Write an essay on the significance of phenomenology in sociology.

Phenomenology is that branch of philosophy concerned with the study of the world that
appears because the world as an ontological, pre-existing entity cannot be understood, as
such. In doing so, phenomenology is concerned with everything that goes into the making of
what Husserl later called the life-world. The life-world consists of the realm of
intersubjective experiences, i.e., subjects experience a world with, and through each other
(Schutz, 1970). In sociology, thus, the doing of social acts by individuals becomes central
with an application of phenomenology. But it is in studying this doing that one can trace the
critique of metaphysical concepts of self, identity, consciousness and the subject in the
phenomenological approach to sociology. This paper attempts to draw on the importance of
phenomenology in sociology by a critique of metaphysical concepts and social constructs, to
problematize these terms within what Judith Butler calls the discursive field of gender that
forms a fundamental part of the study of society (Butler, 1990). An analysis of these concepts
can lead us to understand the interrelation between the indeterminacies that form a basis of
both social theory as well as phenomenology, as exemplified in the construction of the
gendered body and identity.
Schutz became the foremost theorist to apply Webers interpretive sociology to the Husserlian
concept of the life-world to understand the structures that it consists of. According to Weber,
sociology deals with the interpretation of actions of individuals by studying the situation that
it takes place in. An action becomes social only when the individual takes into account
someone elses behaviour in that particular situation. Thus, any knowledge gained through
the analytical tool of such an interpretive sociology will be the knowledge of situation and
not of individual (Tucker, 1965). Webers theory of social action remains relevant precisely
because it takes into account what happens in the external world where individuals are
constantly engaged in different acts, and that one needs to interpret the motivations behind
them. Schutz goes a level further within the framework of the life-world to analyse how a
particular situation is defined or constituted for the individual, and how one can read into the
motivations behind the acts in question (Luckman, 1978).
According to Schutz, the life-world consists of pre-exiting world of information that is takenfor-granted by the individual, but even this unquestionedness and familiarity are by no
means homogenous and express manifold stratifications (Luckman, 1978: 258).
Knowledge as that which is given through the socialisation process is not a personal
experience and thus transmitted through ones predecessors, contemporaries and the world of
culture. This debunks the Kantian model of a priori categories of the mind and only ascribes
knowledge to the phenomena coming from the outside of the individual. One can thus see
that the beginning point of phenomenology is the critique of metaphysical conceptions, as we
shall see with regards to the self as well. Schutz continues to argue that individuals find
themselves in situations that they have to define for themselves. This is done on the basis of
the ontological structure of the pre-given world that is external and a form of imposition on
the individual, along with the biographical state which includes the individuals stock of
actual knowledge at that particular time and is within their spontaneous agency. (Luckman,
1978).
In this framework, it will be useful to analyse how Butler talks about the body as a situation
that needs to be defined by the individual (Butler, 1988). Adopting from a post-structuralist

theory, she emphasises on the body as a site of continuous signification that is constituted by
always already given categories and constructs. The question then arises of how to define the
body even within the discursive field of gender. Butler emphasises on the need to take into
account all forms of what she calls the elementary forms of embodiment, through which a
body becomes a gendered body. The falsely naturalised consistency between sex, gender and
sexuality is crystallised only with acts of the body that are constantly repeated.
In order to describe the gendered body, a phenomenological theory of constitution requires
an expansion of the conventional view of acts to mean both that which constitutes meaning
and that through which meaning is performed or enacted. (Butler, 1988: 521)
Analysing the construction of the body as a site where gendered identity is produced and
reproduced becomes essential. When Merleau-Ponty terms the body as a set of
possibilities, he sets ground for looking at the performative acts of body as a situation that
need to be defined through individual agency (Merleau-Ponty in Butler, 1988). But it is also
important to note where those possibilities are coming from and how they are then used by
the individual. We can then note that the framework presented by Schutz works on the two
levels that Butler locates the construction of the body in. The ontological structure of the pregiven world can act as the means through which meaning is constituted, and the biographical
state of the individual as that through which meaning is performed. This is also similar to the
structure through which Mead distinguishes between the self that adopts the attitude of the
generalised other from the group that the individual is located in, and the self that acts on that
given structure (Mead, 1964).
Although Mead adopts a social psychological theory to analyse the construction of the self,
the difference between the I and the me can be located at the same level as that on which
Butler sets the construction of the body, and that on which Schutz sets the construction of the
situation. Mead notes that if we use a Freudian expression, the me is in a certain sense a
censor. It determines the sort of expression which can take place, sets the stage, and gives the
cue (Mead, 1964: 238). The description of the me as a censor works similarly to what
Schutz calls the imposition of the ontological structure of the pre-given world. Mead
describes the self as a social emergent in an intersubjective world because it is only after
adopting the attitude of the generalised other that one can act in a situation. The critique of
the self thus sets ground for dismantling the metaphysical unity that was ascribed to the
individual and thus can be used further by the sociologist to critique the unified
understanding of the body, sex and gender, as we shall analyse now.
One needs to briefly go back to Mead to understand the construction of the discursive field of
language that becomes the source of meaning making in a social act. Communication as a
prerequisite for a social act depends on the shared vocal gestures of language.
Comprehension of these significant symbols constituting language that precedes individual
interaction works on a repetition of those symbols. It is only in the process of repeating that
meaning is generated, as in the organised social behaviour of the family for instance (Mead,
1964). Such a repetition of significant symbols becomes key in the performative acts that
constitute ones gender identity. Butlers fundamental basis of situating the body in certain
pre-given conditions roots from Simon de Beavouirs proposition that "one is not born, but,
rather, becomes a woman (de Beavouir in Bulter, 1988: 519). The statement not only
debunks the naturalised relationship between sex and gender, but also asserts on the

importance of performative acts constituting the gendered body and identity. A

phenomenological approach to the gendered body then requires the realisation that one is
not simply a body, but, in some very key sense, one does one's body and, indeed, one does
one's body differently from one's contemporaries and from one's embodied predecessors and
successors as well (Butler, 1988: 521).
There is another level at which phenomenology become significant for a sociologist of
gender. The study of the social is the constant evaluation of what gets constructed repeatedly
in the doing of social acts. In that sense, phenomenology gives way to the process of what
Butler calls the economy of signification where sex and gender are constructed through
language. Phenomenologists like Berger and Luckman have argued that the world of
everyday life is largely constituted of anonymity because the other in our interaction is not
always a known individual (Berger and Luckman in Stoller, 2013); thus Mead argues that the
individual adopts the attitude of the generalised other. Silvia Stoller argues that the basis of
phenomenology lies in the indeterminacy of the world leading to constant determinations.
She reiterates Husserls distinction between the things that are directly visible to us, and
things that are more or less determined, or even in the process of being determined (Husserl
in Stoller, 2013). Thus, a phenomenological critique of self and subject would be that one is
always a self-in-becoming and a subject-in-becoming; one can never in that sense attain
selfhood or subjectivity.
Such an approach of gender can be read in Butlers argument of individual identity being
defined by attributes that are never entirely determined in the economy of signification
(Butler, 1990). The question that arises in this context is- how does one define ones own
identity? Butler argues that any discursive field is delimited by language that is
phallogocentric. The discursive associations of the woman with body and sex, or even nature
defines her as the other in opposition to the masculine subject that is associated with mind
and the realm of culture. According to Butler, it is Irigaray who recognises that this
association of the subject and the other works within the metaphysical binary of the mind and
the body as proposed by Descartes. The thinking cogito is then ascribed to the male sex and a
masculine identity, while the physical body and all the further signification that comes with it,
are ascribed to the female sex and the feminine. This association is precisely what marks, and
is further reproduced within, all discursive fields. For Irigaray then, locating the female,
feminine, or the woman has to necessarily fall outside this discursive framework, and thus
outside the significations of language (Irigaray in Butler, 1990. See also Irigaray, 1985: This
Sex Which is Not One).
We have already recognised that a gendered body and identity is constructed through constant
repetition of the acts taking place in the life-world. We have also recognised that elements in
this life-world are not always known or determined entirely. In this framework, the very
concept of identity, as Butler recognises, is constituted of attributes that are innumerable.
Along with that, the field of signification where these attributes are named, solidified and
repeated is delimited by language. This means that there is always something that is in the
process of becoming an attribute, a gender, an identity. Butlers contention, then, is to argue
that identity should be understood as a normative ideal rather than a set of descriptive
attributes, because these attributes will be endless and marked by language. Such normative
ideal is then formulated on the basis of regulatory practices that work on repetition and

performance of gender and other attributes (Butler, 1990). Stoller draws our attention to a
crucial point where phenomenological approach to gender can take us.
The constitutive instability is confirmed in the repetition of its gender norms, to which the
genders themselves contribute, in so far as they behave according to the established gender
norms. However, such an adamant and persistent need for repetition reveals that these norms
must, in fact, have an intrinsic instability. Why else would one constantly strive to be a
certain or particular gender? (Stoller, 2013: 28-29)
Thus, one cannot assume a continuity between sex, gender, sexuality and desire, because
there will always be individuals who will not fall within this normative continuity when the
field of attribution can be endless. Butlers theoretical proposition then leads her to apply a
phenomenological approach insofar as she recognises that the gendered body and identity is
constructed through everyday individual acts that are performed repeatedly, and that there is a
fundamental indeterminacy with regards to attributes that are understood to form an identity.
From such an approach, a social theory of gender cannot ignore that sphere of sexuality,
gender and identity that is still in the process of becoming and not yet solidified, marked or
named as such. Thus, not only does phenomenology help us in understanding the process
through which constructs are constituted in society through a critique of their metaphysical
unity, but also that determination of anything can happen only with a recognition of the
undetermined.

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References
Butler, Judith. 1988. Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in
Phenomenology and Feminist Theory in Theatre Journal, Vol. 40, No. 4 (pp. 519-531).
Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3207893.
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and Subversion of Identity. London,
Routledge. (Ch.1).
Luckmann, Thoman. 1978. (ed.) Phenomenology and Sociology. Middlesex, Penguin Books.
(Ch.12).
Mead, George H. 1964. On Social Psychology. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
(Pp199-246)
Schutz, Alfred. 1970. On Phenomenology and Social Relations. Selected Writings. Chicago,
University of Chicago Press. (Pp72-76)
Stoller, Silvia. 2013. The Indeterminable Gender: Ethics in Feminist Phenomenology and
Poststructuralist Feminism. University of Vienna.
Tucker, William. 1965. Max Webers Verstehen. The Sociological Quarterly. Vol 6, No.2.
(Pp157-162)