meanings and particular situations, making typication crucial to scientic knowledge. The tension here is foreshadowed in Schutzs comments on rationality and everyday thought, where he acknowledges that traditional standards of logic are not well suited to understand everyday experience. He writes: On the level of everyday experience, however, logic in its traditional form cannot render the services we need and expect. Traditional logic is a logic of concepts based on certain idealizations. In enforcing the postulate of clearness and distinctness of the concepts, for instance, traditional logic disregards all the fringes surrounding the nucleus within the stream of thought. On the other hand, thought in daily life has its chief interest precisely in the relation of the
123
277
fringes which attach the nucleus to the actual situation of the thinker. This is clearly a very important point. It explains why Husserl classies the greater part of our propositions in daily life as occasional propositions, that means, as valid and understandable only relative to the speakers situation and to their place in his stream of thought. (1964, p. 76) Arguably, Schutzs general interest is in a scientic understanding of commonsense knowledge, an understanding which would satisfy traditional criteria of logic such as clarity and also satisfy scientic criteria such as generalizability, despite the fact that the situated understanding and knowledge of actors observable in the life-world often does not satisfy these criteria (cf. Heritage 1984, p. 72). These concerns with clarity, generalizability, etc. are consistent with his efforts to develop an objective science of subjective meanings, and consistent also with his interest in idealtypical analysis, which can only provide clarity and generalizability by neglecting the unique attributes of individual persons, actions and situations. But given the tensions involved, such as the trade-off between generalized knowledge and situated knowledge of subjective meanings, and given Schutzs emphasis on adequacy at the level of meaning, it is not surprising that different researchers would pursue questions of meaning and understanding in different directions. This is evident for example in conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis, where transcripts can alternately be used as illustrations of context-transcendent formal structures of speaking and reasoning, or as documentations of situated meanings and relevances. The situation is further complicated given that Schutzian insights have often been lumped in with certain relativizing and solipsistic tendencies in social constructionism, by which individuals and groups can construct their own reality, and lumped in with individualistic concepts from symbolic interactionism, including the actors denition of the situation, and the actors self concept, all of which direct attention away from the structure of the life world and the common element in commonsense knowledge. While a careful reading of Schutz points towards scientic interests in offering scientic generalizations about anonymous and objective structures of the lifeworld, the emphasis on meaning as a criterion of adequacy and on respecting the integrity and character of phenomena in the life-world leads many readers in another direction, and understandably so. There is also arguably a tension between Schutzs generally abstract discussion of types, and his (still generalized) observations that the meanings of types are contextually variable, contingent upon practical interests and problems (Schutz 1964, pp. 234235; see also Barber 1988, p. 37; Schutz and Luckmann 1973, pp. 6667). Schutzs suggestion that there are different levels of analysis (1964, p. 84) provides a framework in which the potential tension between context-transcendent and context-sensitive approaches might be successfully avoided or managed, but there is still the issue that Schutzs discussion remains abstract even in discussing the way that types are modied in relation to particular objects, subjects or contexts. The possibility of divergent applications, without clear articulation or synthesis, is greatly enhanced by Schutz general neglect of empirical questions and empirical research. The door is left open for divergent varieties of scholarship and research or, less charitably stated, there
123
278
K. Kim, T. Berard
remain lingering tensions related to the proper level(s) of analysis in the study of society (see also Costelloe 1996), which study is supposed to be at once interpretive and objective. While some of the most famous gures in subsequent social theory have struggled to integrate or relate different levels or types of sociological analysis (Bourdieu, Giddens), traditions of inquiry which draw signicantly from Schutz, especially social constructionism and ethnomethodology, have been widely and repeatedly acknowledged, whether as authoritative in their own right or as sources of insights to be mined and recycled into one or another variety of grand theory.
Typication and Social Science Research After Schutz Tracing the inuence of Schutzs insights concerning typication on subsequent sociological theory and research would be a daunting exercise of intellectual history, far beyond the scope of this essay. The project would be all the more difcult because Schutz has had a formative inuence, directly or indirectly, on a wide range of micro or interpretive or qualitative projects in sociology, and very few are identied as phenomenological sociology. The inuence of Schutz can in many cases be difcult to tease out from the inuences of pragmatists and symbolic interactionists, especially Herbert Blumer but also Erving Goffman and others, and many scholars draw on Schutzs insights only indirectly, for example by virtue of their familiarity with social constructionism (esp. the foundational statement by Berger and Luckmann 1966), or by means of Garnkel and ethnomethodology. Acknowledgements to Schutz in the contemporary social sciences are relatively rare considering the inuence he has had on sociology, and, when acknowledgements do occur, they can be sparing in their details. By contrast to the rarity of citations to Schutz, the practice of typication remains stunningly ubiquitous and fundamental, and for the most part stunningly unreective and uncritical as well. Hopefully three examples of relevant research can be mentioned without limiting the appreciation that typication is inevitably a foundational element of any sociological inquiry, whether empirical or theoretical. One example will be offered to suggest how processes of typication are central to a very conventional, institutionalized form of social scientic research, the survey research interview, which is typically conducted without any awareness of or interest in phenomenological sociology. Two other examples, referring to membership categorization analysis and constructionist social problems scholarship, can be offered to illustrate how the reective attention to typication or closely related phenomena is associated with productive and ongoing traditions of sociological research. A rst example is a development in the sociology of scientic knowledge in which the practice of social science research becomes, itself, a topic for research. While there have long been numerous instructional and critical works on socialscientic methodology, empirical studies of social scientic methods in the course of their accomplishment place important instructional and critical concerns on an empirical footing. Aaron Cicourel noted in the sixties that measurement involves imposing on the data a reifying structure of equivalence classes, such that unique observations are grouped together in categories or cells and treated as identical, as a
123
279
precondition of comparative or statistical analysis (1964, pp. 8081; 100101). The work involved in summarizing the results of open-ended interviews and the work of conducting xed-choice questionnaires both involve imposing a typifying structure on replies, which replies can display much more variety than the language used to record or summarize them. In the process, the variety of the individual cases is necessarily stripped away (see also Natanson 1970, p. 77; Heeren 1970, p. 51). But whereas Cicourel refers to the possibility of recording and analyzing interviews, subsequent scholarship has done just that, and provided a much more nuanced and empirical understanding of such issues. In reviewing this literature and drawing on her own research experience, Hanneke Hootkoop-Steenstra notes a variety of interactional and interpretive contingencies at work in the course of survey interviews which depart from the methodological ideal and presumption of standardization and which therefore raise questions about the validity of survey data and the research premised on their use. For example, she notes that standardization of wording does not guarantee the (presumed) standardization of meaning across respondents (2000, p. 8), and she notes that interviewers often depart from strict standardized wording in order to elicit easily coded answers, for example when faced with inadequate rst replies by respondents (2000, pp. 126127). Both of these problems are related to typication, specically, to unreective, uncritical and highly abstract assumptions of standardized speech and standardized meanings, which obscure both the details and the variety of the communicative and interpretive practices observable in the conduct of interviews. One conclusion suggested by Houtkoop-Steenstra is that standardization may lead to reliable ndings (in the statistical sense of consistency, not the pragmatic sense of trustworthy) more than to valid ndings (2000, pp. 180184); validity is premised on assumptions of standardization which turn out to be quite questionable. She obviously nds the conversational logic of survey interviews to be quite involved and interesting and worthy of study, but she does not nd standardized surveys to be a particularly strong basis for quantitative research (2000, p. 12). Even more topical is an edited collection by Douglas Maynard et al. (2002), in which Maynard and Schaeffer call for an approach to survey interviews they term analytic alternation, which would follow the situated oscillations between formal rule-following and tacit practices that interviewers enact in concert with survey respondents (2002, p. 4). Drawing on Michael Polanyis notion of tacit knowledge and Schutzs scholarship on commonsense understanding, they suggest that survey researchers have generally emphasized standardization to the point of neglecting the tacit understandings and the pragmatic, situated lived work involved in survey research (2002, p. 9). Although Maynard and Schaeffer end by observing that standardization necessarily and inescapably involves tacit knowledge, and tacit knowledge necessarily and inescapably shapes social measurement (2002, p. 34), the relevance of their survey is perhaps more directly addressed when they suggest (rather diplomatically) that we are not in a good position to assess issues of reliability and validity in survey data until we pay more serious attentionboth empirically and methodologicallyto what interviewers actually do (2002, p. 33). What interviewers actually do, they suggest, involves the active deployment of tacit knowledge to achieve the procedural uniformity that enhances the quality of
123
280
K. Kim, T. Berard
survey data (2002, p. 9). In that interviewers are involved in the practical work of achieving uniformity across multiple locales at various times with various people, the tacit commonsense knowledge at work necessarily includes much that should be understood as typication. Coding interview responses into typied categories such as agree and disagree, is certainly an exercise in typication. But so are a wide range of less obvious and less common interview actions, understandings, and processes. One example is judging potential subjects health concerns so as to distinguish between the type that prompts an offer to call back and the type that prompts the would-be interviewer to desist altogether. Another example is deviating from a survey script to encourage a substantive type of response (e.g., yes or no) as a means of trying to prevent or cut short a series of variations on no idea, the latter of which is easily typed or coded as an adequate response (Dont know) but perhaps doesnt conform to tacit understandings by the interviewer of what types of response are appropriate or intended as answers to questions meant to produce aggregate measures of belief (examples drawn from Lynch 2002, pp. 125 150). Typication is therefore used as an often implicit or illicit research method by interviewers, with the effect of structuring the ndings in an unexamined manner, rather than typication being the topic of survey research or of methodological deliberation. Scholarship on the practical achievement of survey interviews ultimately introduces elements of surprise and instability into the understanding of this commonplace research instrument, alternately perceived as troubles by survey analysts and as data by others such as ethnomethodologists engaged in studies of work or social studies of science (Lynch 2002, pp. 143144). The practical methods of data collection turn out to be practical methods of data construction, in the sense that each piece of data is the product of intersubjective procedures including prompting or even pursuing relevant answers, understanding questions, replying to questions, understanding replies, and ultimately coding responses in a standardized, often quantied manner. Emanuel Schegloff observes in this respect that quantitative analysis, dealing as it does with aggregates of single instances, is not an alternative to single case analysis, but rather is built on its back (1993, p. 102). Ultimately, the observational research on survey interviews suggests that explicit professional methods of collecting quantitative data piggyback on informal methods of practical action and practical reasoning (ethnomethods) which remain invisible or uninteresting to analysts of quantitative data, despite the fact that informal methods are necessary, ubiquitous, and inuential constituents of social research. A second example, dealing with social identities and types of persons, is the tradition of membership categorization analysis (MCA). MCA has made great progress over the last 25 years in explicating social understandings and language use concerning categories or types of persons, and members thereof. Drawing on the pioneering work in conversation analysis (CA) by Harvey Sacks, and becoming established as a eld of inquiry with works such as Lena Jayyusi (1984) and Stephen Hester and Paul Eglin (1997), MCA has contributed greatly to the empirical, pragmatic and (praxio-) logical understanding of how identity categories or types are understood and used as frequent and crucial elements in cultural (ethno)
123
281
methods of practical reasoning and practical action. One important contribution made by this literature is explicit analytic attention to and empirical study of the fact that identity types or membership categories are often understood as belonging together in what Sacks called membership category devices. For example the categories mommy and daddy and baby can be heard as alternative categories belonging to the single membership category device family, and the categories Christian, Jew and Muslim can be heard as alternative categories belonging to the single category device religion. The fact that identity types or membership categories can and often must be understood relationally in this manner has tremendous relevance for understanding a wide range of phenomena, including issues of coordination, solidarity, suspicion, and aggression between incumbents of different categories within the same category device (e.g., class relations, race relations, gender relations, inter-faith relations). Another contribution made by MCA is explicit analytic and empirical attention to the fact that people identify with, and can be understood to belong to, different identity types or membership categories, either simultaneously or successively; this has been referred to in MCA as the multiple category incumbency of persons, and is a specic instance of the more general observation that there are typically many different ways of correctly describing a person, an action, a state of affairs, etc.the problem of multiple description. This issue is of foundational importance for the social sciences because it raises the following issue: since people can correctly be understood and described as incumbents of a variety of different membership categories, e.g., from the category devices of class, race, gender, age cohort/ generation, national origin, religion, education level, profession, political party afliation, marital status, etc., and additionally all kinds of more transient identities, e.g., commuter, tourist, applicant, customer, accused, current speaker, etc., then how is it decided which identity or identities (if any) is/are relevant for understanding a particular situation, or for a particular study? This question of relevant identities is an application of more general insights into the issue of multiple description, noted by Sacks, and in his own manner by Schutz before that (see, e.g., 1962, p. 8; 1964, p. 94; 1967, p. 85). Membership categorization analysis has addressed this question in an open-minded and openended and also rigorously empirical manner, by reference to whatever identities are observably relevant to participants in specic social settings. It has therefore developed in a direction at odds with much theory-driven and politically-driven social analysis, in what continues to be a very edifying and pivotal tension between different traditions of social science (see e.g., Schegloff 1997; Berard 2005). Yet another contribution of membership categorization analysis deals with relations between specic membership types or categories and other varieties of types or categories which may be attributed to them as predicates, including category-related responsibilities (e.g., the care that a mommy shows a baby), interests (e.g., the interest of young men in fast cars), knowledge and beliefs (e.g., the medical expertise of doctors), intentions and motives (e.g., the possibility of whites discriminating against blacks), actions, and many other category-related phenomena. The strength of the relation is acknowledged to vary between regular or even exclusive associations, e.g., the activity of prescribing medicine is linked
123
282
K. Kim, T. Berard
rather closely with the category doctor (a category-bound activity), and weaker but still conventional links, such as the activity of caring for a baby. Since the latter can be done by incumbents of many categories (e.g., mommy, daddy, grandparent, nanny, older sibling, social worker), this activity is said to be tied to these categories (category-tied activities), rather than bound to one or two of them exclusively. The existence of a vast, inferentially rich network of cultural conventions for understanding types of identity alongside types of belief and knowledge, types of intentions and motives, types of responsibilities and privileges, types of actions, etc., is obviously of central importance both as an inevitable topic and as an inevitable resource of the social sciences. That these relations between types or categories are at once logical and empirical, that these various types or categories and predicates are related to each other in a mutually constitutive manner which dees mechanistic and deterministic reasoning, and that they are subject to divergent understandings and evaluations, certainly pose many challenges for the social sciences, but these challenges are being addressed by MCA, with signicant results. A third example of scholarship which illustrates the continuing relevance of typication can be found in constructionist social problems theory, a tradition which is informed to varying degrees in different manifestations by Schutz, sometimes directly and often indirectly through familiarity with early ethnomethodology. As James Holstein and Gale Miller relate in a recent survey of the eld, constructionist social problems theory was founded by the seminal work of Malcolm Spector and Kitsuse (e.g., 1977), which broke with the conventional tendency to begin with social problems as ostensibly objective facts, and instead insisted on treating social problems as social constructionsas the products of claims-making and constitutive denitional processes (2003a, p. 1). The concept of a social problem is obviously one type of social phenomenon and sociological topic, as opposed to other types of phenomenon and other types of study, e.g., social change or social order. More importantly, social problems is an umbrella term comprising an indenite number of conventional types of social problems, including at various times and places witchcraft, teenage pregnancy, hyperactive children, drunk driving, immigration, AIDS, international terrorism, and many many more. The precise relevance of typication for constructionist social problems theory is perhaps best illustrated by means of Holstein and Millers emphasis on what they call social problems work, by which they mean the social practices that link public interpretive structures to aspects of everyday life, such that particular behaviors or situations become socially constructed as social problems (2003a, p. 8). These interpretive structures must be understood primarily, if not exclusively, as types, such as the typication involved in understanding and labeling a particular trafc fatality as an instance of drunk driving, or a particular behavioral disruption in school as an instance of attention decit disorder. In underlining the importance of the culturally available labeling resources for understanding social phenomena as social problems, Holstein and Miller are referring to culturally known types of social problems and the social processes involved in typifying particular behaviors, interactions or situations as instances of an already-familiar type of social problem. Their concern, in other words, is focused on the articulation of problem categories
123
283
with concrete cases (2003b, p. 71), or the practices and processes of social problems typication. Similarly, Ibarra and Kitsuse, in emphasizing that putative social conditions in social problems theory can be understood (respecied) in a constructionist manner as condition-categories, make the observation that these categories, which are used to generate meaningful descriptions and evaluations of social reality, are typications (2003, p. 22). While Holstein and Miller are certainly correct to link their constructionist approach to social problems categories with macro or structural issues of collective representations (a la Emile Durkheim) and discourse structures (a la Michel Foucault), they also draw upon Schutzs notion of schemes of interpretation. This notion, which is inseparable from Schutzs insights about typication, arguably provides a sufcient link between the interactional and structural concerns which Holstein and Miller are engaged in relating, without risking the reication or determinism observable in Durkheimian cultural sociology and without importing the inherently critical and political terms of Foucaults social philosophy. Holstein and Miller clearly go beyond Schutzs scholarship in their emphasis on the situated, practical articulation of categories in social interaction, thus addressing an important omission in Schutzs work mentioned above. They also acknowledge the relevance of Schutzs work. But more could certainly be said about the degree to which it was Schutz, rather than Emile Durkheim or Michel Foucault, and prior to ethnomethodology, who laid the groundwork for such progress in the sociological understanding of typication, classication, labeling, and related phenomena. This groundwork was important also for entire research traditions which would in various ways elaborate upon the insight that social reality is constructed and understood as a meaningful reality in a fundamentally inter-subjective manner, drawing upon a common language and common stock of intersubjective, commonsense knowledge. This knowledge is inevitably knowledge not of particular people and actions, but knowledge of personal types, course of action types, and many other types of types. In different ways, these three illustrations all demonstrate the possibility and the value of studying types and typication and related phenomena in an empirical manner. It is quite important that empirical research be theoretically informed, and for this reason Schutzs theoretical contributions can be quite relevant to empirical research, but it is also quite important that research in the social sciences and social scientic theory be informed and constrained by empirical data and methods. The three illustrations above have briey suggested the value of empirical research addressing the processes of typication in different social contexts, with different relevances for the social sciences. Qualitative studies of quantitative research practices are interesting not only in revealing a new topic for research, but in revealing that quantitative data incorporate and reect methods of managing and manipulating qualitative data which can belie central assumptions or requirements of quantitative methods such as descriptive and inferential statistics. These empirical ndings can alternately be used to rene the collection or analysis of quantitative data, or to provide empirical ndings relevant to the selection of qualitative or mixed methods for conducting social research. Studies of membership categorization practices, relying upon the close analysis of empirical data, have made numerous and signicant contributions to our
123
284
K. Kim, T. Berard
understanding of types and typication, not only with reference to persons and identities, but also with respect to a wide variety of predicates (actions, motives, beliefs, knowledges, competences, rights, obligations, etc.) which can be predicated of incumbents of different categories or types. Whereas Schutz briey indicated awareness of the fact of multiple category incumbency (or multiple identities) and the inconsistencies which may obtain between the predicates of alternative but simultaneous identities (see e.g., 1964, pp. 9495), it was Sacks and subsequent researchers in ethnomethodological conversation analysis who provided the methods and ndings of what Schutz referred to as an as-yet unattained logic of everyday thinking. What Schutz did not seem to foresee was that this logic of everyday thinking could be empirically studied as an immanent, practical logic displayed in naturally occurring talk and texts. This realization allows for the study of personal types and predicates, including their social organization and their employment in social action, to be empirically grounded and continually enriched by the analysis of new data. The contributions of constructionist social problems theory and research yield again new and important topics for the social sciences, including in the rst instance the social construction of social problems, whether referring to macrosociological, historical processes, or micro sociological processes of situated speech and social action. But these contributions also emphasize and illuminate the application of social problem types (or labels) to real people, actions, and social affairs, thus pushing our understanding of typication in a more pragmatic direction, both in the sense of empirical research on pragmatic interaction, and in the sense of addressing issues of public concern.
Typication as a Sensitizing Concept for Future Scholarship It has been suggested above that typication, in the sense that Schutz understood the term, is a great deal more prevalent and important than is typically acknowledged or appreciated by the typical social scientist or even the typical philosopher of social science. To identify typication with the idealtypical mode of analysis advocated by Weber would be to grossly underestimate the ubiquity and necessity of typication in the social sciences. This is true even allowing for Webers inuence on tens of thousands of social scientists who might not acknowledge or even understand how they are building upon methodological or substantive insights associated with Webers use or advocacy of ideal typical analysis with respect to social science methodology or the study of religion, economics, politics, law, social inequality, bureaucracy, modernity, etc. And to identify typication with the study of stereotypes, which are obviously a type of types, would also grossly underestimate the role of types and typication in human perception and interaction. Much like Schutz and his students Berger and Luckmann refocused the sociology of knowledge away form the study of political ideologies and intellectual endeavors towards the much broader and more basic study of commonsense knowledge (see, e.g., Heeren 1970; Berger and Luckmann 1966), Schutz refocused the understanding of types and typication such that these insights illuminated not just the methodology of the social sciences, but, as it were, the methodology of human
123
285
beings, the socialized subjects of the social sciences. Thus not only is typication ubiquitous and necessary in the sciences, such that Carl Hempel would remark that the analysis of typological procedures exhibits the methodological unity of empirical science (1963, p. 230), but typication is also ubiquitous and necessary in society, consistent with Berger and Luckmanns observation that social reality itself is apprehended in a continuum of typications (1966, p. 33). It follows from the above that types and typication, in addition to being tremendously important substantive topics and absolutely necessary methodological devices, are among the most basic as well as among the most radical of sensitizing concepts (to employ Blumers most serviceable phrase) for theory development and for theoretically informed inquiry. Attending more regularly and more rigorously to issues of types and typication in the social sciences stands to enrich not only the methodology of the social sciences, but to recommend important new topics and new perspectives on recurring topics (as social constructionism and ethnomethodology have done in sociology and beyond), and to bridge the all-too-frequent gap between methodological concerns, substantive interests, and theoretical insights. Typication is simultaneously a scientic method, a commonsense method of perception and communication, a topic for the social sciences, and a theoretical insight which has since the sixties become a tried and tested heuristic for a tremendous variety of empirical studies across a variety of disciplines and literatures. Alfred Schutzs insights concerning types and typication have been published for over 50 years now, and have been taken up both directly and indirectly by a variety of scholars. There is certainly a risk that with the passing of time this contribution will become increasingly misunderstood and neglected, even as the number of studies which draw upon Schutzian insights continues to grow in number and diversity and importance. Already 40 years ago now, the secondary literature on typication had attained signicant sophistication and reexivity. In addition to various studies referenced above, the work of McKinney stands out as a useful landmark in the development of the literature on types and typication. McKinney not only wrote an article explicitly addressing the general nature and importance of typication and typologies, but published it as a Presidential Address in Social Forces, one of the most inuential venues for sociological scholarship in the United States. Although his treatment of types and typication emphasized the methodological nature and importance of the phenomena, he also pointed out rather incisively some of the theoretical relevance, noting that types and typologies are composite theoreticalmethodological devices (1969, p. 10). And he noted as well, referring to what Schutz discussed as the rst order constructs of the life-world as opposed to the second order constructs of the social scientist, that types are fundamental data for the social scientist (1969, p. 2). Speaking with signicant concern about the treatment of types and typologies in sociology, McKinney regretted that Everybody uses them, but almost no one pays any attention to the nature of their construction (1969, p. 4). Continuing, he argues, As we envisage the future, however, and contemplate the scope and magnitude of sociological problems yet to be explored it would seem to be extremely unwise not to develop a vastly increased self-consciousness, as an aspect of
123
286
K. Kim, T. Berard
both the common methodology and the common theoretical orientation, with respect to the construction and utilization of typologies. Since they are used with great frequency in social inquiry it would appear to be methodologically imperative that we develop and proliferate a greater understanding of their multiple roles in that inquiry. (1969, p. 4) In light of all of the above, and with reference to these specic concerns, we are now well-positioned to reect upon the successes and continuing challenges facing scholarship on types and typication. It is true, as McKinney anticipated, that the scope and the magnitude of the problems addressed by sociology and related inquiries has increased dramatically over the ensuing 40 years. During this time, there have been a number of remarkable gures to draw more or less explicitly on Schutzian phenomenological sociology, including Schutzs insights on types and typication. Much of this work was at the same time deservedly famous, and rather difcult to institutionalize, e.g., with respect to the creation of generations of scholars identifying with and developing professionally coherent as well as intellectually coherent traditions of inquiry. In the case of Goffman, relevant scholarship such as his analysis of total institutions (1961) and stigma (1963) have been celebrated and even inuential, but hardly institutionalized in subsequent social science methodology, theory, or studies. In the case of Berger and Luckmanns social constructionism (1966) again we see fame and inuence, and in this case we also see the professional and literary proliferation of work associated with social constructionism (see, e.g., Holstein and Gubrium 2008), but much of the original theoretical and substantive content of Berger and Luckmanns treatise in the sociology of knowledge has been left behind. Some of the common attributes of avowedly constructionist scholarship which undoubtedly aided its rise to both fame and infamy, such as the frequent debunking motif and the celebration of subjectivity and relativism, are rather inconsistent with the foundational texts. In the case of Garnkel and ethnomethodology, as with social constructionism, we can see fame and inuence, but also widespread and persistent misunderstanding and suspicion, and declining familiarity with authors, Schutz foremost among them, whose work provided foundational resources and inspiration. The interactionist, constructionist, ethnomethodological, and other broadly interpretive sociologies which have carried forward Schutzian insights may have thousands of adherents and practitioners, but this is not to suggest that Schutzs contributions are today well understood or well applied. It is much more the case that Schutzs inuence is increasingly indirect and mediated in different ways by different people and traditions of inquiry (cf. Psathas 2004), and in some ways weakening as a function of intergenerational and interdisciplinary diffusion. Despite the continuing neglect and misunderstanding, from practitioners of interpretive social science as well as their detractors, Schutzs foundational insights into types and typication remain available to us today, and remain an edifying contribution to the social sciences, especially in combination with subsequent scholarship which draws directly and signicantly from Schutzs social phenomenology. Not only is the understanding of types and typication methodologically imperative, as McKinney suggested long ago now, but it is at the same time
123
287
theoretically and substantively imperative. While it is clearly not the case that the social sciences will wither away and die unless they attend more seriously to foundational methodological issues, central theoretical concerns, and basic topics, it will remain unclear what social scientists are actually doing when they study society, and it will remain unclear how inter-subjective social interaction and inter-subjective social knowledge is even possible, let alone how it is structured and distributed and with what effects. As is suggested above by references to social studies of social science, membership categorization analysis, and constructionist social problems theory, our understanding of types and typication is advancing, and advancing well beyond Schutzs contributions. But the gains to our knowledge will be immeasurably richer if we can understand and evaluate contemporary developments with reference to the historical and intellectual antecedents which inform them most profoundly, and relate them to one another, as parallel developments dealing with types as both topics and resources for the social sciences.
References
Barber, M. D. (1988). Social typications and the elusive other: The place of sociology of knowledge in Alfred Schutzs phenomenology. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press. Berard, T. (2005). On multiple identities and educational contexts: Remarks on the study of inequalities and discrimination. Journal of Language, Identity and Education, 4(1), 6776. Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Choi, J. (2001). A phenomenological study of anonymity. Research in Philosophy and Phenomenology, 16, 275303. Cicourel, A. (1964). Method and measurement in sociology. New York, NY: Free Press. Costelloe, T. (1996). Between the subject and sociology: Alfred Schutzs phenomenology of the lifeworld. Human Studies, 19, 247266. Cox, R. R. (1978). Schutzs theory of relevance: A phenomenological critique. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Douglas, J. (1970). Understanding everyday life. In J. Douglas (Ed.), Understanding everyday life: Towards a reconstruction of sociological knowledge (pp. 344). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Dreher, J. (2003). The symbol and the theory of the life-world: The transcendences of the life-world and their overcoming by signs and symbols. Human Studies, 26, 141163. Ebeling, R. (1999). Human action, ideal types, and the market process: Alfred Schutz and the Austrian economists. In L. Embree (Ed.), Schutzian social science (pp. 115134). Boston, MA: Kluwer. Ferguson, H. (2006). Phenomenological sociology: Insight and experience in modern society. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Garnkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. Heeren, J. (1970). Alfred Schutz and the sociology of common-sense knowledge. In J. Douglas (Ed.), Understanding everyday life: Towards a reconstruction of sociological knowledge (pp. 4556). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Hempel, C. (1963). Typological methods in the social sciences. In M. Natanson (Ed.), Philosophy of the social sciences: A reader (pp. 210230). New York, NY: Random House. Heritage, J. (1984). Garnkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
123
288
K. Kim, T. Berard
Hester, S., & Eglin, P. (Eds.). (1997). Culture in action: Studies in membership categorization analysis. Washington, DC: International Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, and University Press of America. Holstein, J. A., & Gubrium, J. F. (Eds.). (2008). Handbook of constructionist research. New York: Guilford. Holstein, J., & Miller, G. (2003a). Introduction: A fork in the road: Challenges and choices in social constructionism. In J. Holstein & G. Miller (Eds.), Challenges and choices: constructionist perspectives on social problems (pp. 113). New York, NY: Aldine. Holstein, J., & Miller, G. (2003b). Social constructionism and social problems work. In J. Holstein & G. Miller (Eds.), Challenges and choices: Constructionist perspectives on social problems (pp. 7091). New York, NY: Aldine. Hootkoop-Steenstra, H. (2000). Interaction and the standardized survey interview: The living questionnaire. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Ibarra, P., & Kitsuse, J. (2003). Claims-making discourse and vernacular resources. In J. Holstein & G. Miller (Eds.), Challenges and choices: Constructionist perspectives on social problems (pp. 1750). New York, NY: Aldine. Jayyusi, L. (1984). Categorization and the moral order. Boston, MA: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Kuhn, T. (1970). The structure of scientic revolutions (enlarged) (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lynch, M. (1993). Scientic practice and ordinary action: Ethnomethodology and social studies of science. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Lynch, M. (2002). The living text: Written instructions and situated actions in telephone surveys. In D. Maynard, H. Houtkoop-Steenstra, N. C. Schaeffer, & J. Van Der Zouwen (Eds.), Standardization and tacit knowledge: Interaction and practice in the survey interview (pp. 125150). New York: Wiley. Maynard, D., Houtkoop-Steenstra, H., Schaeffer, N. C., & Van Der Zouwen, J. (Eds.). (2002). Standardization and tacit knowledge: Interaction and practice in the survey interview. New York: Wiley. McKinney, J. (1969). Typication, typologies, and sociological theory. Social Forces, 48(1), 112. Natanson, M. (1962). Introduction. In A. Schutz (Ed.), Collected papers, vol. I: The problem of social reality (pp. xxvxlvii). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Natanson, M. (1970). The journeying self: A study in philosophy and social role. Reading, MA: AddisonWesley. Psathas, G. (2004). Alfred Schutzs inuence on American sociologists and sociology. Human Studies, 27, 135. Psathas, G. (2005). The ideal type in Weber and Schutz. In M. Endress, G. Psathas, & H. Nasu (Eds.), Explorations of the life-world (pp. 143169). Dordrecht: Springer. Roberts, B. (2006). Micro social theory. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan. Schegloff, E. (1993). Reections on quantication in the study of conversation. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 26(1), 99128. Schegloff, E. (1997). Whose text? Whose context? Discourse and Society, 8(2), 165187. Schutz, A. (1962). Collected papers, vol. I: The problem of social reality. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Schutz, A. (1964). Collected papers, vol. II: Studies in social theory. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Schutz, A. (1966). Collected papers, vol. III: Studies in phenomenological philosophy. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Schutz, A. (1967). The phenomenology of the social world. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Schutz, A., & Luckmann, T. (1973). The structures of the life-world (Vol. I). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Spector, M., & Kitsuse, J. ([1977] 2001). Constructing social problems. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Thomason, B. (1982). Making sense of reication: Alfred Schutz and constructionist theory. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. Turner, J. H. (1978). The structure of sociological theory (revised ed.). Homewood, Il: Dorsey Press. Wagner, H. (1983). Phenomenology of consciousness and sociology of the life-world: An introductory study. Edmonton, Canada: University of Alberta Press. Wanderer, J. (2005). Interpretive origins of classical sociology: Weber, Husserl, Schutz, Durkheim and Simmel. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen. Weber, M. ([1956] 1978). G. Roth & C. Wittich (Eds.). Economy and society in two volumes. Berkeley: University of California Press.
123
289
Wiggins, O. P., & Schwartz, M. A. (1988). Psychiatric diagnosis and the phenomenology of typication. In L. Embree (Ed.), Worldly phenomenology: The continuing inuence of Alfred Schutz on North American human science. Washington, DC: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology & University Press of America. Zimmerman, D., & Pollner, M. (1970). The everyday world as a phenomenon. In J. Douglas (Ed.), Understanding everyday life: Towards a reconstruction of sociological knowledge (pp. 80103). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
123
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Schutz

Transféré par

Informations du document

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Schutz

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Hum Stud (2009) 32:263289 DOI 10.

1007/s10746-009-9120-6 RESEARCH PAPER

Published online: 10 December 2009 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Typication in Society and Social Science

Typication in Society and Social Science

Typication in Society and Social Science

Typication in Society and Social Science

Typication in Society and Social Science

Typication in Society and Social Science

Typication in Society and Social Science

Typication in Society and Social Science

Typication in Society and Social Science

Typication in Society and Social Science

Typication in Society and Social Science

Typication in Society and Social Science

Typication in Society and Social Science

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi