Schutz. A
Alfred Schuetz
We will try to show how a waking adult perceives the intersubjective world Everyday life, on which and in which he acts as a person among other people.
A person at any moment of his daily life is in a biographically determined situation, that is, in a physical and sociocultural environment determined by himself. In such an environment he takes his position. It is not only a position in physical space and external time, not only a status and role within a social system, it is also a moral and ideological position. This is the deposition of all previous experience, systematized in the usual forms of the available stock of knowledge. As such it is unique, given to this person and no one else.
In analyzing the first constructs of everyday thinking, we behaved as if the world were my private world, while ignoring the fact that from the very beginning it was the intersubjective world of culture. It is intersubjective, since we live among other people, we are connected by a community of concerns, work, and mutual understanding. He is the world of culture, because from the very beginning everyday life appears before us as a semantic universe, a set of meanings that we must interpret in order to find support in this world and come to terms with it. However, this set of meanings - and this is the difference between the kingdom of culture and the kingdom of nature - arose and continues to be formed in human actions: our own and other people, contemporaries and predecessors. All cultural objects (tools, symbols, language systems, works of art, social institutions etc.) by their very meaning and origin indicate the activity of human subjects. Therefore, we always feel the historicity of culture when we encounter it in various traditions and customs.
Now we have to consider additional constructions that arise in everyday thinking, taking into account not the private, but the intersubjective world, and the fact that ideas about it are not only my personal business; they are initially intersubjective and socialized. We will look briefly at three aspects of the problem of knowledge socialization: mutuality of perspectives or structural socialization of knowledge; social origin of knowledge or its genetic socialization; social distribution of knowledge.
In the natural attitude of everyday thinking, I take it for granted that other intelligent people exist. This means that the objects of the world, in principle, are knowable to them either actually or potentially. This I know and accept without proof or doubt. But I also know and take for granted that the “same” object must mean something different to me and to every other person. This happens because:
1) I, being “here”, am at a different distance from objects and perceive them in a different typicality than another person who is “there”. For the same reason, some objects are beyond my reach (my seeing, hearing, manipulating), but within his reach, and vice versa;
2) biographically determined situations, mine and the other person, the corresponding present goals and the systems of relevances determined by them (mine and the other) must differ, at least to some extent.
Everyday thinking overcomes the differences in individual perspectives that result from these factors through two basic idealizations:
1) interchangeability of points of view (I take it for granted and assume: the other person also believes that if I change places with him and his “here” becomes mine, I will be at the same distance from objects and see them in that the same typicality that he has at the moment. Moreover, within my reach there will be the same things that he has now. The opposite relationship is also true);
2) coincidences of the system of relevances. Until proven otherwise, I take it for granted—and I assume others do as well—that the differences in perspective generated by our unique biographical situations are immaterial from the point of view of the present goals of either of us. And that he, like me, i.e. “we” believe that we have selected and interpreted actually and potentially common objects and their characteristics in the same or at least “empirically the same” way, that is, in the same way, from the point of view of our practical purposes.
It is obvious that both idealizations of the interchangeability of points of view and the coincidence of relevances, together forming the general thesis of mutual perspectives, represent typifying constructs of objects of thought that overcome the uniqueness of the objects of my or any other person’s personal experience. Thanks to the action of these constructs, it can be assumed that the sector of the world that is taken for granted by me is also perceived by another, my partner, and, moreover, is taken for granted by “us.” But this “we” includes not only “you” and “me”, but “everyone who is one of us,” that is, everyone whose system of relevances essentially (to a sufficient degree) coincides with “yours” and “ mine." What is considered familiar to everyone who shares our system of relevances is a way of life considered natural, normal, correct by members of the “we-group”.
Any individual stock of available knowledge at one time or another in life is delimited into zones with varying degrees of clarity, distinctness, and accuracy. This structure is generated by the system of prevailing relevances and is thus biographically determined. Knowledge of these individual differences is in itself an element of ordinary experience: I know to whom and under what typical circumstances I should turn as a competent doctor or lawyer. In other words, in everyday life I construct a typology of another’s knowledge, its volume and structure. In doing so, I assume that he is guided by a certain structure of relevances, which is expressed in him in a set of constant motives that impel him to a special type of behavior and determine even his personality.
We will try to show how a waking adult perceives the intersubjective world of everyday life, in which and in which he acts as a person among other people. This world existed before our birth, was experienced and interpreted by our predecessors as an organized world. It appears to us in our own experience and interpretation. But any interpretation of the world is based on previous acquaintance with it - ours personally or transmitted to us by parents and teachers. This experience, in the form of “present knowledge,” acts as a schema with which we relate all our perceptions and experiences.
Such experience includes the idea that the world in which we live is a world of objects with more or less definite qualities. We move among these objects, experience their resistance and can influence them. But none of them are perceived by us as isolated, since they are initially associated with previous experience. This is also a network of available knowledge, which for the time being is taken for granted, although at any moment it can be called into question.
Undoubted prior knowledge is given to us from the very beginning as typical, which means that it carries within itself an open horizon of similar future experiences. We do not perceive the external world, for example, as a collection of individual unique objects scattered in space and time. A specific real object reveals its individual characteristics, which nevertheless appear in the form of typicality.
Thus, in the natural setting of everyday life, we are occupied with only some objects that are in relation to others, previously perceived, forming a field of self-evident, unquestioned experience. The result of the selective activity of our consciousness is the selection of individual and typical ones. characteristics of objects. Generally speaking, we are only interested in certain aspects of each particular typed object.
A person at any moment of his daily life is in a biographically determined situation, that is, in a physical and sociocultural environment determined by himself. In such an environment he takes his position. It is not only a position in physical space and external time, not only a status and role within a social system, it is also a moral and ideological position. To say that the definition of a situation is biographically determined is to say that it has its own history. This is the deposition of all previous experience, systematized in the usual forms of the available stock of knowledge. As such it is unique, given to this person and no one else.
In analyzing the first constructs of everyday thinking, we behaved as if the world were my private world, while ignoring the fact that from the very beginning it was the intersubjective world of culture. It is intersubjective, since we live among other people, we are connected by a community of concerns, work, and mutual understanding. He is the world of culture, because from the very beginning everyday life appears before us as a semantic universe, a set of meanings that we must interpret in order to find support in this world and come to terms with it. However, this set of meanings - and this is the difference between the kingdom of culture and the kingdom of nature - arose and continues to be formed in human actions: our own and other people, contemporaries and predecessors. All cultural objects (tools, symbols, language systems, works of art, social institutions, etc.) by their very meaning and origin indicate the activity of human subjects. Therefore, we always feel the historicity of culture when we encounter it in various traditions and customs. Historicity is the sediment of activity in which history is revealed to us. Therefore, I cannot understand a cultural object without relating it to the activity through which it came into being. For example, I do not understand a tool without knowing the purpose for which it is intended; a sign or symbol - without knowing what it represents in the mind of the person using it; institution - without understanding what it means for people who orient their behavior towards it. This is the basis of the so-called postulate of subjective interpretation in the social sciences, which we will talk about later.
Now we have to consider additional constructions that arise in everyday thinking, taking into account not the private, but the intersubjective world, and the fact that ideas about it are not only my personal business; they are initially intersubjective and socialized. We will look briefly at three aspects of the problem of knowledge socialization: mutuality of perspectives or structural socialization of knowledge; social origin of knowledge or its genetic socialization; social distribution of knowledge.
In the natural attitude of everyday thinking, I take it for granted that other intelligent people exist. This means that the objects of the world, in principle, are knowable to them either actually or potentially. This I know and accept without proof or doubt. But I also know and take for granted that the “same” object must mean something different to me and to every other person. This happens because:
1) I, being “here”, am at a different distance from objects and perceive them in a different typicality than another person who is “there”. For the same reason, some objects are beyond my reach (my seeing, hearing, manipulating), but within his reach, and vice versa;
2) biographically determined situations, mine and the other person, the corresponding present goals and the systems of relevances determined by them (mine and the other) must differ, at least to some extent.
Everyday thinking overcomes the differences in individual perspectives that result from these factors through two basic idealizations:
1) interchangeability of points of view (I take it for granted and assume: the other person also believes that if I change places with him and his “here” becomes mine, I will be at the same distance from objects and see them in that the same typicality that he has at the moment. Moreover, within my reach there will be the same things that he has now. The opposite relationship is also true);
2) coincidences of the system of relevances. Until proven otherwise, I take it for granted—and I assume others do as well—that the differences in perspective generated by our unique biographical situations are immaterial from the point of view of the present goals of either of us. And that he, like me, i.e. “we” believe that we have selected and interpreted actually and potentially common objects and their characteristics in the same or at least “empirically the same” way, that is, in the same way, from the point of view of our practical purposes.
It is obvious that both idealizations of the interchangeability of points of view and the coincidence of relevances, together forming the general thesis of mutual perspectives, represent typifying constructs of objects of thought that overcome the uniqueness of the objects of my or any other person’s personal experience. Thanks to the action of these constructs, it can be assumed that the sector of the world that is taken for granted by me is also perceived by another, my partner, and, moreover, is taken for granted by “us.” But this “we” includes not only “you” and “me”, but “everyone who is one of us,” that is, everyone whose system of relevances essentially (to a sufficient degree) coincides with “yours” and “ mine." Something that is considered familiar to everyone who shares ours. system of relevances is a way of life considered as natural, normal, correct by members of the “we-group”. As such, it is the source of many recipes for dealing with things and people in typical situations, it is the source of habits and “mores”, “traditional behavior” in the Weberian sense, self-evident truths that exist in the “we-group”, despite their contradictions, in short, everything “relative to the natural aspect of the world.”
Only a very small part of knowledge about the world comes from personal experience. Most are of social origin and are transmitted; friends, parents, teachers, teachers of teachers. I am taught not only to define the environment (that is, the typical features of a relatively natural aspect of the world perceived by the “we-group” as the self-evident totality of all things that are for the time being certain, which, however, can always be questioned), but also build typical constructs according to a system of relevances corresponding to the anonymous unified point of view of the “we-group”. This includes lifestyles, ways of interacting with the environment, practical recommendations on using typical means to achieve typical goals in typical situations.
Knowledge is socially distributed. The general thesis of mutual perspectives certainly overcomes the difficulty that my actual knowledge is only my partner's potential knowledge, and vice versa. But the stock of actual available knowledge varies among people, and everyday thinking takes this fact into account. Not only is what a person knows different from his neighbor's knowledge, but also how they both know the "same" facts.
A. Schutz
RETURNING HOME
To those returning home, the house shows - at least at first - an unusual face. A man thinks he is in an unfamiliar country until the clouds clear. But the situation of the returnee is different from that of the stranger. The latter must join a group that is not and has never been his own. This world is organized differently than the one he came from. The returner, however, expects to return to an environment where he has already been, about which he has knowledge that he thinks he can use to get into contact with it. The stranger does not have this knowledge; the one returning home hopes to find it in his memory. So he feels and experiences the typical shock of the returning Odysseus, described by Homer.
We will analyze this typical homecoming experience in general terms. social psychology. Veterans returning from war are an extreme case, and it is well described in the literature. We can refer to the experiences of travelers returning from foreign countries and emigrants returning to their native lands. All of them are examples of those returning home, and not for a while, like a soldier on leave or a student on vacation.
However, what do we mean by home? Home is where we begin, the poet would say. Home is a place where everyone intends to return when he is not there, a lawyer would say. We will understand by house the zero point of the coordinate system that we attribute to the world in order to find our place in it. Geographically, it is a specific place on the surface of the earth. But home is not only a refuge: my home, my room, my garden, my fortress. The symbolic characteristics of the concept “home” are emotionally charged and difficult to describe. Home means different things to different people. It means, of course, the father's house and native language, family, friends, a favorite landscape and the songs that our mother sang to us, food prepared in a certain way, familiar everyday things, folklore and personal habits - in short, a special way of life, made up of small and familiar elements dear to us.
Surveys show that for some, home is a tomato sandwich with ice milk, for others it is fresh milk and a morning newspaper at the door, for others it is trams and car horns. Thus, home means one thing to a person who never leaves it, another to someone who lives away from it, and a third to those who return to it.
The expression “to feel at home” means the highest degree of closeness and intimacy. Home life follows organized routine patterns, it has well-defined goals and proven means, consisting of a set of traditions, habits, institutions, routines for all activities. Most of the problems of daily life can be solved by following patterns. There is no need to define and redefine situations that have previously been encountered many times, or to give new solutions to old problems that have already been satisfactorily solved. The way of living at home is governed not only by my own pattern of expressions and interpretations, but it is common to all members of the group to which I belong. I can be sure that, using this scheme, I will understand others, and they will understand me. The system of relevance adopted by the members of my group demonstrates a high degree of conformity. I always have a chance - subjectively or objectively - to predict the actions of another towards me, as well as their reaction to my actions. We can not only foresee what will happen tomorrow, but also plan for the more distant future. Things continue to be the same. Of course, in everyday life there are new situations and unexpected events. But at home, even deviations from the daily routine are managed in ways that people typically cope with extraordinary situations. There are familiar ways to respond to crises in business, to resolve family problems, to deal with illness or even death.
This is an aspect of the social structure of the home world for those who live in it. It changes completely for someone who has left home.
He entered into a different social dimension, not covered by the system of coordinates used as a reference scheme at home. He does not experience in the living present many of the social relationships that make up the texture of his home group as a member of them. As a result of the rupture of the unity of space and time with his group, the field of interpretation in which the other manifests himself is sharply narrowed for him. The personality of the other is not perceived by him as a whole: it is split into parts. There is no holistic experience in the experience of a loved one: his gestures, similarities, manner of speech. All that remains are memories and photographs. But there is such a means of communication as letters. However writing a letter addresses the type of addressee that he left behind when leaving home, and the addressee reads the letters of the person to whom he said goodbye. It is assumed that what was typical in the past will be typical now, i.e. The previous system of relevances will remain. But innovations can arise in the lives of both partners. Soldiers were often surprised by letters from home. This change in relevance systems correlates with a change in the degree of closeness: the home group continues to exist in everyday life according to the usual pattern. Of course, the sample itself can also change. But these changes are slow, to which people adapt their system of interpretations, adapting themselves to the changes. In other words, the system changes as a whole, without breaks or faults. Even in modifications, there is always a testament to how to cope with life, except in cases of violent destruction in disasters or hostile acts. The absentee always has advantages in the knowledge of this universal pattern. He can imagine the actions of his mother or sister in a given situation based on past experience, but they cannot have the same experience regarding the life of a soldier at the front. True, the media, the stories of returnees and propaganda give some picture of life at the front, but these stereotypes are not formed spontaneously, but are directed, sifted for military and political purposes. But the soldier's situation is unique. When, upon his return, he talks about her - if he talks at all - he will see that even people who sympathize with him do not understand the uniqueness of his individual experience, which made him a different person.
They will try to find familiar features of already formed types of soldier's life at the front. From their point of view, his life at the front differed only in minor details from what they read in the magazines. Thus, it may turn out that many actions that seem to people to be manifestations of the greatest courage, in fact for a soldier in battle are only a struggle for survival or fulfillment of duty, while other numerous examples of self-sacrifice and heroism remain underestimated by people at home.
The discrepancy between the uniqueness and importance that the absent person ascribes to his experience and the pseudotyping of it by the people left at home who attribute pseudo-relevance to this experience is one of the greatest obstacles to the renewal of the we-relationship. The success or failure of the returnee depends on the chance to transform these social relations into renewed ones. But even if such an attitude does not prevail, a comprehensive solution to this problem remains an elusive ideal.
But here neither more nor less than the reversibility of internal time is in question. This is the same problem that Heraclitus expressed in the aphorism about the impossibility of entering the same river twice and which Bergson analyzed as duration: its essence is that past experience takes on a different meaning. And the returning person is no longer the same: neither for himself, nor for those who were waiting for his return. This is true for all returnees. Even if we return home after a short break, we find that the old, familiar environment takes on an additional meaning arising from our experience during the period of absence: things and people, at least initially, have different appearances. And it takes some effort to transform our activities into a routine and reactivate our previous relationships with people and things.
Unfortunately - and this is the main thing - there is no guarantee that social functions that pass the test in one system will be able to do the same when transferred to another. This is especially true for veterans returning from war. From a sociological point of view, army life exhibits a strange ambivalence. It is characterized by an exceptionally high degree of coercion and discipline imposed by a controlling and normative structure. A sense of duty, camaraderie, a sense of solidarity and subordination are outstanding qualities developed in the individual, but in this case they are closed within the framework of a certain group and are not open to his own choice. These traits are valuable both in times of peace and in times of war. However, during war, they regulate the behavior only within their group, but not their enemies. The attitude towards enemies is rather the opposite of imposed discipline. What prevails in him to overcome the enemy cannot be used in the patterns of civil life in Western democracies. War is that archetype of social structure that Durkheim called the violation of law. In civil society the soldier must choose his ends and means and cannot, as in the army, follow authority or direction. Therefore, he often feels like a child without a mother.
Another factor. During times of war, members of the armed forces have a privileged status in society. “All the best goes to our soldiers” - this is the wartime slogan. And just as civilians look at a man in a military uniform, so he looks at himself, even if he does minor work in the armed forces. But the one returning home is deprived of a uniform, and with it a privileged position in society. This does not mean, of course, that he loses the prestige of a defender of his homeland, but history shows that exaggerated longevity does not accompany the memory of glory.
The above leads to practical conclusions. Much has been done, but more remains to be done to prepare the returning veteran for the adjustment to home. It is equally necessary to prepare the home group for his arrival. Through the press and radio, households should be explained that the person they are waiting for is no longer the same, different, and not even the same as they imagine him to be. Turning the propaganda machine in the opposite direction, destroying the pseudotypes of battle life and the life of a soldier in general and replacing it with the truth is not an easy task. But it is necessary to destroy the glorification of dubious Hollywood heroism and paint a realistic picture of how these people think and feel - a picture no less worthy and appealing to memory. At first, not only will the homeland show an unfamiliar face to the person returning home, but he will also seem strange to those who are waiting for him. Both must be wise.
| Stranger In this article we are going to study, within the framework of the general theory of interpretation, a typical situation in which a stranger attempts to interpret and orient himself in the cultural pattern of a social group with which he is approaching. A “stranger” will be understood as an adult individual of our time and our civilization, trying to achieve permanent recognition, or at least a tolerant attitude towards himself, on the part of the group with which he becomes close. A striking example of the social situation under study is that of an immigrant, and for the sake of convenience, the subsequent analysis will be based on this example. However, its significance is in no way limited to this particular case. An applicant for membership in a private club, a prospective groom wanting to be admitted into a girl's family, a farmer's son going to college, a city dweller settling in the countryside, a "conscript" joining the army, a defense worker's family moving to a rapidly growing industrial city are all, according to the definition just given, strangers, although in these cases the typical “crisis” experienced by the immigrant may take a milder form or even be completely absent. preconditions. It would be convenient to begin by examining how the cultural pattern of group life is presented to the ordinary consciousness of the person living everyday life in a group among his fellows. Following the established terminological tradition, we use the concept of "cultural pattern of group life" to designate all those specific values, institutions and systems of orientation and control (such as folk customs, mores, laws, habits, traditions, etiquette, manners of behavior), which, in the general opinion of modern sociologists, characterize - and perhaps even constitute - any social group at one time or another of its historical existence. This cultural pattern, like any phenomenon in general, social world, is perceived differently by a sociologist and a person acting and thinking within its framework. A sociologist (precisely as a sociologist, and not as a person among other people, which he remains in his private life) is an indifferent scientific observer of the social world. He is indifferent in the sense that he deliberately refrains from participating in the network of plans, means-end relations, motives and chances, hopes and fears that the actor uses in the social world to interpret his experiences of this world; acting as a scientist, he tries to observe, describe and classify the social world as accurately as possible, using an ordered system of terms and guided by scientific ideals of coherence, coherence and analytical consistency. In turn, the actor, who is inside the social world, experiences it primarily as a field of his actual and possible actions and only secondarily as an object of his thinking. Since he is interested in knowledge of his social world, he organizes this knowledge, not in the form of a scientific system, but based on the relevance of this knowledge for his actions. He groups the world around himself (as the center) as the area of his dominance, and, therefore, takes a special interest in that segment of the world that is within his actual or potential reach. He isolates from it elements that can serve as means or ends for his “use and pleasure,” for solving the problems facing him and for overcoming the obstacles that arise on the way to this. His interest in these elements varies in intensity, and therefore he does not strive to know them all with equal thoroughness. All he needs is this differentiated knowledge relevant elements, in which the degree of desired knowledge would correlate with the degree of their relevance. In other words, at any given moment in time the world appears to him as divided into different layers of relevance, each of which requires a different degree of knowledge. The knowledge of a person acting and thinking in the world of his daily life is not homogeneous. It is (1) incoherent, (2) only partially clear, and (3) not at all free from contradictions.
The resulting system of knowledge - incoherent, incoherent and only partially clear - assumes for the members of the in-group the appearance of coherence, clarity and coherence, sufficient in order to give everyone a reasonable chance to understand and be understood. Each member, born or brought up in the group, accepts the pre-prepared standardized scheme of the cultural pattern handed down to him by ancestors, teachers and authorities as an unexamined and unquestioned guide for all situations commonly encountered in the social world. Knowledge that corresponds to a cultural pattern proves itself, or, more precisely, it is taken for granted until the opposite is proven. This is the knowledge of trustworthy recipes interpretation of the social world, as well as treatment of things and people, allowing, while avoiding undesirable consequences, to achieve the best results in any situation with minimal effort. On the one hand, a recipe functions as a prescription for action and, therefore, serves as a scheme for self-expression: everyone who wants to achieve a certain result must act as specified in the recipe provided for achieving this goal. On the other hand, a recipe serves as a schema for interpretation: it is assumed that everyone acting in the way specified in the recipe is oriented towards obtaining the corresponding result. Thus, the function of a cultural template is to eliminate the burden of research by providing ready-made instructions, to replace hard-to-find truths with comfortable truisms, and to replace the problematic with the self-explanatory. This habitual thinking, or “thinking-as-usual” as one might call it, corresponds to the concept of a “relatively natural worldview” ( relativ nat ь rliche Weltanschauung) Max Scheler; it includes those "taken-for-granted" assumptions relevant to a particular social group which - with all their internal contradictions and ambivalences - Robert S. Lind so masterfully describes as the "spirit of the Midtown." Business as usual thinking can be maintained as long as certain fundamental assumptions remain true, namely: (1) that life, especially social life, will continue to be the same as it has been; or, in other words, that in the future the same problems will constantly be repeated, requiring the same solutions, and, therefore, our previous experience will be quite sufficient to cope with future situations; (2) that we can rely on the knowledge transmitted to us by our parents, teachers, authorities, traditions, habits, etc., even if we do not understand its origin and real meaning; (3) that in the ordinary course of affairs it is enough to know about the general type or style of events that we may encounter in our life world in order to cope with them or keep them under our control; and (4) that neither the systems of recipes that serve as schemes of interpretation and self-expression, nor the underlying basic assumptions that we have just mentioned, are our private business, but are accepted and applied in a similar way by our fellows. As soon as one of these assumptions fails testing, conventional thinking stops working. A “crisis” arises, which, according to the well-known definition of W.A. Thomas, “interrupts the flow of habit and creates altered states of consciousness and practice,” or, as we might say, instantly overturns the entire existing system of relevance. The cultural pattern ceases to function as a system of proven cash recipes; it turns out that the scope of its applicability is limited to a specific historical situation. Meanwhile, the stranger, due to his personal crisis, does not share the above-mentioned basic assumptions. The cultural model of this group does not have for him the authority of a proven system of recipes, if for no other reason, then at least due to the fact that he was not involved in the living historical tradition that formed this model. Of course, the outsider knows that the culture of this group has its own special story; Moreover, this story is accessible to him. However, it never became as integral a part of his biography as the history of his native group was for him. For each person, only those customs according to which his fathers and grandfathers lived become elements of his way of life. Graves and memories cannot be moved or conquered. Consequently, the stranger enters another group as a neophyte, in the true sense of the word. At best, he may be willing and able to share with the new group in living and immediate experience a common present and future; however, under all circumstances he remains excluded from the analogous general experience of the past. From the point of view of his host group, he is a man with no history. The cultural pattern of the native group still continues to be for the stranger the result of continuous historical development and an element of his personal biography; and therefore this sample was and remains an unquestioned correlation scheme for his “relatively natural worldview.” Consequently, the stranger naturally begins to interpret the new social environment in terms of his usual thinking. In the pattern of correlation inherited from the native group, he finds ready-made and presumably reliable ideas about the model of the out-group, but soon these ideas inevitably turn out to be inadequate. First, the ideas about the cultural pattern of the non-native group that the stranger finds in the interpretative scheme of his native group stem from the attitude of a disinterested observer. However, when approaching a non-native group, the stranger must transform from a carefree bystander into a potential member. At the same time, the cultural model of a non-native group ceases to be the content of his thinking and turns into a segment of the world that he must master through his actions. Thus, the position of this sample in the stranger's system of relevances changes decisively, which means, as we have seen, that a different type of knowledge is now required to interpret it. Jumping, figuratively speaking, from the audience onto the stage, the former outside observer becomes a member of the caste and enters into social relations with others as a partner. actors and henceforth becomes a participant in the unfolding action. Secondly, the new cultural pattern takes on the character of the environment. From distant it becomes close; its unfilled structures are filled with living experiences; its anonymous contents are transformed into concrete social situations; his ready-made typologies fall apart. In other words, the experience of social objects at the level of the immediate environment does not coincide with the idea of them at the level of opinions about distant objects; moving from the last level to the first, any concept formed at the level of alienated detachment inevitably becomes inadequate if applied to a new level without redefinition in the categories of this level. Use the site search: ©2015- 2019 site All materials presented on the site are solely for the purpose of information for readers and do not pursue commercial purposes or copyright infringement. |
Tatiana Tyagunova*
View ethnophenomenologically
Annotation . The article makes an attempt, starting from those conceptualizations of everyday reality contained in the works of Schutz, to look at everyday life from an empirical perspective - from the perspective of how everyday life is practiced. The consequence of this empirical view is a reconceptualization of the concept of everyday life - everyday life is not considered as an attribute life world everyday life as the “ultimate area of meaning”, but as a formal feature of any social practice, which, in turn, requires a change in the research setting.
Keywords . Phenomenology, everyday life, life world, routine actions, social practices, practical reflexivity, intersubjectivity.
With the “light hand” of Alfred Schutz, or more precisely, Edmund Husserl, the everyday life world is the world in its unproblematic reality. In his last work, “Structures of the Lifeworld,” published posthumously, Schutz gives the following definition: “The everyday lifeworld is to be understood as that area of reality in which the waking, normal adult individual is in the attitude common sense reveals as simply given. “The ‘merely given’ designates everything that we experience as beyond doubt, any state of affairs that for the time being appears as unproblematic.” But what does “unproblematic” mean? The unproblematic, as not subject to doubt, as a matter of course, has become a common (primarily in sociological language) attribute of everyday life. The self-evident consequence of such a characterization is, among other things, the definition of everyday action as an action that is fundamentally unreflective. Undoubtedly, Schutz fully inclines towards this when he writes: “the self-evident (das Fraglosgegebene) always represents a level of perception that does not seem to require further analysis.” I propose to dwell on this given-as-not-need-to-question—but not in order to once again subject (theoretical) reflection to (non-reflective) everyday action (Schütz perfectly
* Tyagunova Tatyana Vasilievna– Researcher at the Center for Educational Development Problems of the Belarusian State University.
© Tyagunova T., 2009.
© Center for Fundamental Sociology, 2009.
1 The book was written by Schutz's student Thomas Luckmann, based on the plan and drafts prepared by Schutz shortly before his death for the project "Structures of the Lifeworld", conceived as a continuation of the book "The Meaning Structure of the Social World" published in Springer-Verlag in 1932 (the only published by Schutz during his lifetime, if we do not take into account his numerous articles). In the preface to the new edition of Structures... in 2003, Luckman writes that he followed exactly the plan drawn up by Schutz, except for two “significant” deviations. The first is associated with a change in the internal structure of the third chapter, devoted to the consideration of the subjective stock of knowledge, which entailed the need to add a new chapter (it is listed at number 4 as “Knowledge and Society”). The second change concerns the final (in Schutz's original plan) chapter on the methodology of the social sciences - Luckman excluded it from the final version, since, as he writes, it basically did not go beyond what was formulated in the essay “Ordinary and Scientific Interpretation human action"
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did this work) or perhaps to explicate the “self-evident” of sociological understanding itself (which would be no less presumptuous). My goal is somewhat different: starting from those conceptualizations of everyday reality contained in Schutz’s works, to look at everyday life from an empirical perspective - from the perspective of how everyday life is practiced. I will try to show that this task will require, in turn, a reconceptualization of the very concept of everyday life, on the one hand, and a change in the research setting, on the other.
Ontological lining of everyday life
For Schutz, the everyday life world represented the supreme reality: the world of everyday life is the generic space of all possible areas of meaning. The everyday world is the world of routine activities, or the world of work2. However, Schutz notes, “routine is a category that can be found at any level of activity, not just in the world of work, although it plays a decisive role in the supreme reality - at least because the world of work is the locus of all possible social relationships , and acts of work are prerequisites for all types of communications.” Let's dwell on this passage for now. In what sense are routines found in any activity? Doesn't it follow from this that any activity is fundamentally everyday? For Schutz, of course not. Although routine actions are everyday actions, everyday reality and routine are by no means identical concepts. Moreover, Schutz argues, none of the alternative domains of meaning are compatible with the meaning of everyday life: the actions (theorizing) of the scientist and the actions of a direct participant in ordinary situations of interaction (or the actions of the scientist as a direct participant in these situations) are mutually exclusive. Schutz masterfully tries to get around the ambiguity hidden in the stated thesis, firstly, by conceptualizing the “action” itself in a special way (1), and secondly, through a scrupulous elaboration of one of the key concepts in his theory - the concept of “relevance” (2)3.
(1) Schutz strictly distinguishes between the concepts of “behavior”, “action”, “work”, “execution” and simply “thinking”. In particular, “behavior that is planned in advance, i.e., based on a pre-formulated project ... will be called action, regardless of whether it is external or hidden.” Purposeful action, characterized by the intention to implement a project, is execution, which can also be either external or hidden; an example of the latter is attempting to mentally solve a scientific problem. Finally, work should be understood as external performances (as opposed to (hidden) performances of mere thinking) requiring bodily movements. Thus, it is one thing to think, another thing, for example, to build a garage. The conclusion is banal, and it would not be worth focusing on if not for two important points with which the initial distinction is connected. Firstly, Schutz considers thinking from an egological perspective, as a purely private act, an internal process that has an external plane of expression. (This is not the place to dwell on how the demystification of this privacy, begun primarily by G. Ryle and L. Wittgenstein and continued by conceptual analysts, showed the social - external - lining of this "internal" matter, i.e. on what, like language , so thinking should be considered rather as socially organized things, and not in the categories of mental processes). Secondly, and more importantly, thinking, just like acts of work, is an action (but executed, unlike the latter, on an internal level) and, just like acts of work, can be routine, i.e. habitual,
2 Routine activities, writes Schutz, are “a set of tasks habitually performed almost automatically in accordance with instructions that have been learned and successfully practiced until now.”
3 Of course, Schutz's line of reasoning does not coincide with the way it is presented here, but for the present discussion this difference is not significant.
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unproblematic character. However, actions categorized as scientific (and scientific actions proper for Schutz are precisely the actions of thinking, or more precisely, the actions of theoretical contemplation) are not routine in the sense in which acts of work in the world of everyday life are. Although not routine actions, they can nevertheless also be carried out in a familiar, unproblematic manner; moreover, they involve the implementation of routine acts of work. What is the matter here is explained by the second Schutzian concept, namely, the concept of relevance systems.
(2) Schutz points out that “routine activity at each level is characterized by a special transformation... structures... relevances.” Constitutive of the reality of the world of everyday life are the routine actions of work - i.e. such actions in the external world, which are based on a project and are characterized by the intention to implement the projected state of affairs with the help of bodily movements, are included in any activity, be it the activity of a scientist carrying out his scientific research, a composer composing another sonata, or, of course, a visitor grocery store or subway passenger. However, if for a grocery store visitor his acts of work (for example, the act of buying a pack of tea or salt) form “both the scene and the object” of his activity, then for a scientist his acts of work (for example, carrying out experimental measurements or writing an article) form no more than as a background, the material basis of scientific actions themselves, determined by another system of (motivational, thematic and interpretative) relevances, which is given by its theoretical setting and, being accepted, is considered as an unproblematized given. “All these activities,” writes Schutz, “works performed in the world and belonging to it, are either conditions or consequences of theorizing, but do not belong to the theoretical attitude as such, from which they are easily separable.” Here, however, the following methodological problem arises, which J. Habermas rightly points out. If a change in the system of relevances due to the adoption of a theoretical attitude should guarantee “the compatibility of the constructs of the social scientist with the constructs of ordinary experience of social reality,” then, says Habermas, Schutz would have to explain the methodological role of the relevances associated with the scientific system with special value orientations. “He would have to show why exactly they help solve the problem of relating theory building to the communicatively clarified pre-theoretical knowledge that the social scientist discovers in his subject area, without at the same time linking the significance of his statements to (discovered or the context of the life world brought by him." From Habermas’s point of view, the change from a natural attitude to a theoretical one, as a result of which the actions of theorizing form a kind of figure against the background of the actions of work (presuming included participation in the situation under study), cannot guarantee the objectivity of understanding the processes under study, since this objectivity is achievable only on the basis of intersubjectivity, which means - based on the position of (even a virtual) participant, and not a detached observer.
Thus, routine activities form the background for other activities. She is essentially marginal. Routine actions are always performed “in the name” of other actions, they serve to perform activities defined, in Schutz’s terms, by a system of higher-order relevances. In this sense, they are more than unproblematic: not problematized not only in relation to ends (motivational relevance) and means (interpretive relevance), but also as such, that is, thematically. More precisely, they are thematically relevant, but in a paradoxical way, representing, so to speak, a “tamed topic” (topic-in-hand)4. A “tamed topic” is a non-thematizable problem, i.e. something that represents a problem, but not as such, but only in relation to
4 Routine knowledge, says Schutz, is a kind of “knowledge-in-hand”.
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this state of affairs. Thus, the organization and conduct of an interview by a researcher within the framework of the scientific problem he is solving will be such a tamed topic, subordinated to another thematic relevance, serving as a scheme for selecting and interpreting data; it forms a non-thematizable problem (I know how to solve it in a typical situation using typical means) - until, say, the recorder breaks down; then from a non-thematizable background it turns into a thematizable problem (replacing or repairing a voice recorder). Routine for Schutz forms the ontological basis of any activity in general, be it solving current everyday affairs, conducting scientific research or immersing in the world of art. In addition, this is also a category that has a gradual characteristic: the reality of the everyday is the reality of the typical, while the routine reality of the everyday is the reality of the highly typical, in fact “standardized and automated.”
Typical vs. orderly
Schutz's understanding of routine is remarkable primarily in two respects. Firstly, the self-evident, unproblematic character is not an attribute exclusively of the everyday world: it is inherent in any theoretical and practical activity (moreover, this feature applies not only to actions within the framework of the corresponding system of relevances, but also to the systems of relevances themselves, which, however, it brings us back to the question posed by Habermas regarding the privileged status of the scientific system of relevances and the value orientations associated with it in comparison with the systems of relevances of practical figures). Secondly, the world of everyday life is a world not only of the unproblematic, but also of the constantly problematized (the tamed topic every now and then “falls out of hand”). It is the latter circumstance that I intend to take further as a starting point and show that everyday life is fundamentally detectable in any activity, but not as an ontological lining of routine acts and a set of typified action patterns, but as
essential feature of any socially organized practice . The question, then, sounds like this: how exactly there is an unproblematic solution to current tamed problems asproblems-related-to-this-state-of-affairs?Let's analyze two fragments of the transcript, which is a transcript of the recording of the academic exam. 6 .
Fragment 1
properties of sensations. meaning = properties of sensations a: divided |
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on psychophysiological and psychophysical |
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let's start from the beginning (.) what is the feeling |
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give a definition |
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and this feeling: e:: (4.0) well, this is what a person is |
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<<ощущает>laughing> |
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So. is your name Tanya? |
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Tanya, concentrate, think |
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) ((leaves)) |
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(15.0) ((goes back)) |
5 Schutz, however, is far from postulating ontology boundaries between different areas of the lifeworld; these are just different levels of reality, and real to the extent that they are given the accent of reality.
6 The recording was made during the winter examination session of 2008 at one of the universities in Minsk; The original audio file is stored by the author of this article and can be provided upon request to anyone.
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12 Art. Well, this feeling is =a: (2.0) some kind of thing, probably some kind of
13 chus/sensitivity of the body to influences =
14 Etc. = this sensation [mental process
mental process. a::: which |
16 occurs when exposed to some irritants↓
17 a:: (2.0) and
18 Etc. what is the impact
19 Art. on::: person.
20 (2.0)
21 Ave. and more specifically
22 Art. a: n on the human body/well=on: the human body. (.) skin.
23 Etc. [to the senses
24 Art. [to the human senses
As you can see, the student is faced with a certain problem, namely: to define “sensation”, and, accordingly, with the need to solve this problem. Let's look at how this happens.
The difficulty clearly revealed by the student’s actions is related to the teacher’s request for a definition of “sensation.” With his request, the teacher shows what the structure of the answer should be in this case (pp. 03–04) and, by saying “let’s start over,” indicates this structural incompleteness in the student’s answer. “First” here in no way refers to the astronomical flow of time, it is an organizational moment of the current interaction, marking the latter as an “exam answer” that presupposes a certain sequence: “first” is defined.
The student tries to give a definition, which, however, turns out to be unsatisfactory, and with her laughter she demonstrates that she herself recognizes its unsatisfactoryness. In its tautology, the answer can be accepted as quite sufficient, for example, in a situation of non-institutional interaction, in a conversation between non-professionals, but it is not correct in the situation of a student’s answer on an exam formulating “the definition of a mental process.” The latter presupposes that the answer must be formulated in terms of professional language; moreover, their professional relevance is created, as can be seen from lines 12–24, thanks to a specific discursive order. In other words, the formulation of the definition must demonstrate not just knowledge of professional terminology (i.e., the use of the words “sense organs” instead of the words “organism” or “skin”), but specific speech practice corresponding to what is considered to be the “formulation of the definition of a mental process " In this regard, the replacement of “what a person feels” with “the sensitivity of the body to influences” is considered by the teacher as inadequate (which means: it does not reproduce the formal beginning of the definition, which should begin with the words “this is a mental process ...”), which he shows by her correction of the student's answer in line 14.
Lines 09–14 also provide insight into what the teacher is saying: the student must “concentrate and think.” To think means demonstrate that specific order of statements that corresponds to the practice of formulating a “definition”. When a teacher corrects a student’s answer by defining sensation as “the body’s sensitivity to influences,” does this mean that the student “didn’t think”? Rather, it indicates that the teacher still does not detect in her response an adequate speech structure that she is expected to know and actualize in relation to the current situation in such a way that her “knowledge” is evidenced from the very way she speaks, those. she must use professional terms and reproduce a specific speech pattern. J. Coulter, considering the process of “understanding,” writes in this regard: ““Understanding”...
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can mean knowing how to act, knowing how to use a word, tool, map or any other contextually relevant object, knowing how to behave, knowing what will happen next, and a variety of other things." Like “understand,” “think” means publicly demonstrating a certain (speech) practice that is consistent with the occasional circumstances of its contextual implementation. The student’s actions in the fragment under consideration clearly reveal a discrepancy with what is expected of her in this situation.
For both the student and the teacher, the use of specific terms of professional language means formulating an answer to an examination question, i.e., their use is carried out internally and is subject to a specific educational task. In this regard, the student's use of professional words and expressions is embedded in her demonstration of her preparedness. The student demonstrates this preparedness in the first two lines: she shows that she “knows” how to answer the question on her exam card, using the terms “psychophysiological” and “psychophysical”, which should serve as visible evidence of her knowledge. Her knowledge of the meaning of these terms is knowledge of the way they are used to-answer-a-student-on-an-exam. In this sense, through the definition she gives of the word “sensation” (“sensation… is what a person feels,” pp. 05–06), the student discovers that she was not prepared for this issue. At the same time, she demonstrates her understanding of the meaning of this word as a word natural language, used equally (as opposed to the words “psychophysiological” or “mental process”) both by professional psychologists and ordinary members of society. However, the demonstration turns out to be problematic - not as such, but in relation to a given situation that requires a “different” understanding, or a different language game, as Wittgenstein would say - “understanding” is as varied as the practices of linguistic use.
What does this example show us? First of all, how within and through the actions carried out, i.e. within the corresponding context, there is an ordering and endowment of meaningfulness with what is carried out as an “answer to an exam”, thereby giving the situation a reproducible, recognizable, in short, routine character of an “answer to an exam”. exam." And although this implementation is unproblematic in general, it is fundamentally problematizable in its specific implementations. Neither the student nor the teacher question what is happening. However, the certainty of what is happening as an answer-to-exam is ensured not by each participant having a typified idea of what the exam means, but by an ordered sequence of mutually oriented actions. The answer on the exam is a situation of mutual agreements that are of an occasional nature. Of course, this situation is defined: the student answers, the answer is accepted and the teacher evaluates it. However, the method of carrying out these actions is quite dynamic and variable: it does not embody a certain given answer-on-exam pattern, but is implemented at each moment in time based on and taking into account specific circumstances. The answer on the exam, to use the expression of D. Zimmerman, is the “temporary achievement of the participants in the situation”7. In other words, answering an exam is practiced, and this practice
7 Compare: “The characteristic features of a setting as perceived by its participants include, among other things, its historical continuity, the structure of the rules and the relationship of the actions performed in it with these rules, as well as the ascribed (or achieved) statuses of their participants. Viewed as a temporary achievement of the participants in the setting, these features will be called the occasional corpus of setting features. Using the term “occasional corpus”, we want to emphasize the fact that the features of socially organized activity are particular, contingent implementations of the production and recognition of the work of participants in the activity. We emphasize the occasional character of this corpus in comparison with the corpus of knowledge of the members, their skills and beliefs, always prior to and independent of any actual circumstances in which this knowledge, skills and beliefs are manifested or recognized. The latter is usually called “culture.”
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is occasional in its implementation - not in the sense that there is a filling of a certain abstract (typical) pattern or form with the features of a specific situation and the structuring of the latter according to this form; rather, this form itself turns out to be the resulting effect of the local implementation of an ordered, coordinated
And mutually identifiable activities. In the case discussed above, the answer to the exam takes the form of a consistent coordination of two speech practices: not just two languages, relatively speaking, ordinary (“sensation is what a person feels”) and professional (“sensation is a mental process...”) , but two different practices of using words intersecting in an academic exam situation. Likewise, the student turns out to be an unprepared student(not-knowing-the-definition-of-sensation) not before the answer, but during and as a result of the local configuration of the joint actions of a given teacher taking an exam and a given student taking this exam.
Typical knowledge of what it means to take an exam - for example, take an exam ticket, sit down at a table, write down on a piece of paper what will constitute the answer to the question on the ticket, voice what is written to the teacher, answer the teacher's questions - may well give some idea of what is happening and at the same time say nothing about what is happening. And it’s not so much that everything depends on specific details, but that the “what” of what happens lies in its “how.” One
And the same action, for example, answering a question, can be carried out by both the student and the teacher and, accordingly, can be ordered in completely different ways. In the passage below (Fragment 2), not only the student, but also the teacher “answers.” But these are different answers.
Fragment 2
09 Art.: e=m::
10 (17.0)
11 St.: I don’t remember anymore
12 Ex: well, you just named the first four words
13 (2.0)
14 St.: well, unrestrained, right? (1.0) yes?
15 Ex: no, when you said there was such and such a type (2.0) according to Pavlov
16 (1.0)
17 Art.: yes?=
18 Ex: =yes
19 Art.:<<смеётся>>
20 (1.0)
21 St.: yes. strong type
22 Ex: so he put what is the first property of the nervous system
23 (2.0)
24 St.: well:: (1.0) well, not strength of character but
25 (1.0)
26 Ex: strength (1.0) [nervous system
[ nervous system ↓ |
32 (1.0)
33 Art.: e:::: (1.0) a=calm yes?=
34 Ex: =no
35 (11.0)
36 Art.: maybe emotional
37 (1.0)
38 Ex: we are talking about the properties of the nervous system and not about: (.)
39 characteristics of a person (2.0) and these properties relate
40 to two main processes that are characteristic of the nervous
41 systems are processes (2.0) excitation and (4.0)
42 Art.: excitement and (2.0) well, you can’t say calm↓
43 Ex: [braking
braking |
The teacher asks the student to name the properties of the nervous system (p. 07), which causes obvious difficulties for the latter (p. 08–10). The student justifies his inability to answer by saying that “he no longer remembers” (p. 11). The situation is constituted as a situation of both an answer and a non-answer: the student does not remain silent and does not say that he does not know, but answers in a way that allows him to position himself as potentially knowing, but not remembering, and the word “already” should be emphasized, that he was preparing. Thus, the student expands the scope of the current situation as a situation of answering an exam, connecting it with the previous situation of preparation. This does not mean that in other cases the answer in the exam is strictly limited to what is happening here and now. On the contrary, the actual examination situation always includes a reference to what precedes it as “preparation for the examination” and is constituted on the basis of the unspoken and mutually implied assumption that before coming to the examination, the student is preparing for it, so that the exam itself becomes visible evidence of preparation. However, in this case, reference to the situation preceding the preparation is used as a resource to justify the inability to demonstrate the knowledge that is expected of the student. The word “already” in the student’s answer is contrasted with “just” in the teacher’s statement following it (p. 12). Thus, the teacher returns the relevance of what is currently happening, emphasizing what was said by the student here and now: “just now.” He contrasts the student’s strategy “to demonstrate knowledge, which means remembering and updating what has been learned,” as further exchange shows, with the strategy “to demonstrate knowledge, which means reasoning” (pp. 22, 38–41): objecting to the student’s words “I don’t remember anymore,” the teacher with his remark “well, you just named the first four words” indicates that the student still knows, but not in the sense that he remembers, but rather in the sense that he must draw a conclusion from what was “just” said (in the line 22 this expectation is demonstrated most clearly: “so what did he put…”). This appeal to what was actually said deprives the student of the opportunity to appeal to memory as a resource of knowledge (pp. 14–20). The student begins to use the “guessing” strategy (p. 14). However, the failure of its application, revealed by the teacher’s subsequent remark (p. 15), forces the student to adjust his further actions and, as can be seen from lines 24 and 42, he subsequently uses another strategy, which can be characterized as the strategy of “anticipating the wrong answer” ( “well, not strength of character,” p. 24; “Well, you can’t say calm,” p. 42), allowing him, on the one hand, to present the answer as the result of his current thoughts, on the other hand, to mitigate the possible negative effect if the answer turns out to be incorrect.
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Unlike the teacher, the student demonstrates a much wider repertoire of behavior. His actions are aimed at assuring the teacher that he not only follows the proposed rules of the game (demonstrates knowledge), but also does it in the way expected of him (to know means to reason), flexibly changing the strategy of behavior in case of detection its ineffectiveness in the current situation (to know means to remember). At the same time, the student does not simply adapt to the expectations of the teacher, but, focusing on the line of behavior that the teacher adheres to, structures his actions in such a way as to induce, in turn, the teacher to take the actions he desires - ultimately, the teacher himself gives the necessary answers.
By managing an exam response, students create and manage their membership in the "student" category. In other words, students, as British researchers B. Benwell and E. Stokoe note, “not only “educate,” but also “practice themselves as students.” The same is true for teachers. From the above fragment it is clear how, during the examination answer, the student’s attempt to construct himself as someone who “remembers and reproduces” is contrasted with the teacher’s systematic construction of the student as someone who “reasons.” And, as can be observed, for a student “being a student” does not at all mean “thinking in terms of professional language.”
What, however, allows one to recognize a certain activity as, for example, an answer-on-an-exam (not only from the point of view of the researcher, but also from the point of view of the participants in the activity themselves)? Carrying out a certain activity as a given activity means precisely orderly and oriented implementation, taking into account existing and emerging circumstances. And in this sense - unproblematic and everyday implementation. Everyday-as-orderly must be understood in three senses: how
agreed upon, as following in the ordinary course and as being duly carried out8 . In other words, the daily performance of an activity also means its competent implementation. However, competence is a practical thing, not a set of rules and regulations. There is no “cookbook” for the practice of giving a lecture, passing an exam, etc. Competently performing a lecture, passing an exam, or any other activity is a practical achievement.
Everyday practice and reflexivity of action
“Everyday”, understood as the coordinated, ordinary, competent implementation of any socially organized activity, disperses the lifeworld of everyday life, transforming it from an autonomous supreme region or “ultimate region of meaning” into a multiplicity of different intersecting and interpenetrating practices. This transformation is a trace of a certain refocusing in the study of social reality carried out in the 70s of the twentieth century. a number of researchers who can conditionally be united as representatives of the theory of practices. Today, notes V. Vakhshtain, we are witnessing a revival of interest in the study of everyday life, characterized by some change in the definition of the latter: “If in previous - phenomenological and neo-Marxist - theoretical projects we were talking about the stratum of the “life world” (Lebenswelt), which represents the “supreme reality" human existence, then now everyday life returns in the form of a container for routine practices, a kind of arena for unreflective actions” 9. Two points, however, require clarification.
I think the question should be formulated a little differently. It's about
8 The German “ordentlich”, by the way, provides for use in precisely these three meanings: simultaneously and as ordered and how ordinary, permanent, regular, regular And How in proper order, neatly, decently, decently, as expected.
9 It should be noted, however, that Vakhstein makes this statement in a critical mode.
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to consider not just the multiplicity of everyday practices, but the many different social practices in their everyday implementation. Everyday life permeates all social practices. But not in the sense that it constitutes the ontological basis of any activity and appears in the form of typified patterns of action, as Schutz believed, but insofar as it consists in organized, coordinated, orderly, reproducible ways of carrying out any activity. In short, we should consider not everyday and non-everyday practices, but various practices in their daily implementation.
The second point concerns the identification of the everyday and the unreflective. Undoubtedly, both aspects are closely related to each other: the division into everyday and non-everyday practices is based on the distinction between reflexive and non-reflective or pre-reflective actions, which in turn goes back, as Vakhstein points out following V. Volkov, to the Humean distinction between practical action and reflexive action. In this sense, Schutz only follows tradition, defining the activity of scientific theorizing as the area of reflexive action itself. This does not mean, of course, that when deciding his daily affairs, a practical worker does not comprehend (does not reflect) his actions, however, the adoption of a reflexive attitude presupposes, according to Schutz, stopping the action: to grasp the action in reflection, he says, means “to stop and think” . Reflection involves withdrawal from participation. Of course, the scientist, carrying out his scientific activity, not only reflects from the position of a detached observer, but also participates in social interaction, communicating with other researchers, taking measurements, etc., in short, supporting the reproduction of the corresponding scientific tradition. However, “science as a social phenomenon” is one thing,
And quite another is “the specifically scientific position of the scientist in relation to his object,” notes Schutz. The opposition between theory and practice thus creates the preconditions for removing reflexivity not only from everyday practices, but
And generally from the field of practice as such.
Another connotative series sets the contrast between the everyday and the unconscious: everyday actions are unreflective, since they are based on a taken-for-granted, unconscious way of implementation. Of course, this is not to say that they are unconscious; they are rather outside, or before, awareness. They are not thematized, Schutz would say. However, we observe exactly the opposite. Practical actions are continuously thematized because they require constant coordination and ordering. Routine is not the basis or condition of everyday practices, but a consequence of their orderly implementation. Routine is produced in a meaningful way. Therefore, practical actions are not pre-reflective, they are reflexive in the sense that, as P. Auer points out, “they themselves form a context which they make interpretable-for-all-practical-purposes-of-a-given-moment.” It is clear that reflexivity so understood does not coincide with what theoretical reflection implies. The latter - if we take reflexive analysis in its (Husserl's) phenomenological version as a basis - presupposes a directed intentional relationship through which the act of consciousness grasps what the act is directed towards, be it another act or a specific object that is not a state of consciousness10. Practical reflexivity - and I think it is quite justified to use just such a term - is a feature of practical demonstrations, descriptions and explanations themselves, directly related to the irreducible indexicality of social actions11. V. Patzelt characterizes indexicality and reflexivity as “paired
10 Strictly speaking, in the phenomenological sense, the object of a reflexive attitude is always precisely another act of consciousness (see:), however, in the context of the present discussion, these subtleties can be neglected.
11 Indexicality is a term used by linguists to denote the property of natural language expressions that enables participants to understand what they are doing in an interaction.
We will try to show how a waking adult perceives the intersubjective world of everyday life, in which and in which he acts as a person among other people. This world existed before our birth, was experienced and interpreted by our predecessors as an organized world. It appears to us in our own experience and interpretation. But any interpretation of the world is based on previous acquaintance with it - ours personally or transmitted to us by parents and teachers. This experience, in the form of “knowledge at hand,” acts as a schema with which we relate all our perceptions and experiences.
Such experience includes the idea that the world in which we live is a world of objects with more or less definite qualities. We move among these objects, experience their resistance and can influence them. But none of them are perceived by us as isolated, since they are initially associated with previous experience. This is also a network of available knowledge, which for the time being is taken for granted, although at any moment it can be called into question. Undoubted prior knowledge is given to us from the very beginning as typical, which means that it carries within itself an open horizon of similar future experiences.
We do not perceive the external world, for example, as a collection of individual unique objects scattered in space and time. We see mountains, trees, animals, people. I may have never seen an Irish Setter before, but as soon as I look at it, I know that it is an animal, or more precisely, a dog. It has all the familiar features and typical behavior of a dog, not a cat, for example. You can, of course, ask: “What breed is she?” This means that the difference between this particular dog and all others known to me arises and is problematized only by its resemblance to the undeniably typical dog that exists in my mind.
Speaking in the specific language of Husserl, whose analysis of the typical structure of the world of everyday life we have summarized, the features that appear in the actual perception of an object are apperceptively transferred to any other similar object, perceived only in its typicality. Actual experience confirms or does not confirm my expectations of typical correspondences. If confirmed, the content of the type is enriched; in this case, the type is divided into subtypes. On the other hand, a specific real object reveals its individual characteristics, which nevertheless appear in the form of typicality. Now - and this is especially important - I can consider this perceived object in its typicality to be a representative of a general type, I can allow myself to formulate the concept of a type, but I do not at all need to think about a specific dog as a representative of the general concept “dog”. In principle, my Irish Setter Rover exhibits all the characteristics associated, according to my previous experience, with the type of dog. However, what he has in common with other dogs is not at all interesting to me. For me he is Rover - a friend and companion; this is what distinguishes him from other Irish setters, with whom he is related by certain typical characteristics of appearance and behavior, - for no particular reason - I am not inclined to see in Rover a mammal, an animal, an object of the external world, although I know that he is all of these too .
Thus, in the natural setting of everyday life, we are occupied with only some objects that are in relation to others, previously perceived, forming a field of self-evident, unquestioned experience. The result of the selective activity of our consciousness is the identification of individual and typical characteristics of objects. Generally speaking, we are only interested in certain aspects of each particular typed object. The statement that a given object S has a characteristic property p, in the form "S is p" is an elliptical proposition. For S, taken no matter how it appears in my eyes, represents not only p, but also q, and r, and much more. The complete proposition should read: S is, in addition to being both q and r, also p. If, in relation to an element of the world taken for granted, I assert: “S is p,” I do so because, under the circumstances, S interests me as p, and I ignore its being as q and r as irrelevant. .
The terms “interest” and “relevance” just used are references to a number of complex problems that we cannot discuss now. We have to limit ourselves to just a few comments. A person at any moment of his daily life is in a biographically determined situation, that is, in a physical and sociocultural environment determined by himself. In such an environment he takes his position. It is not only a position in physical space and external time, not only a status and role within a social system, it is also a moral and ideological position. To say that the definition of a situation is biographically determined is to say that it has its own history. This is the deposition of all previous experience, systematized in the usual forms of the available stock of knowledge. As such it is unique, given to this person and no one else. A biographically determined situation presupposes certain possibilities for future practical or theoretical activity. Let's call it “purpose at hand”. This goal precisely determines the elements that are relevant in relation to it. The system of relevances, in turn, determines the elements that will form the basis of the general typing, and the features of these elements that will become characteristically typical or, conversely, unique and individual. In other words, it determines how far we have to penetrate into the open horizon of typicality.[…]
We will try to show how a waking adult perceives the intersubjective world of everyday life, in which and in which he acts as a person among other people. This world existed before our birth, was experienced and interpreted by our predecessors as an organized world. It appears to us in our own experience and interpretation. But any interpretation of the world is based on previous acquaintance with it - ours personally or transmitted to us by parents and teachers. This experience in the form of “knowledge at hand” acts as a scheme with which we relate all our perceptions and experiences.
Such experience includes the idea that the world in which we live is a world of objects with more or less definite qualities. We move among these objects, experience their resistance and can influence them. But none of them are perceived by us as isolated, since they are initially associated with previous experience. This is also a network of available knowledge, which for the time being is taken for granted, although at any moment it must be questioned. Undoubted prior knowledge is given to us from the very beginning as typical, which means that it carries within itself an open horizon of similar future experiences.
We do not perceive the external world, for example, as a collection of individual unique objects scattered in space and time. We see mountains, trees, animals, people. I must have never seen an Irish Setter before, but as soon as I look at it, I know that it is an animal, or rather a dog. It has all the familiar features and typical behavior of a dog, not a cat, for example.
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One can, of course, ask “What breed is she?” This means that the difference between this particular dog and all others known to me arises and is problematized only due to the similarity with the undoubted typical dog that exists in my mind.
Speaking in the specific language of Husserl, whose analysis of the typical structure of the world of everyday life we have summarized, the features that appear in the actual perception of an object are apperceptively transferred to any other similar object, perceived only in typicality. Actual experience confirms or does not confirm my expectations of typical correspondences. If confirmed, the content of the type is enriched; in this case, the type is divided into subtypes. On the other hand, a specific real object reveals its individual characteristics, which nevertheless appear in the form of typicality. Now - and this is especially important - I can consider this typically perceived object to be a representative of a general type, I can allow myself to formulate the concept of a type, but I do not at all need to think about a specific dog as a representative of the general concept “dog”. In principle, my Irish Setter Rover exhibits all the characteristics associated, according to my previous experience, with the type of dog. However, what he has in common with other dogs is not at all interesting to me. For me he is Rover - a friend and companion; in this ᴇᴦο difference from other Irish setters, with whom ᴇᴦο have certain typical characteristics of appearance and behavior in common, - for no particular reason - I am not inclined to see in Rover a mammal, an animal, an object of the outside world, although I know that he is also all of these .
The structure of everyday thinking - concept and types. Classification and features of the category "Structure of everyday thinking" 2015, 2017-2018.
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