The Theory of Qualitative Research

Flick-03.
qxd 3/19/04 2:16 PM Page 63
Part 3
The Theory of Qualitative Research

Flick-03.qxd 3/19/04 2:16 PM Page 65
Introduction
Qualitative research cannot be reduced to data for specific issues: biographical (see 3.6) and
collection and interpretation procedures, methodo- generation research (see 3.7), approaches like
logical principles or detailed and exotic descrip- ethnography (see 3.8), cultural studies (see 3.9),
tions of life-worlds. Methods and methodologies or gender studies (see 3.10) have developed
are not, for this kind of research, an end in their own theoretical discourse. Research in
themselves. They are based on theoretical con- organizations (see 3.11) and qualitative evalua-
siderations and should, in turn, serve in the for- tion research (see 3.12) confronts the empirical
mulation of theories. The precise description of work with specific theoretical demands.
life-worlds ought to contribute to a better under-
standing of specific cultural phenomena and
forms of action, to assist in the recognition of BACKGROUND THEORIES (PART 3A)
structures and patterns of their social reproduc-
tion and their particular rationale. The first chapter (see 3.1) gives an overview of
A common starting point for the different phenomenological life-world analysis as devel-
individual theoretical traditions within qualita- oped by Alfred Schütz following the ideas of
tive research is the day-to-day action of members Edmund Husserl. Here the bases of the constitu-
of society in differing situations and under vary- tion of meaning for social science analysis are
ing cultural conditions. But what is important developed. In this theoretical perspective we see
in the detailed descriptions of these is not a the existing social reality, which we take for
duplication or a ‘portrait’ of reality. It is rather granted, as a preconditional ‘social construc-
that their character itself is a central theme of tion’ (Berger and Luckmann 1966) of members
theoretical endeavour in qualitative research. To of a given society (see 3.4).
capture social reality in a theoretical form it is Ethnomethodology represents an indepen-
first necessary to make a reconstruction and dent theoretical development within qualitative
analysis using a variety of ethnographic proce- research (see 3.2). It shares with phenomeno-
dures, derived from interviews and documents. logical analysis the question of the routine
Secondly, the knowledge gained in this way has foundations of everyday action and its formal
then to be incorporated into a set of general the- mechanisms. Within the tradition of sociology
oretical relationships – perhaps as a contribu- it picks up the question first posed by Durkheim
tion to the basis of a constitution of sociality, a concerning the preconditions of social order
theory of social order, or a theory of culture or and directs its attention to the ‘productive
regional cultures. achievements’ of members of society that bring
Part 3 consists of two subsections: the first about social order as an arrangement of com-
focuses on the most important background munication and interaction.
theories of qualitative research, whereas the Symbolic interactionism (see 3.3) has its roots in
second subsection addresses examples of quali- pragmatism and is governed by a humanist per-
tative research programmes with specific theo- spective. In its basic assumptions it stresses the
retical frameworks. importance of the subject in the creation of social
The first group of contributions includes: reality, it indicates the processes of joint situational
phenomenological life-world analysis (see 3.1), negotiation of lines of action and the role of settled
ethnomethodology (see 3.2) and symbolic cultural and symbolically transmitted norms,
interactionism (see 3.3), as well as the construc- which only become a concrete action-reality for
tivist (see 3.4) and hermeneutic (see 3.5) theo- participants in the course of an interaction. In its
retical perspectives. The second group addresses most recent developments under the conditions of
research programmes and theoretical developments postmodernism and the influence of the crisis of
Flick-03.qxd 3/19/04 2:16 PM Page 66
66 A COMPANION TO QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
representation, the constructivist aspects of the world that new perspectives in qualitative
approach have been more fully elaborated. theory provide scope for new discoveries.
We are concerned here (see 3.4) with certain Life-world analysis reconstructs the inner
approaches to a constructivist perspective that view of the actor in a variety of local environ-
belong not only to qualitative research but ments, ‘meaning-provinces’ and special worlds,
which have led to particularly intensive discus- in order to achieve a better overall understand-
sion and further developments in this area. ing of participants and their life-world(s) (see
Here, in addition to methodological considera- 3.8). The investigation of these is not only man-
tions, there is also some treatment of epistemo- ifest in the diversity of modern forms of life. In
logical questions concerning the character of its methodological perspective on the artificial
social reality; this involves discussion of the alienation of the habitual and apparently familiar
links with a theory of science deriving, on the it opens up, as a reflection, a view of general
one hand, from system-theory and, on the other principles and processes in the social construc-
hand, from literary studies, with regard to their tion of life-worlds. Cultural studies (see 3.9) – an
importance for theory construction in qualita- interdisciplinary field between sociology, ethno-
tive research. graphy, media science and literary studies – is
Hermeneutic approaches constitute, after interested in the following questions: how are
phenomenology and symbolic interactionism, cultural symbols and traditions used and altered
the third major tradition within qualitative in the context of social change, under specific
research (see 3.5). Qualitative data such as pro- power relations and in states of social conflict
tocols, memos, interview transcripts, photo- between participants? To what extent are actors
graphs or films do not speak for themselves; in this process marked by the traditions, fash-
in qualitative research they are viewed as texts ions and temporal misalignments of (popular)
that have to be read (in the sense of interpreted) culture?
and related to available research results. In the Theoretical aspects of qualitative research
different hermeneutic approaches there is a have also made an impact on modern gender
broad tradition of transforming these inter- research (see 3.10). This is concerned both with
pretative endeavours into theory-driven the processes involved in the social construction
methodologies. of gender and with the qualitative analysis of
communication and interaction within and
between the genders. It is a particular theoreti-
RESEARCH PROGRAMMES AND cal challenge to analyse, for example, pieces of
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES interaction analysis as an expression of the
FOR SPECIFIC ISSUES (PART 3B) socially unequal treatment of the genders.
Organization analysis and development (see
Qualitative biographical research (see 3.6) and 3.11) and evaluation research (see 3.12) are
qualitative generation research (see 3.7) are examples of two central applications of qualita-
closely related: how are individual interpretative research. They are of theoretical interest in
tions interrelated, which also always means the that the application of qualitative procedures to
creation of new or reconstructed personal organizational development and evaluation
biographies in the light of historical constella- makes visible both the necessary and the
tions and events, which members of a given obstructive mechanisms in changing and
generation have both undertaken and suffered, redefining social constructions. This enables
and how do new configurations and lifestyles qualitative research to provide insights into the
emerge from these constellations? It is also in the microstructures and preconditions of social
context of an everyday history of the modern change.
Flick 3.01 Part-A.qxd 3/19/04 7:11 PM Page 67
Part 3A
Background Theories of Qualitative Research
3.1 Phenomenological Life-world Analysis
Ronald Hitzler and Thomas S. Eberle
1 The idea of a life-world phenomenology 67

2 From meaning-constitution to understanding the other 68
3 On the sociological relevance of life-world analysis 69
1 THE IDEA OF A LIFE-WORLD to achieve an ‘adequate’ methodological

PHENOMENOLOGY self-awareness.
Life-world, in Edmund Husserl’s sense, is the
The variant of life-world phenomenology, original domain, the obvious and unquestioned
which was developed by Alfred Schütz on the foundation both of all types of everyday acting
basis of ideas derived from Husserl and re- and thinking and of all scientific theorizing and
imported to Europe from the USA by Thomas philosophizing (cf. also Welz 1996). In its con-
Luckmann, is today without question one of the crete manifestations it exists in all its countless
most important background theories of qualita- varieties as the only real world of every indivi-
tive research (cf. also Brauner as early as 1978). dual person, of every ego. These variations are
The main objective of this mundane phenome- built on general immutable structures, the
nology is to reconstruct the formal structures of ‘realm of immediate evidence’.
the life-world. Alfred Schütz adopted this idea of Husserl’s and
From a historical point of view, Husserl’s diag- attempted to discover the most general essential
nosis (1936) of the crisis in European scholar- features of the life-world, in respect of the parti-
ship forms the scientific background to this cular problems of social as opposed to natural
focus on the life-world. For him, the crisis con- sciences (cf. Schütz and Luckmann 1973, 1989).
sisted of the fact that the scientific protagonists The general aim of life-world analysis, ori-
have (or at least had) forgotten that all science ented to the epistemological problems of the
is rooted in the life-world. For Husserl, the social sciences, is therefore to analyse the under-
explanation of the life-world essence of science standing of meaning-comprehension by means
therefore provided the only way to overcome of a formal description of invariable basic struc-
the crisis in science. For when the ‘meaning- tures of the constitution of meaning in the
basis’ of the life-world is (again) revealed, scien- subjective consciousness of actors.
tific idealizations will – in Husserl’s opinion – no Unlike the normal objective and inductive
longer be reified, and science will be able understanding of science, phenomenology
begins with experience of the individual and actors relate to their actions. Consequently,
develops this in a reflexive form. The mundane Schütz recognizes the principal problem of a
phenomenology of Schütz and his followers, methodological basis for the social sciences in
therefore, is not a sociological approach in the analysing the processes of meaning-creation
strict sense of the word, but a proto-sociological and meaning-interpretation together with the
enterprise that underlies actual sociological incremental constitution of human knowledge.
work (cf. Hitzler and Honer 1984; Knoblauch In other words: mundane phenomenology, in
1996a; Luckmann 1993). It is therefore inter- the methodological sense, is ‘constitution analy-
ested in the epistemological explanation of the sis’. All meaning configurations – according
‘foundation’ of the life-world, which is on the to Schütz’s main thesis (1932) – are constituted
one hand a point of reference and on the other in processes of meaning-creation and under-
hand an implicit basis for research work in the standing. To explain social phenomena from
social sciences. the actions of participating individuals therefore
Nevertheless both ‘normal’ science and mun- implies referring back to the subjective meaning
dane phenomenology – in the extended sense of which these actions have for the actors
the term – proceed empirically (cf. Luckmann themselves.
1979). Of course, the specific ‘difference’ in In this process of reconstruction, Schütz
phenomenological empiricism consists of the builds on the transcendental phenomenology of
researcher beginning with his/her own subjec- Edmund Husserl: the meaning of experiences
tive experiences. Whatever phenomenological is determined by acts of consciousness. A
‘operations’, and on the basis of whatever epis- meaning-relation arises when (individual) expe-
temological interests, are then carried out, it is riences are brought together to form a unit by
the personal subjective experiences that are and syntheses of a higher order. The total coherence
remain the only source of data, because they of the experience then forms the quintessence
alone are evident. On the basis of this ‘special’ of all subjective meaning-relations, and the
type of data, phenomenology advances towards specific meaning of an experience arises from
controlled abstraction formulations of the basic the way in which it is classified within this total
layers of the processes of consciousness and coherence of experience.
reveals the universal structures in subjective Actions are experiences of a particular kind:
constitution-behaviour. their meaning is constituted by the design that
But Schütz not only analyses the life-world in anticipates the resulting action. For this reason
respect of how it is constituted meaningfully in Schütz keeps acting and action strictly apart.
the subjective consciousness: he also sees it as The meaning of acting is determined by the
produced by the actions of people (cf. also Srubar meaning of the projected action. The goal of an
1988). This also explains the high level of com- action is the ‘in-order-to’ motive of the action,
patibility of phenomenological life-world analy- while the stimulus or the reasons for the action-
sis with many of the problems of interpretative design form the ‘because’ motive. Weber’s ‘sub-
sociology in general and with the theoretical jectively intended meaning’ is, in this respect,
perspective of American pragmatism (cf. partic- nothing more than a self-explanation on the
ularly Schütz 1962, 1964). part of the actor of his/her own action-design.
This self-explanation always derives from a
process of ‘now and in this way’, and therefore
2 FROM MEANING-CONSTITUTION TO necessarily remains ‘relative’: interpretations of
UNDERSTANDING THE OTHER meaning vary, according to the time when they
occur, according to the momentary situational
Throughout his life Schütz worked on the interest in the explanation, and also according
problem of a sound philosophical basis for to the underlying reservoir of knowledge spe-
interpretative sociology. As his starting point he cific to a particular biography and marked by
selected Max Weber’s definition of sociology as typological and relevance structures.
a ‘science that seeks to interpret social action In analysing the understanding of the other
and thereby provides a causal explanation for its Schütz departs from the level of transcendental
sequencing and its effects’ (Weber 1972: 1). phenomenology: with his (everyday) ‘general
According to Weber, what has to be understood thesis of the alter ego’ (Schütz 1962) he presup-
is the ‘subjectively intended meaning’ that poses the existence of the fellow human and
PHENOMENOLOGICAL LIFE-WORLD ANALYSIS 69
analyses the way we understand the other from As Schütz has shown, however, the perspective
a quasi-natural perspective. His basic question of another actor can only be captured approxi-
is: how can other human beings be understood mately. Complete adequacy therefore remains
if there is no direct access to their conscious- an unachievable ideal for interpretative social
ness? His analysis shows that the alter ego can sciences.
only be understood in a ‘signitive’ way, that is,
through he signs and indications. The act of
understanding therefore always consists of a 3 ON THE SOCIOLOGICAL RELEVANCE
self-explanation on the part of the interpreter OF LIFE-WORLD ANALYSIS
on the basis of a biographically determined
reservoir of knowledge, adapted to his/her situ- If one sees phenomenological life-world analysis
ational relevance system. In consequence of as both proto- and para-sociological epistemology,
this, no more than fragmentary excerpts of the it then appears to be of immediate relevance to
other’s subjective context are ever accessible to any kind of sociology based on the notion that
the interpreter. Every meaning-interpretation our experience rather than ‘objective’ factual con-
can therefore be no more than an approxima- tent is decisive in the way we define situations:
tion, the quality of which depends on the degree we are, to use Schütz’s (1962) term, ‘activity cen-
of familiarity with, and the ‘temporal proximity’ tres’ of our respective situations and thereby also
of, the particular alter ego in the consciousness of capable of subjective definition – and, in our rela-
the interpreter. tion to one another, alternating between high-
Unlike (transcendental) phenomenology, the level agreement and crass opposition.
social sciences are therefore obliged to take Accordingly, if our everyday world consists
account, in methodological terms, of the seman- not simply of ‘brute facts’ but of (manifold)
tic pre-constitution of the social world. This meanings, then the essential task of sociology is
means that the theories and methods of social to understand, in a reconstructive way, how
science are ‘second order’ constructs which meanings arise and continue, when and why
(must) derive from ‘first order’ everyday con- they may be described as ‘objective’, and how
structs. Schütz expresses this in the form of two human beings adapt interpretatively these
methodological postulates: the postulate of sub- socially ‘objectivized’ meanings and recover
jective interpretation, and the postulate of from them, as if from a quarry, their ‘subjective’
adequacy. significations, thereby collaborating in the further
The postulate of subjective interpretation construction of ‘objective reality’ (cf. Berger and
requires social scientific explanations to relate Luckmann 1966). The empirical programme of
to the subjective meaning of an action. From phenomenology therefore includes, from the
the point of view of theory-construction this point of view of research practice, the systematic
means that on the basis of typical patterns of an reconstruction of multiple qualities of experience
observed sequence of actions a model of an (see 3.8).
actor is constructed to whom an awareness of In this sense the life-world is in no way a mar-
typical in-order-to and because motives is attrib- ginal theme in the social sciences, but their sys-
uted. The postulate of adequacy requires that the tematic central problem: since perception,
social scientist’s constructs be consistent with experience and action constitute an original
the constructs of the everyday actor. They must sphere that is only ‘really’ accessible to the per-
therefore be comprehensible and give an accu- ceiving, experiencing or acting subject, the so-
rate explanation of acting. Complete adequacy called factual realities are only truly evident as
is achieved when the concrete meaning- phenomena of the subjective consciousness. Of
orientation of actors is captured accurately. In this course this experience can always ‘deceive’ in
way we explain the subjective perspective of the the face of an ‘objectively’ defined factual con-
individual actors at truly the ultimate reference tent. Nevertheless, it may be said to determine
point for social science analyses, because ‘hold- our behaviour ‘objectively’. For not only is our
ing on to the subjective perspective’ offers, consciousness necessarily intentional (‘about
according to Schütz (e.g. 1978), the only really something’), but also the correlates of this
sufficient guarantee that social reality is not intentionality – at least in everyday experience –
replaced by a fictitious non-existent world are meaningful (cf. Schütz 1967 for further
constructed by some scientific observer. discussion).
Because the life-world reveals at every moment from individual worlds by virtue of the fact that
fundamentally more experiential possibilities the former are pre-determined and not inten-
than an individual can truly bring into any the- tionally constituted, whereas the latter are goal-
matic focus, the individual is constantly and directed (for example, the world of the employed
inevitably selecting from the total of possible person, of the family member, of the citizen,
experiences available at any given moment (cf. and so on). Every immediate experience, every
Esser 1996). It is not generally important to us present world, according to Marx (1987: 129),
that, in consequence, our experience and action has ‘the content of an individual world’.
is always the result of elective procedures, because For a variety of reasons, Hitzler and Honer
we are constantly concerned with completing (e.g. 1984, 1988, 1991), following Benita
our actual experience meaningfully or with cre- Luckmann (1970), prefer the term ‘small social
ating a structure for every selected perception. life-worlds’, but in a broad sense are referring to
This means that in respect of the meaningfulness the same phenomenon: a small social life-world
of experiences we distinguish, according to our or an individual world is a fragment of the life-
respective subjective relevances, between the world, with its own structure, within which
important and the unimportant, or between the experiences occur in relation to a special inter-
relevant and the irrelevant. subjective reservoir of knowledge that is obliga-
This meaningfulness can be distinctly tory and pre-existent. A small social life-world
situation-specific and short-term, but it can also is the correlate of the subjective experience of
be (almost) completely independent of situation reality in a partial or temporally restricted
and permanent; it can be of purely subjective or culture. This kind of world is ‘small’, therefore,
of general social ‘validity’ (to an extent that not because it is concerned only with small
always has to be determined). This is because all spaces or consists of very few members. A small
individual human beings live in their own life- social life-world is described as ‘small’ rather
world as the sum total of their concrete world of because the complexity of possible social rele-
experience. However, all concrete manifesta- vances is reduced within it to a particular system
tions of life-world structures also have inter- of relevance. And a small social life-world is
subjective features. To come to terms with our called ‘social’ because this relevance system is
normal everyday life we make use of a large obligatory for successful participations. Empiri-
number of shared meaning schemata, and our cal examples of the analysis of small social life-
various subjective relevance systems overlap at worlds may be found in Honer (e.g. 1994a),
many points. Hitzler (1993, 1995), Hitzler et al. (1996), Hitzler
Shared beliefs first of all facilitate and deter- and Pfadenhauer (1998) Knoblauch (e.g. 1988,
mine our everyday life, which is always a matter 1997) and Soeffner (e.g. 1997).
of living together. To a certain extent the subject Therefore, while, in principle, every person is
‘shares’ his/her respective concrete life-world indeed given his/her own and unique life-world,
with others. To put this more precisely: the cor- from an empirical point of view the individual
relates of an individual’s experience correspond subjective life-worlds seem only relatively origi-
to the correlates of the experience of others in nal, because human beings typically refer back
ways that may be typologized. From this, mean- to socio-historically ‘valid’ meaning schemata
ing schemata may be created, which are shared and concepts of action in the process of orienta-
by different subjects and are therefore inter- tion within their own world.
subjectively valid, and these correlate to a greater Particularly in modern societies, small social
or lesser extent with individual, biographically life-worlds are therefore the subjective corre-
conditioned, meaning structures. To put this spondences to cultural objectivizations of reality
rather differently: human social practice is – showing multiple social diversity, as is mani-
inevitably – a practice of interpretation, of decod- fested, for example, in divergent language and
ing signs and symbols, and essentially of speaking environments (cf. Luckmann 1989;
communication (cf. Luckmann 1986, 1989). Knoblauch 1995, 1996b). The most important
In this sense, writers such as Werner Marx result of this is that the relevance structures of
(1987) understand the life-world as a plurality different members of society can only be the
of sometimes clearly defined, and sometimes same in a very conditional and ‘provisional’ way.
undetermined, purposive individual worlds. Marx Moreover, in connection with the developing
argues that Husserl distinguishes the life-world division of labour, the proportions of generally
PHENOMENOLOGICAL LIFE-WORLD ANALYSIS 71
known meanings and those of factual contents epistemologically relevant antagonism in social
currently known ‘only’ to experts are diverging: research is not between qualitative and quanti-
the quantities of specialist knowledge are tative, nor even between standardized and non-
increasing; they are becoming ever more standardized, investigations, but between
specialized and are increasingly remote from hermeneutic and scientistic methodologies and
general knowledge (cf. Hitzler et al. 1994). It fol- methods.
lows from this that contexts can be divided
between what everyone knows and what is
known by relatively few people. If, however, as NOTE
Schütz and Luckmann (1973: 318) affirm, ‘in a
borderline case, the province of common knowl- 1 In contrast, the testing of hypotheses in the
edge and common relevances shrinks beyond a deductive-nomological explanatory model presup-
critical point, communication within the poses – quasi-implicitly – that human beings under
the same conditions will act in the same way. In
society is barely possible. There emerge “societies
societies with a predominantly traditional orienta-
within the society”.’ tion this is indeed often the case, but in modern
This is again a very significant insight in societies, only in the area of routine actions. As
respect of the repeatedly postulated need for an modern societies are marked by de-traditionalization,
ethnological attitude on the part of the socio- an increase in options and individualization (Gross
logist towards his/her own culture; for it means 1994, 1999), and actors frequently re-interpret their
that under such conditions, for every type of situations, so their knowledge and behaviour
grouping, for every collective, even within a becomes more contingent, the prognostic capability
society, different kinds of knowledge and, above of ‘if–then’ statements becomes more disturbed and
all, different hierarchies of knowledge types are exploratory-interpretative research design becomes
more necessary (cf. also Hitzler 1997, 1999b).
or at least might be relevant.1 And as the mani-
fold life-worlds and the small social life-worlds
of other people become the object of scientific FURTHER READING
interest, the problem of how and how far one
can succeed in seeing the world through the
eyes of these other people (cf. Plessner 1983),
Knoblauch, H. (2002) ‘Communication, Contexts
and in reconstructing the subjectively intended and Culture. A Communicative Constructivist
meaning of their experiences, becomes virulent Approach to Intercultural Communication’, in
not ‘only’ from a methodological viewpoint but A. di Luzio, S. Günthner and F. Orletti (eds),
also, and more particularly, in terms of method. Culture in Communication. Analyses of
Admittedly Schütz himself was never con- Intercultural Situations. Amsterdam: John
cerned with the methods of empirical social Benjamins, pp. 3–33.
research. Such implications of life-world analysis
are already to be seen, however, in the works of Maso, I. (2001) ‘Phenomenology and Ethno-
Harold Garfinkel in particular (1967a; see 2.3) graphy’, in P. Atkinson, A. Coffey, S. Delamont,
and Aaron V. Cicourel (1964). In Germany, J. Lofland and L. Lofland (eds), Handbook of
Schütz’s matrix is most often used for the system- Ethnography. London: Sage. pp. 136–144.
atic analysis of the way social scientific data come
about (cf. Luckmann and Gross 1977), for the Psathas, G. (1989) Phenomenology and
analysis of communicative genres (see 5.18), for Sociology: Theory and Research. Washington,
the explanation of hermeneutic reconstruction DC: Center for Advanced Research in Pheno-
procedures (see 3.5, 5.16) and to provide a theo- menology and University Press of America.
retical base for ethnographic sociology (see 3.8).
Against the background of the above outline
it becomes increasingly evident that the
Flick 3.02.qxd 3/19/04 7:13 PM Page 72
3.2 Ethnomethodology
Jörg R. Bergmann
1 Scientific and historical background 72

2 The reality model of ethnomethodology 73
3 Central concepts and programmatic statements 75
4 Developments and perspectives: ‘studies of work’ 77
5 Critical evaluation and prospects 79
1 SCIENTIFIC AND General rules, in Garfinkel’s opinion, must

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND necessarily be transmitted into the current inter-
active process; they must be situated, in order to
Ethnomethodology (EM) is the name of a be relevant to an action. This transmission,
sociological approach to investigation that sees however, must be achieved by actors through
social order, in all the ramifications of everyday interpretation of the rules and the situation;
situations, as a methodically generated product rules, values and situation can only be harmo-
of members of a society. It is the goal of EM to niously related by means of meaning attribu-
determine the principles and mechanisms by tion and interpretation.
means of which actors, in their action, produce In coining the term ethnomethodology
the meaningful structure and ordering of what Garfinkel (1974) relied on the concept of
is happening around them and what they ‘ethnoscience’ developed in North American
express and do in social interaction with others. cultural anthropology. The research orientation
The name and programme of EM derive from of ‘ethnoscience’, which subsequently devel-
Harold Garfinkel (1967a), who, in the 1950s and oped into a ‘cognitive anthropology’ (D’Andrade
1960s, examined the work of Talcott Parsons 1995), was concerned with ‘the ordering of
(1937) and Alfred Schütz (1932), and applied things in the heads of people’ (Goodenough
himself to the old and, for sociology, key ques- 1964). Its goal, using special techniques of
tion of how social order is possible (Hilbert semantic analysis, is to determine individual
1992). In Talcott Parsons’s structural functional- cultural orientation schemata from the
ism the problem of social order was considered vocabulary used in a language community.
to be solved by referring to a normative consen- ‘Ethnomedicine’ therefore refers to the recon-
sus; with the existence of socially identical structed system of knowledge and ideas in a
internalized cultural value systems the solution single language community about sickness, causes
to the problem of social order was seen as guar- of sickness and curative procedures. Garfinkel
anteed. Harold Garfinkel countered this with was also interested in what members of a society
the argument that between, on the one hand, know, think and do in dealing with everyday
rules and values that could only be formulated circumstances; in the term ‘ethnomethodology’
generally and, on the other hand, the inevitably this is expressed in the prefix ‘ethno-’. But
particular situation of current action, there is an unlike the cognitive anthropologists, Garfinkel’s
epistemological hiatus (Heritage 1984, 1987). aim was not to determine the structure of patterns
Flick 3.02.qxd 3/19/04 7:13 PM Page 73
ETHNOMETHODOLOGY 73
of orientation and experience specific to particular enterprise was secured through the success of
domains. The problems he addressed were of a Aaron Cicourel’s (1964) book. It was realized
more fundamental nature. His interest was in only with some delay that EM also had its own
the operational basis of that meaningful order- research programme.
ing that is taken for granted in everyday action,
that is to say, in the techniques and mecha-
nisms – or ethno-methods – of its production. 2 THE REALITY MODEL OF
Compared to the ‘cognitive consensus’ pro- ETHNOMETHODOLOGY
posed in Parsons’s theory (cf. Wilson 1970),
Garfinkel advances the idea that members of a It is characteristic of EM that it operates with a
society are not passively subject to their social- model of reality that differs sharply from the ‘real
ized need-systems, internalized norms, social knowledge’ idea, deriving from Durkheim, that
pressures and so on, but rather that they are social facts as an objective reality are the object
continuously producing and actively develop- and legitimization of sociology. In the introduc-
ing social reality in interaction with others as a tion to his book Studies in Ethnomethodology,
meaningful action-context. This actor-model which rapidly became the foundation text of EM,
was not ‘politically’ motivated, but it did have Garfinkel writes (1967a: VII)
great affinity to the social emancipation move-
ments of the 1960s. While the normative- In contrast to certain versions of Durkheim, that
consensual character of Parsons’s system of teach that the objective reality of social facts is
categories was increasingly felt to be inade- sociology’s fundamental principle, the lesson is
quate, if not unreal, against the background of taken instead, and used as a study policy, that the
objective reality of social facts as an ongoing
political, social and generation conflicts in
accomplishment of the concerted activities of
American society, approaches that emphasized daily life, with the ordinary, artful ways of that
the constructive and negotiational character of accomplishment being by members known, used,
social reality were much more in keeping with and taken for granted, is, for members doing socio-
the spirit of the age (Gouldner 1971). This is a logy, a fundamental phenomenon.
significant – if extra-scientific – reason for
success, from the 1960s onwards, of EM, symbolic Garfinkel does not deny that social facts are
interactionism, the treatise of Berger and experienced as an objectively determined reality,
Luckmann (1966), or the works of Erving but he decisively rejects the idea of making this
Goffman (Widmer 1991), which fed on sources experience of certainty in everyday life the basis
with, in some respects, a different conceptual of a science of social phenomena. Instead he
history but which united in emphasizing the proposes observing ‘the objective reality of social
active, creative role of the individual in social facts as an ongoing accomplishment of the con-
interaction (Arbeitsgruppe Bielefelder Soziologen certed activities of daily life’, which means not
1973). Garfinkel himself points out in many proceeding from the existence of social facts, but
places that explanatory approaches that ignore rather conceiving their objective reality as an
the interpretative and constructional accom- ongoing accomplishment or product that is
plishments of actors are, in his opinion, work- accomplished in and through the activities of
ing with an actor-model in which actors appear everyday life. In this reality model the following
as judgmental dopes. conditions are of particular importance.
The developmental history of EM was first
determined by the fact that it was perceived 1 For EM what actors observe and deal with in
almost exclusively as a critique of the predomi- their everyday activity as given social facts,
nant structural-functional theoretical model as a reality existing without their being
and as a critique of the accepted methodical involved, is only created as such in their
canon of empirical social research. This was actions and observations. Social deeds
particularly true in the German-speaking world, acquire their character of reality exclusively
where Jürgen Habermas (1970) very quickly through interactions that take place between
drew attention to the ethnomethodologists’ people. It is only in social interaction that
criticism of the unconsidered preconditions of the objectivity of ‘objectively’ perceived
social science research practice, and where the events, the factual nature of ‘factually’ valid
reputation of EM as a methodologically critical phenomena, is created.
Flick 3.02.qxd 3/19/04 7:13 PM Page 74
2 This process of creating reality is, in principle, was influenced by the phenomenological
not completed at any given moment: it is technique of epoché described by Husserl – the
continuously carried out in the finely bracketing of belief in the existence of the world
matched social actions of actors. Social real- (Eberle 1984; Filmer et al. 1972). Garfinkel also
ity is understood by Garfinkel as an ‘ongoing pursues an interest in constitutive analysis,
accomplishment’, as a reality that is created although it is not his aim to appropriate the
‘locally’ by interactants at every moment stream of consciousness with its cogitations and
and in every situation (Mehan and Woods intentional objects, and he is not interested in
1975). Unlike social science theories with a the transcendental status of this operation of
resolutely normative and objectivist view of bracketing and reduction in phenomenological
reality, EM proceeds on the basis that the philosophy (see 3.1). Garfinkel suspends his
nature of reality in social facts is not a prop- belief in the given nature of social facts in order
erty inherent to them; social facts acquire to gain some insight into how social facts
their type of reality exclusively in inter- become social facts in the acts of members of a
actions between people; it is only in every- society. This transfer of a constitutive-analytical
day practical action that social reality is perspective from the world of philosophy into
real-ized. the world of social sciences is undoubtedly
3 In the continuous process of creating reality, problematic, and for that reason it has often
everyday knowledge, routines and interpre- been criticized (Eickelpasch and Lehmann 1983;
tations play an important part. And yet the List 1983); but it is an original achievement of
ethnomethodological representation of the Garfinkel and has set in train a high degree of
genesis of meaningful order in everyday innovation and creativity amongst generations
practice cannot be ‘cognitively’ curtailed and of social scientists.
restricted to the question of how the mean- To illustrate and explain the ethnomethodo-
ing of an action is produced in the subjective logical model of reality nothing is more appro-
perception of participants. In the accom- priate than a case study by Garfinkel (1967a) of
plishments of order that EM sees as its the transsexual ‘Agnes’. Just as the distinction
object of investigation it is rather a matter of between man and woman in the everyday world
meaning-indications and revelations that is taken for granted as a social fact, in sociology
actors, in their utterances, give to their part- and social research membership of one gender is
ners in interaction as clues along the way. presupposed as a unit of description that is
4 EM is guided by the idea that everyday taken as a variable in every kind of data collec-
actions are, in their performance, made tion. Using the example of ‘Agnes’, Garfinkel
recognizable as ‘evidences-of-a-social-order’ demonstrates that gender distinction and its
(Garfinkel): two people who are walking natural self-evidence quality is in no way a nat-
together make it clear to others that here ‘two ural fact. Agnes was born with male sexual char-
people are walking together’ (Ryave and acteristics, was first raised as a boy, changed her
Schenkein 1974). Because it is shared by all own appearance, lived as a young woman, and
competent members of society, this process of at the age of 19 underwent an operation to
creating a meaning-related reality cannot take change her gender. She taught Garfinkel that to
place in a subjectively random fashion: it is, be a woman meant to be perceived and treated
on the contrary, methodical (Weingarten by others as a ‘woman’, which again requires
et al. 1976), which implies that it displays making oneself perceptible to others, by
individual, formal and, therefore, describable various methods, as a ‘normal, natural woman’.
structural features. For everyday actors this In this way the fact of gender-membership
process of the methodical production of real- becomes a continually self-fulfilling and con-
ity is uninteresting, and is taken for granted. tinually presented accomplishment that is
For EM, however, this generative process is of interactive and perceptive (cf. also the investi-
central importance: what is taken for granted gations of Kessler and McKenna 1978 and
in everyday life becomes, for EM, a problem Hirschauer 1993 that complement Garfinkel’s
(Wolff 1976). Agnes study). In the view of EM a concrete
immutable fact becomes an event that takes
From this characterization it may be recognized place over time and that can change and develop
that the ethnomethodological model of reality in an unexpected way.
Flick 3.02.qxd 3/19/04 7:13 PM Page 75
ETHNOMETHODOLOGY 75
3 CENTRAL CONCEPTS AND 1 The place where for EM the meaningful

PROGRAMMATIC STATEMENTS construction of reality takes place is the social
event, because actors, in carrying out their
Since Garfinkel does not see the problem of actions, employ techniques and procedures to
how meaningful social order arises between make these actions recognizable, understand-
people as being solved by reference to uniform able, describable and accountable. ‘Account’ in
internalized value systems, for him the ques- this context means more than ‘understand’: it
tion of the ‘how’ in the constitution of mean- means the observable forms and representations
ing takes centre-stage. ‘This thesis’, begins in which a perception, an interpretation or an
Garfinkel’s PhD dissertation (1952: 1) – super- explanation materialize. This externalized char-
vised by Talcott Parsons – ‘is concerned with acter of accounts is shown with particular clarity
the conditions under which a person makes where Garfinkel (1967a: 1) writes ‘When I speak
continued sense of the world around him’. This of “accountable” …, I mean … observable-and-
concern with the question of meaning consti- reportable, i.e. available to members as situated
tution permeates EM from its beginnings down practices of looking-and-telling.’ Other para-
to its most recent past. But Garfinkel gives this phrases of the term accountable that are scattered
question a new direction that marks the special through Garfinkel’s work include recordable,
character of EM compared to other interpreta- countable, picturable, tellable, storyable,
tive research approaches. For him, the process representable.
of meaning endowment in everyday life is not 2 Garfinkel’s definitive description of EM
something that can be separated from the also shows that these accounts should not be
action itself and removed into the heads of understood as discrete linguistic events that are
people. Instead, he assumes that ‘meaningful produced or perceived outside the current
events are entirely and exclusively events in a event; they are, rather, an integral component
person’s behavioral environment. … Hence of the social event to which they relate. For
there is no reason to look under the skull, for example, in the particular way in which two
nothing of interest is to be found there but people speak together, we may recognize that in
brains’ (1963: 190). This decision of Garfinkel’s this talk we are dealing with a conversation
to conceptualize, for the purposes of investi- between a doctor and a patient; and at the same
gation, the process of subjective allocation time their utterances are only understandable if
of meaning not as an inner ‘private’ act one hears them as utterances in a doctor–
of consciousness, but from the outset as a patient conversation. Accounts therefore possess
social, ‘public’ event, is of central importance a fundamental reflexivity: while on the one hand
for EM and has far-reaching consequences they serve to create and make recognizable the
for its research practice. (For an ethno- order and meaning of a social event, on the
methodological discussion and critique of other hand they are themselves a part of
mental concepts and cognitive theories, cf. this event and obtain their meaning and intelli-
Coulter 1989.) gible content only with reference to this social
EM is not concerned with the reconstruction of order.
a silent internal understanding in the sense of 3 This reflexivity of accounts is manifest pri-
reconstructive hermeneutics, but with observing marily in the fact that utterances and actions
and describing the structural principles of the constantly relate to the context in which they
process of understanding and making oneself occur and thereby inevitably take on an indexi-
understood that is documented in action itself. cal character. They point continually to the situ-
Garfinkel (1967a: VII) incorporated this aim in a ation and the context in which they are
definitive description of EM in which various produced, and to understand their content and
concepts appear that are of crucial importance for meaning recipients must continually take
the understanding of EM: ‘Ethnomethodological account of the environment of the event. But
studies analyze everyday activities as members’ since in the course of an event the situational
methods for making those same activities visibly- and contextual circumstances are constantly
rational-and-reportable-for-all-practical-purposes, changing, every social encounter possesses
i.e. “accountable”, as organizations of common- something unique and particular. The indexical-
place everyday activities.’ The concepts contained particular character of all social events is an incon-
in this definition may be set out as follows. venience for scientific observation, which looks
Flick 3.02.qxd 3/19/04 7:13 PM Page 76
for typology, formalization and generalization. in stressing the special rationality of everyday
Attempts to overcome this inconvenience by action as opposed to scientific rationality.
de-indexicalizing – by replacing indexical
expressions by objective expressions – will only For EM the sense of linguistic utterances in
lead to unreal solutions, since indications of socially organized action contexts is structurally
context cannot be avoided even in scientific dis- uncertain. The vagueness and the elliptical char-
course. But if, in view of this situation, one pro- acter of statements are not seen in everyday life
ceeds to represent social interaction simply by as ‘errors’; they are, rather, sanctioned as situa-
actualization and invoking abstract describable tionally appropriate behaviour. The partners in
behaviour patterns (roles and so on), one is communication, guided by pragmatic action
denying exactly its essentially context-dependent motives, rely on the fact that the other will
quality. Garfinkel therefore decided to dedicate always understand what was meant by a partic-
the investigative programme of EM totally to ular utterance, and that what was not immedi-
the question of how social order can possibly ately understood has a meaning that will be
arise out of inevitably indexical utterances and clarified in the further course of the conversa-
actions that are dependent on situation and tion. To put this more pointedly: EM assumes
context. ‘I use the term “ethnomethodology” to that the structural uncertainty of meaning in
refer to the investigation of the rational proper- everyday interactive events is a constitutive con-
ties of indexical expressions and other practical dition for certainty of meaning, that is to say,
actions as contingent ongoing accomplish- for meaningful experience and action. In this
ments of organized artful practices of everyday way EM, in respect of the character of everyday
life’ (Garfinkel 1967a: 11). What does Garfinkel rationality, arrives at a similar assessment to that
mean by saying that indexical expressions have of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1958: 63), who – coming
rational properties? from a totally different theoretical tradition –
4 It is a premise of EM that the reflexive formulated this paradox as follows.
context-dependency of meaning-generation and
the indexicality of everyday utterances and On the one hand it is clear that every sentence of
actions cannot, in principle, be removed our language is ‘in order, as it is’ means that we
(Garfinkel and Sacks 1970). This means, how- are not looking for an ideal: as if our normal
vague sentences had as yet no completely
ever, that the conditions under which people
unflawed meaning and we still have to construct
act in everyday life, develop projects for action a complete language. On the other hand it seems
or take decisions are always unclear and can clear: where there is meaning there must be com-
only be explained in advance to a very limited plete order. … The most perfect order must also be
extent. But under such conditions, how is hidden, therefore, in the vaguest sentence.
appropriate and efficient behaviour, communi-
cation and cooperation at all possible? For Everyday discourses are characterized, for EM,
Garfinkel, however, this question is already by their provisional nature, vagueness, incom-
wrongly worded because it proceeds from the pleteness or ambiguity, but these characteriza-
model of scientific-rational communication, tions, which suggest some deficiency, cannot
according to which everyday communication hide the fact that communication and under-
must appear defective. And yet in everyday standing in the everyday world can only be
life – and this is what the remark about the achieved in this way. It is only in comparison
rationality of indexical expressions relates to – with the scientific model of understanding that
communication can only take place because of relies on unambiguity, completeness and objec-
the fact that terms are not clearly defined in an tivity of statements that these features of every-
interaction, but are defined vaguely; meanings day communication have to be seen as
are not fixed once and for all, but are used flui- deficiencies. At this point it becomes clear that
dly; themes and meaning-contents are not for- EM as a critique of the scientistic procedure of
malized and freed from contradictions, but are the traditional social sciences, and EM as a pro-
kept open and ambiguous. ‘What a stir it would gramme for investigating the special rationality
cause in the world if the names of things were of the world of everyday life, are two sides of
turned into definitions!’ observed Lichtenberg one and the same undertaking. (On the rela-
(1983: 450) once in his Sudelbücher, and it is in tionship of EM to canonical social sciences and
precisely this sense that Garfinkel is interested humanities, cf. Button 1991.)
Flick 3.02.qxd 3/19/04 7:13 PM Page 77
ETHNOMETHODOLOGY 77
4 DEVELOPMENTS AND PERSPECTIVES: specific types of professional activity. In the first

‘STUDIES OF WORK’ instance this is a matter of tracing the unique
quality of a particular professional activity that
In the initial phase of EM the works of Garfinkel cannot be subsumed under a general category.
(1967a) were totally directed to the task of prov- Here a focus is provided by the analysis of (nat-
ing that in the everyday world an unknown ural) scientific work (Lynch et al. 1983) in
field of research lay before the eyes of the social which it becomes clear why the ethnomethodo-
scientist, and that this was worthy of investiga- logical ‘studies of work’ of previous years
tion. Garfinkel did this, in the first place, by received and discussed primarily in the sociol-
showing how – for example, in coding a ques- ogy of science (Knorr-Cetina and Mulkay 1983;
tionnaire – social science research practice was Lynch 1993).
continually but unknowingly influenced by The formulation and definition of the ‘studies
everyday elements that needed urgently to be of work’ approach (Garfinkel 1991, 1996;
clarified in accordance with the methodological Garfinkel and Wieder 1992) should be under-
and statistical requirements of empirical social stood to a certain extent as a reaction to the
research (see also Cicourel 1964). Alternatively, development and success of conversation analy-
he showed that medical records from a psychi- sis, which also has its roots in the original pro-
atric clinic, which seemed, to an external social gramme of EM and was able to consolidate itself
scientific observer, to be defective sources of to a large extent as an independent research
data, immediately lost their ‘deficits’ when put approach (see 5.17). ‘Studies of work’ as the lat-
into the context of their clinical application; est version of ethnomethodological research, on
there are, therefore, as Garfinkel pointed out, the other hand, do not offer such a clear picture,
‘good organizational reasons for bad clinic and this is not least a result of the complexity of
records’. Garfinkel has become best known for the area of ‘work’ (Heritage 1987). While con-
his unconventional crisis experiments, in which versation analysis had restricted itself to the
individual features of the everyday world – such limited aspect of linguistic and non-linguistic
as its characteristic vagueness – can be made interaction, ‘studies of work’ include everything
clear and a matter of conscious awareness if they to do with the carrying out of working activities –
are confronted systematically, for instance if the even over an extended period of time – and this
use of indexical expressions is criticized or the included not only episodes of linguistic interac-
clear meaning of a term is demanded. tion, but also matters of the technical handling
The collapse of normal communication makes of instruments, the manipulation and spatial
visible its everyday world foundation. organization of objects, or the pictorial and
Inspired by the works of Garfinkel, many written documents that were produced in the
studies, in the early days of EM, dealt with the course of work.
question of how ‘facts’ are produced in various A central theorem of early EM claims that
organizations. In a law court how is a clear order actors, in carrying out actions, employ numer-
of events reconstructed in the face of contradic- ous techniques and procedures to make these
tory information (Pollner 1987)? In a clinic how actions portrayable and accountable, and that
does a patient who has died become a dead in this way they produce the reality of social
person in the actions of the staff of the clinic facts. In this respect ‘studies of work’ go a step
(Sudnow 1967)? In a corrective institution how further and, in their own estimation, radicalize
is the difference between inmates and supervi- the idea of the meaningful creation of reality.
sors created and maintained (Wieder 1974)? In a They reject the division implicit in this concep-
social welfare office how is it decided whether a tion between description, portrayal and expla-
client has a legitimate claim (Zimmerman nation on the one hand and objects, facts and
1974)?1 circumstances on the other. Instead they insist
Garfinkel himself has been concerned, since on the indivisibility and irreducibility of the
the mid-1970s, with a particular development of local production of social order in, and as the
EM that has become known under the label embodied practices of, the actors. The meaning
‘studies of work’ (Garfinkel 1986). This will be and reality of social objects are no longer viewed
described briefly below. Research done in this as the result of the application of distinguish-
area concentrates on describing the practical able representation practices: instead object and
competences that underlie the performance of representation are understood as a unit, as a totality
Flick 3.02.qxd 3/19/04 7:13 PM Page 78
that realizes itself in the performance of sensory (Garfinkel et al. 1981), with the laboratory
and bodily activities. activity of neurobiologists (Lynch 1985), with
Here it becomes clear that the ‘studies of mathematicians’ performance of proofs
work’ approach was formulated under the influ- (Livingston 1986), with concealed educational
ence of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s investigations activity of introductory scientific texts (Morrison
of the phenomenology of the human body. By 1981), with improvisation activity while play-
analysing work performance, the ‘studies of ing the piano (Sudnow 1978) or keyboard
work’ attempt, from a sociological perspective, work (Sudnow 1979). In these studies it is
to continue his endeavours to overcome the dis- demonstrated that even producing the ‘demon-
tinction between the body as a self-contained strability’ of a mathematical proof, which is
mechanism and consciousness as the essence normally assumed to be independent of con-
for itself. Their focus of interest is the embodied text, is anchored in the local situational
knowledge that is materialized in the natural sequences of actions of the mathematician per-
mastery of skilful practices and that is constitu- forming with chalk on the blackboard.
tive for the successful execution of a particular Moreover, a pulsar is defined as a ‘cultural
piece of work. With this they aim to provide an object’ in that it is shown that it only begins to
empirical analysis of competence systems that exist because of a series of embodied work-
are characteristic of a particular type of work activities by the astronomer during a sequence
and give it its identity. of sets of observations.
These competences cannot be depicted in More recent investigations in the ‘studies of
handbooks or training manuals, and are ignored work’ tradition are concerned, on the one hand,
by traditional occupational and professional with the local situational practices of profes-
sociology. Between the training manual repre- sionalized work (cf. for example Travers 1997 for
sentations – the official rules for a particular a study of the work of lawyers and defence
kind of work which can provide only model counsels), and on the other hand – and this
versions of the working process – and the factual, applies to the majority of current research in
practical performance of work at a particular sit- this area – with situational work practices in
uational moment, there is a fundamental gap, dealing with technology, and in particular infor-
which everyday experience sees as the differ- mation technology. ‘Studies of work’ are indeed
ence between theory and practice. In spite of aiming not at developing general schemata for
fundamental theoretical training, every type of the description of the use of machines and com-
work – from driving a tractor, to playing the puters, but at determining the ‘identifying
piano, right down to carrying out a mathemati- features’ (Garfinkel) of this work from the situa-
cal proof – must first be learned as a practical tional details of the use of objects and informa-
activity. In this process the practitioner acquires tion (for example, on a computer screen). This
the ability to recognize and adjust to contingen- precise attention to local practices in the use of
cies, to take decisions about the course of work, objects and in the execution of work-tasks
not schematically but moment by moment, makes ‘studies of work’ attractive and applicable
and, in association with situational imponder- to research in the field of human–computer
ables and local constellations, somehow to interaction (HCI) and computer-supported
manage the observable adequacy and efficiency cooperative work (CSCW), as the work of Lucy
of his or her activity. This ‘somehow’ had long Suchman (1987), in particular, has impressively
been omitted in the descriptions of both practi- shown.
tioners and sociologists. ‘Studies of work’ make The programme of ‘studies of work’ has also
precisely this ‘somehow’ their primary focus, by had a strong influence on the development of
asking ‘how exactly’ the specific nature of a par- the so-called ‘workplace studies’ (Knoblauch
ticular type of work is constituted in the skilled 1996c), which are concerned with the analysis
physical performance of practical activities, in of complex work-tasks, particularly in the area
the details of their performance. of information technology (for an overview cf.
For the ‘studies of work’ approach some of Button 1993). An important aspect of this type
the investigations that started in the 1970s have of working context is that specialization, divi-
a paradigmatic value. This applies to studies sion of work and concentration on a computer
that concerned themselves with the discovery screen lead to the necessity for actors to apply
activity of astronomers in an observatory particular skills of coordination and anticipation
Flick 3.02.qxd 3/19/04 7:13 PM Page 79
ETHNOMETHODOLOGY 79
with regard to the behaviour of their colleagues. confronts the fundamental problem of determining
Checking, observing, thinking, recognizing and the level of generality at which pieces of qualita-
so on often do not happen in these contexts as tive research should treat their respective social
an impersonal psychic procedure, but are objects of investigation.
imparted to colleagues as part of a person’s own However, insisting on the ‘haecceitas’ of all
communicative behaviour in highly distinctive social objects, which should not be damaged in
and implicit ways. Because ethnomethodologi- scientific observation, will ultimately handicap
cal ‘studies of work’ have always made this every analytical endeavour and will lead,
embodied, communicative form of knowledge through an ever-deepening multiplication of
and recognition their special theme, fascinating detail, to a descriptive duplication of the object.
new links to cognitive science have resulted that The term ‘haecceitas’ was originally coined by
do not reduce the processes of cognition to the mediaeval scholasticist Johannes Duns
cerebral physiological processes, but which Scotus to characterize the ‘here-and-now’ nature
localize them as ‘distributed cognition’, mani- of things. What he meant, in the formulation of
fest in the communicative ecology of working Heidegger, who studied Duns Scotus’s early
and learning contexts (cf. Engeström and works, was ‘what really exists is an individual
Middleton 1996). thing. … All that really exists is a “such-here-
now”’ (Safranski 1997: 84). But this miracle of
the singularity of the real is a nominalist con-
5 CRITICAL EVALUATION struct, since human reason always operates in a
AND PROSPECTS comparative, linking and ordering fashion
between the respective unique individual mani-
Tensions between conversation analysis and festations – and the social scientist does the
‘studies of work’ have permeated the discus- same with a systematic intent. However,
sions of recent years and have frequently led to Garfinkel’s reference to the ‘haecceitas’ of every-
marked differences of opinion. These differ- thing social should not be seen merely as a
ences cannot be written off as an internal battle provocation of model-building social sciences,
between two ethnomethodological camps, but as a warning that, in the course of all neces-
since they concern a point of general relevance – sary formalization and generalization, the local,
particularly for qualitative research. Conversation reflexive constitutive process of the social
analysis pursues the goal of determining the should not be lost from sight. If ethnomethod-
mechanisms that are principally relevant for ological ‘studies of work’ succeed, with a mea-
the organization of ‘talk-in-interaction’. For sure of generalization, in gaining access to what
many ethnomethodologists (cf., for example, situational demands, practical and embodied
Pollner 1991), Garfinkel’s original programme knowledge contribute to professional work,
is being diluted by this procedure to the point then its discoveries could have a lasting influ-
where it is no longer recognizable. They fear ence in many areas.
that in the formalization and linguisticization
of conversation analysis the idea that interac-
tion is always locally bound, that it inevitably NOTE
has an indexical character, and is subject to a
process of reflexive meaning-constitution, will 1 Information about further ethnomethodological
become unimportant. Garfinkel himself (1991, studies on these and similar themes can be found
see also Lynch 1993, ch. 7), in his program- in the collections of Douglas (1970), Turner (1974),
matic works, has spoken consistently of the Psathas (1979), Helm et al. (1989), Coulter (1990)
‘haecceitas’ of the social world (see below) and Watson and Seiler (1992), Have and Psathas (1995),
has singled this out as the focus of ethno- Psathas (1995). An extensive bibliography on
methodological interest. This term (whose ori- ethnomethodology up to 1990 may be found in
Fehr et al. (1990). Surveys and critical discussions
gin Garfinkel does not indicate) is intended to
of the further development of ethnomethodology
express that everything social only exists as a since its foundation by Harold Garfinkel are in
unique, individual manifestation – a feature Attewell (1974), Sharrock and Anderson (1986),
that is eliminated if the social is described in Atkinson (1988) and Maynard and Clayman
general terms and subsumed under predeter- (1991). Further presentations are in Fengler and
mined theoretically derived categories. This Fengler (1980) and Patzelt (1987).
Flick 3.02.qxd 3/19/04 7:13 PM Page 80
FURTHER READING
Fehr, B. J., Stetson, J. and Mizukawa, Y. (1990)

‘A Bibliography for Ethnomethodology’, in
J. Coulter (ed.), Ethnomethodological Sociology.
Brookfield: Edward Elgar. pp. 473–559.
Heritage, J. C. (1984) Garfinkel and Ethnometho-

dology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hilbert, R. A. (1992) The Classical Roots of Ethno-

methodology: Durkheim, Weber, and Garfinkel.
Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina
Press.
Sacks, H. (1992) Lectures on Conversation,

Volume I and II (edited by G. Jefferson
with introductions by E. A. Schegloff). Oxford:
Blackwell.
Turner, R. (ed.) (1974) Ethnomethodology:

Selected Readings. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Flick 3.03.qxd 3/19/04 2:25 PM Page 81
3.3 Symbolic Interactionism
Norman K. Denzin
1 Basic principles of symbolic interactionism 81

2 Theories of agency and action 82
3 Root assumptions 82
4 Race and gender 83
5 Epistemological and conceptual assumptions 83
6 Origins: Cooley, James, Mead, Dewey, Blumer 83
7 Varieties of interactionist thought 84
8 Recent developments: the narrative turn 85
9 Experience and its representations 85
10 Assessing interpretations 85
11 Disputes over truth 86
12 Conclusion 86
Symbolic interactionism is that unique American that connects the symbolic interactionist tradition
sociological and social psychological perspec- with science studies, cultural psychology and
tive that traces its roots to the early American the Soviet tradition represented by the works of
pragmatists, James, Dewey, Peirce and Mead. It Vygotsky and others. The journal Symbolic
has been called the loyal opposition in Interaction and the research annual Studies in
American sociology, the most sociological of Symbolic Interaction routinely publish work by
social psychologies. Only recently has this per- symbolic interactionists, and members of the
spective entered the discourses of the other Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction.
social sciences, including anthropology, psy- Interactionism has had a tortured history in
chology and science studies, where the works of American sociology (see Fine 1993). Many times
Mead have been joined with the theories of its death has been announced, and its practi-
Wittgenstein, Vygotsky and Bakhtin (1989). tioners maligned, but the perspective refuses to
Harré, for example, places ‘symbolic inter- die. Today it is alive and well, thriving in its jour-
actions’ at the heart of psychology, showing nals and at its annual meetings and symposia.
how selves, attitudes, motives, genders and
emotions are ‘discursive productions, attributes
of conversations rather than mental entities’ 1 BASIC PRINCIPLES OF
(Harré 1992: 526). SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM
Other social scientists are adopting an inter-
actionist informed approach to the study of The term symbolic in the phrase symbolic inter-
lives, identities and social relationships (see action refers to the underlying linguistic foun-
Dunn 1998; Holstein and Gubrium 2000; dations of human group life, just as the word
Musolf 1998; Wiley 1994). A relatively new jour- interaction refers to the fact that people do not
nal, Mind, Culture, and Activity, publishes work act toward one another, but interact with each
Flick 3.03.qxd 3/19/04 2:25 PM Page 82
other. By using the term interaction symbolic 3 ROOT ASSUMPTIONS

interactionists commit themselves to the study
and analysis of the developmental course of In its canonical form symbolic interactionism
action that occurs when two or more persons (or rests on the following root assumptions (see
agents) with agency (reflexivity) join their indi- Blumer 1981).
vidual lines of action together into joint action.
1 ‘Human beings act toward things on the
basis of the meanings that the things have
2 THEORIES OF AGENCY AND ACTION for them’ (Blumer 1969: 2).
2 The meanings of things arise out of the
The concepts of action and agency are central to process of social interaction.
interactionist theories of the self and the inter- 3 Meanings are modified through an interpre-
action process. Action references experiences tive process which involves self-reflective
that are reflexively meaningful to the person. individuals symbolically interacting with
Agency describes the locus of action, whether in one another (Blumer 1969: 2).
the person, in language, or in some other struc- 4 Human beings create the worlds of experi-
ture or process. At issue is the place of an ence in which they live.
autonomous, reflexive individual in the con- 5 The meanings of these worlds come from
struction of meaningful action. That is, do interaction, and they are shaped by the self-
persons, as agents, create their own experience? reflections persons bring to their situations.
Or, is experience created by a larger entity, or 6 Such self-interaction is ‘interwoven with
agent? Are agency, meaning and intention in social interaction and influences that social
the actor, in the experience, or in the social interaction’ (Blumer 1981: 53).
structure? Do persons, as Karl Marx argued, 7 Joint acts, their formation, dissolution, con-
make history, but not under conditions of their flict and merger constitute what Blumer calls
own making? If history goes on behind people‘s the ‘social life of a human society’. A society
backs, then structures, not persons as agents, consists of the joint or social acts ‘which are
make history. If this is the case, then the formed and carried out by [its] members’
real object of interactionist enquiry is not (Blumer 1981: 153).
the person, or a single individual. Rather, exter- 8 A complex interpretive process shapes the
nal systems and discursive practices create par- meanings things have for human beings.
ticular subjectivities, and particular subjective This process is anchored in the cultural
experiences for the individual. Interactionists world, in the ‘circuit of culture’ (du Gay
reject this interpretation, arguing that experi- et al. 1997: 3) where meanings are defined by
ence, structure and subjectivity are dialogical the mass media, including advertising,
processes. cinema and television, and identities are rep-
Following Giddens’s theory of structuration, resented in terms of salient cultural categories.
and his concept of the duality of structure, it can
be argued that ‘the structured properties of social The basic task of the mass media is to make
systems are simultaneously the medium and out- the second-hand world we all live in appear to be
come of social acts’ (Giddens 1981: 19; emphasis natural and invisible. Barthes (1957/1972: 11)
in original). Further, ‘all social action consists of elaborates, noting that the media dress up real-
social practices, situated in time-space, and orga- ity, giving it a sense of naturalness, so that
nized in a skilled and knowledgeable fashion by ‘Nature and History [are] confused at every
human agents’ (1981: 19). Thus does Giddens’s turn.’ The prime goals of the mass media com-
interactionist model overcome the false opposi- plex are to create audience members who:
tion between action, agency, meaning and struc- (1) become consumers of the products advertised
ture. Giddens’s formulation is consistent with in the media; while (2) engaging in consump-
symbolic interactionist assumptions. Every indi- tion practices that conform to the norms of pos-
vidual is a practical social agent, but human sessive individualism endorsed by the capitalist
agents are constrained by structural rules, by political system; and (3) adhering to a public
material resources, and by the structural opinion that is supportive of the strategic
processes connected to class, gender, race, ethni- polices of the state (Smythe 1994: 285). The
city, nation and community. audience is primarily a commodity that the
Flick 3.03.qxd 3/19/04 2:25 PM Page 83
SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM 83
information technologies produce (Smythe 1 Interpretative (and symbolic) interactionists

1994: 268). A final goal of the media is clear: to do not think general theories are useful.
do everything it can to make consumers as audi- 2 Interactionists reject totalizing, grand
ence members think they are not commodities. theories of the social; interactionists, like
Herein lies the importance of cultural narra- many post-structural (Foucault) and post-
tives and stories that reinforce the epiphanal modern (Lyotard) theorists, believe in writ-
nature of human existence under late twentieth- ing local narratives about how people do
century capitalism. These stories give members things together.
the illusion of a soul, of structural freedom and 3 Interactionists do not like theories that
free will. Thus do the circuits of culture (pro- objectify and quantify human experience.
duction, distribution, representation) implement They prefer to write texts that remain close
this system of commodification. to the actual experiences of the people they
are writing about.
4 Interactionists do not like theories that are
4 RACE AND GENDER imported from other disciplines, like the
natural sciences or economics (for example,
All human experience is racially gendered; that chaos or rational choice theories).
is, filtered through the socially constructed cate- 5 Interactionists do not like theories that ignore
gories of male and female. This system privileges history, but they are not historical determi-
whiteness over blackness. It reproduces negative nists. They believe that persons, not inexorable
racial and ethnic stereotypes about dark-skinned forces, make history, but they understand
persons. It regulates interracial, inter-ethnic sex- that the histories that individuals make may
ual relationships. The gendered categories (male not always be of their own making.
and female) of the racial self are enacted in daily 6 Interactionists do not like theories that
ritual performances, in the conversations ignore the biographies and lived experiences
between males and females, and in media repre- of interacting individuals.
sentations (see 3.10). 7 Interactionists do not believe in asking ‘why’
These gender categories are performative, questions. They ask, instead, ‘how’ questions.
established in and through the interaction How, for example, is a given strip of experi-
process. This process of performing gender pro- ence structured, lived and given meaning?
duces a gendered social order. In these perfor-
mances there are no originals against which a These are the things that interactionists do not
particular gendered performance can be judged. like to do. This means they are often criticized
Butler argues that each person constitutes for not doing what other people think they
through their interactional performances a should do, like doing macro-studies of power
situated version of a heterosexual, or non- structures, or not having clearly defined con-
heterosexual identity. Every performance is a cepts and terms, or being overly cognitive, or
masquerade, a copy of the real thing, an imita- having emergent theories, or being ahistorical
tion of an imitation. Butler elaborates, ‘If het- and astructural (see Musolf 1998). Too often
erosexuality is an impossible imitation of itself, these criticisms reflect either a failure to under-
an imitation that performatively constitutes stand what the interactionist agenda is, or the
itself as the original, then the imitative parody fact that the critics have not read what interac-
of “heterosexuality” … is always and only an tionists have written.
imitation of an imitation, a copy of a copy, for
which there is no original’ (1993: 644).
6 ORIGINS: COOLEY, JAMES,
MEAD, DEWEY, BLUMER
5 EPISTEMOLOGICAL AND
CONCEPTUAL ASSUMPTIONS I now turn to a brief discussion of the origins of
this perspective in American social theory (see also
The symbolic interactionist perspective may be Musolf 1998: 20–92; also Holstein and Gubrium
clarified by outlining the empirical and theore- 2000: 17–37; Wiley 1994). Interactionists are cul-
tical practices interactionists value and do not tural romantics. Often tragic and ironic, their
value. vision of self and society stands in a direct line
Flick 3.03.qxd 3/19/04 2:25 PM Page 84
with the Left romanticism of Ralph Waldo Mead’s picture of the social act, he introduced
Emerson, Karl Marx and William James. From the the concepts of joint action and acting unit to
beginning, interactionists have been haunted by a describe the interactions that extend from dyads
Janus-faced spectre. On the one hand, the found- to complex institutions. His self is an inter-
ing theorists argued for the interpretative, subjec- pretative process, and his society (after Park and
tive study of human experience. On the other Thomas) is one built on the play of power, inter-
hand, they sought to build an objective science of est, group position, collective action and social
human conduct, a science that would conform to protest. He applied Mead and Park to the study
criteria borrowed from the natural sciences. of fashion, film, racial prejudice, collective behav-
Pragmatism, as a theory of knowing, truth, iour and the industrialization process.
science and meaning, is central to the interaction- With Mead, and Blumer’s extension of Mead,
ist heritage. For Mead, James, Peirce and Dewey, the interaction tradition decisively moves away
truth is defined in terms of its consequences for from the interpretative and phenomenological
action. What is true is what works. Pragmatism suggestions of Cooley and James. It enters a con-
became a form of cultural criticism for Dewey and fused phase, as noted above, which attempts,
James. Dewey’s pragmatism celebrated critical though unsuccessfully, to become naturalistic,
intelligence, implemented through the scientific subjective and scientific. (In 1974 in Frame
method, as the proper mode of scientific enquiry. Analysis Goffman attempted to reclaim and then
This pragmatic tradition, in its several forms, con- refute the neglected James and phenomenologi-
tinues to the present day (see Denzin 1992: 131; cal tradition; see 2.2.)
Strauss 1993b). It remains one of the most viable
interpretative philosophical positions now operat-
ing in the human disciplines. 7 VARIETIES OF INTERACTIONIST
Cooley contended that the self of the person THOUGHT
arises out of experiences in primary groups,
especially the family. Modern societies are Symbolic interactionism comes in multiple vari-
shaped by the media. Governmentally regulated eties. These include: pragmatic, feminist, pheno-
competition is the best mechanism for main- menological and constructionist varieties.
taining the democratic values of a society like Diversity is not just theoretical. At the methodo-
the United States. logical level, interactionists employ a variety of
James argued that the state of consciousness, interpretative, qualitative approaches, including
or stream of consciousness, is all that the field of autoethnographies, narratives of the self, struc-
psychology needed to posit. The self, in its prin- tural, articulative, semiotic and practical ethno-
cipal form of knower or subject (the ‘I’), is at the graphies, grounded theory, the biographical, life
centre of the person’s state of consciousness. In history method, performance and feminist
experience the ‘I’ interacts with the ‘me’, or the ethnographies, more traditional interviewing
self as object. For James the person has as many and participant observation practices, creative
selves as he or she has social relationships. interviewing, the interpretative practices hinted
Mead turns Cooley and James on their heads. at by Blumer, conversation analysis, ethnographic
For him the self is not mentalistic. Self and mind and laboratory searches for generic principles of
are social and cognitive processes, lodged in the social life, and historical studies of civilizational
ongoing social world. Self is a social object which processes.
lies in the field of experience. It is structured by Substantively, interactionists have made major
the principle of sociality, or the taking of the contributions to many areas of social science. An
attitude of the other in a social situation. The self incomplete list would include the fields of
can be scientifically studied, like an object in the deviance, social problems, collective behaviour,
physical sciences. Rejecting introspection because medical sociology, the emotions, the arts, social
it is not scientific, he argued for a view of the self organization, race relations and industrializa-
and society which joins these two terms in a reci- tion, childhood socialization, fashion, film, the
procal process of interaction. His key term was mass media, family violence and small groups.
‘the act’, which replaces James’s concept of In short, there are many styles and versions of
stream of experience. symbolic interactionism and these variations are
Blumer (1969) turns Mead into a sociologist. displayed across the fields of sociology and social
Offering a view of society that derives from psychology.
Flick 3.03.qxd 3/19/04 2:25 PM Page 85
8 RECENT DEVELOPMENTS: stories, rituals, myths), represents experience.

THE NARRATIVE TURN These representational practices are narrative
constructions. The meanings and forms of
Contemporary symbolic interactionists emphasize everyday experience are always given in narra-
the reflexive, gendered, situated nature of tive representations. These representations are
human experience. They examine the place of texts that are performed, stories told to others.
language and multiple meanings in interactional Bruner is explicit on this point: representations
contexts (see Holstein and Gubrium 2000). This must ‘be performed to be experienced’ (1984: 7).
reflexive, or narrative concern is also evidenced Hence symbolic interactionists study performed
in other points of view, from phenomenology texts, rituals, stories told, songs sung, novels
(see 3.1), to hermeneutics (see 3.5), semiotics, read, dramas performed. Paraphrasing Bruner
psychoanalysis (see 5.20), feminism (see 3.10), (1984: 7), experience is a performance, and real-
narratology (see 5.11), cultural, discursive and ity is a social construction.
dialogical psychology (see 5.19), interpretive The politics of representation is basic to the
sociology and cultural studies (see 3.9). study of experience. How a thing is represented
This narrative turn moves in two directions at involves a struggle over power and meaning.
the same time. First, symbolic interactionists While social scientists have traditionally privi-
(and other theorists) formulate and offer various leged experience itself, it is now understood that
narrative versions, or stories about how the no life, no experience can be lived outside of
social world operates. This form of narrative is some system of representation (Hall 1996d:
usually called a theory, for example Freud‘s 473). Indeed, ‘there is no escaping … the politics
theory of psychosexual development (see 5.20). of representation’ (Hall 1996d: 473; see 5.22).
On this, Charles Lemert reminds us that socio- Symbolic interactionists are constantly con-
logy is an act of the imagination, that the various structing interpretations about the world. All
sociologies are ‘stories people tell about what accounts, ‘however carefully tested and sup-
they have figured out about their experiences in ported are, in the end‚ authored’ (Hall, 1996a:
social life’ (Lemert 1997: 14). This is how inter- 14). Interactionist explanations reflect the point
actionism is best understood: various stories of view of the author. They do not carry the
about the social world, stories people tell them- guarantee of truth and objectivity. For example,
selves about their lives and the worlds they live feminist scholars have repeatedly argued
in, stories that may or may not work. (rightly we believe) that the methods and aims
Second, symbolic interactionists study narra- of positivistic social psychology are gender-
tives and systems of discourse, suggesting that biased, that they reflect patriarchal beliefs and
these structures give coherence and meaning to practices (see 3.10). In addition, the traditional
everyday life. (A system of discourse is a way of experimental methods of social psychological
representing the world.) Systems of discourse enquiry reproduce these biases.
both summarize and produce knowledge about
the world (Foucault 1980: 27). These discursive
systems are seldom just true or false. In the 10 ASSESSING INTERPRETATIONS
world of human affairs truth and facts are con-
structed in different ways. Their meanings are The narrative turn and the feminist critique lead
embedded in competing discourses. As such interactionists to be very tentative in terms of
they are connected to struggles over power, or the arguments and positions they put forward.
regimes of truth; that is, to who has the power It is now understood that there is no final, or
to determine what is true and what is not true authorized version of the truth. Still, there are
(Hall 1996c: 205). criteria of assessment that should be used.
Interactionists are ‘committed to providing sys-
tematic, rigorous, coherent, comprehensive,
9 EXPERIENCE AND ITS conceptually clear, well-evidenced accounts,
REPRESENTATIONS which make their underlying theoretical struc-
ture and value assumptions clear to readers …
It is not possible to study experience directly, so [still] we cannot deny the ultimately interpre-
symbolic interactionists study how narratives, tive character of the social science enterprise’
connected to systems of discourse (interviews, (Hall 1996a: 14).
Flick 3.03.qxd 3/19/04 2:25 PM Page 86
Interpretive interactionists (see Denzin 2000) 11 DISPUTES OVER TRUTH

seek an existential, interpretive social science
that offers a blueprint for cultural criticism. This There are many in the interactionist community
criticism is grounded in the specific worlds who reject the narrative turn (as outlined above)
made visible in the research process. It under- and what it implies for interpretive work. These
stands that all enquiry is theory- and value- critics base their arguments on six beliefs:
laden. There can be no objective account of a
culture and its ways. The ethnographic, the 1 The new writing is not scientific, therefore it
aesthetic and the political can never be neatly cannot be part of the ethnographic project.
separated. Qualitative enquiry, like art, is always 2 The new writers are moralists; moral judge-
political. ments are not part of science.
A critical, civic, literary form of qualitative 3 The new writers have a faulty epistemology;
enquiry is one that should meet four criteria. It they do not believe in disinterested observers
must evidence a mastery of literary craftsman- who study a reality that is independent of
ship, the art of good writing. It should present a human action.
well-plotted, compelling, but minimalist narra- 4 The new writing uses fiction; this is not
tive. This narrative will be based on realistic, nat- science, it is art.
ural conversation, with a focus on memorable, 5 The new writers do not study lived experi-
recognizable characters. These characters will be ence which is the true province of ethnogra-
located in well-described, ‘unforgettable scenes’ phy. Hence, the new writers are not
(Ford 1998: 1112). Second, the work should pre- participant observers
sent clearly identifiable cultural and political 6 The new writers are postmodernists, and
issues, including injustices based on the struc- this is irrational, because postmodernism is
tures and meanings of race, class, gender and fatalistic, nativistic, radical, absurd and
sexual orientation. Third, the work should articu- nihilistic.
late a politics of hope. It should criticize how
things are and imagine how they could be differ- These six beliefs constitute complex discursive
ent. Finally, it will do these things through direct systems; separate literatures are attached to
and indirect symbolic and rhetorical means. each. Taken together, they represent a formi-
Writers who do these things are fully immersed dable, yet dubious critique of the new inter-
in the oppressions and injustices of their time. actionist project. They make it clear that there
They direct their ethnographic energies to higher, are no problems with the old ways of doing
utopian, morally sacred goals. research. Indeed, the new ways create more
The truth of these new texts is determined problems then they solve. These beliefs serve
pragmatically, by their truth effects, by the crit- to place the new work outside science, perhaps
ical, moral discourse they produce, by the in the humanities, or the arts. Some would
‘empathy they generate, the exchange of experi- ban these persons from academia altogether.
ence they enable, and the social bonds they Others would merely exclude them from
mediate’ (Jackson 1998: 180). The power of certain theory groups, that is from symbolic
these texts is not a question of whether ‘they interactionism.
mirror the world as it “really” is’ (Jackson 1998:
180). The world is always already constructed
through narrative texts. Rorty (1979) is firm on 12 CONCLUSION
this point. There is no mirror of nature. The
world as it is known is constructed through acts To summarize, symbolic interactionism offers a
of representation and interpretation. generic theory of action, meaning, motives,
Finally, this performative ethnography emotion, gender, the person and social struc-
searches for new ways to locate and represent ture. This theory has relevance for all of the
the gendered, sacred self in its ethical relation- human disciplines, from psychology, to socio-
ships to nature. An exploration of other forms logy, history, anthropology and political
of writing is sought, including personal diaries, science. Thus do interactionists study the inter-
nature writing and performance texts anchored sections of interaction, biography and social
in the natural world. structure in particular historical moments.
Flick 3.03.qxd 3/19/04 2:25 PM Page 87
FURTHER READING
Holstein, J. A. and Gubrium, J. F. (2000) The Self

We Live By: Narrative Identity in a
Postmodern World. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Musolf, G. R. (1998) Structure and Agency in

Everyday Life: An Introduction to Social
Psychology. Dix Hills, NY: General Hall, Inc.
Strauss, A. (l993) Continual Permutations of

Action. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Flick 3.04.qxd 3/19/04 7:15 PM Page 88
3.4 Constructivism
Uwe Flick
1 Introduction 88
2 What is constructivism? 88
3 Epistemological assumptions on the nature of social reality 89
4 Construction of knowledge 89
5 Social scientific knowledge as a social construction 90
6 Mimesis and world-making in texts 91
7 Constructivism and qualitative research 93
1 INTRODUCTION ‘Constructivism’. What is common to all

constructivist approaches is that they examine
The construction of social reality is booming as the relationship to reality by dealing with con-
a topic. For almost all areas of social scientific structive processes in approaching it. Examples
research there are monographs or collections in of constructions are to be found at different levels.
which a constructivist approach is selected: on
socialization (Grundmann 1999), health and ill- 1 In the tradition of Jean Piaget (1937), cogni-
ness (Gawatz and Nowak 1993; Lachmund and tion, perception of the world and knowledge
Stollberg 1992); on technological change (Flick about it are seen as constructs. Radical con-
1996); or transsexuality (Hirschauer 1993) to structivism (Glasersfeld 1995) takes this
name but a few. Scientific findings are also gen- thought to the point where every form of
erally treated as social construction (e.g. Latour cognition, because of the neurobiological
and Woolgar 1979), which has led to bitter con- process involved, has direct access only to
troversies (cf. the debates resulting from Sokal images of the world and of reality, but not of
1996). Hacking (1999) desperately asks ‘the both. Luhmann (1990a) relates these ideas to
social construction of What?’. With regard to systemic perspectives in order to use them as
qualitative research, constructivist ideas (such as the basis for a social theory (1997).
Schütz 1962 or Berger and Luckmann 1966) 2 Social constructivism in the tradition of
have been the basis for a variety of methods. Schütz (1962), Berger and Luckmann (1966)
Over the course of time, however, little atten- and Gergen (1985, 1999) enquires after the
tion has been paid to these ideas in qualitative social conventionalizations, perception and
research. At present interest in constructivist knowledge in everyday life.
ideas is again on the increase (e.g. Flick 2002: 3 Constructivist sociology of science in the tra-
ch. 4; T. Sutter 1997). dition of Fleck (1935/1979), the present-day
‘laboratory-constructivist’ research (Knorr-
Cetina 1981; Latour and Woolgar 1979),
2 WHAT IS CONSTRUCTIVISM? seeks to establish how social, historical,
local, pragmatic and other factors influence
A number of programmes with different scientific discovery in such a way that scientific
departure points are subsumed under the label facts may be regarded as social constructs
Flick 3.04.qxd 3/19/04 7:15 PM Page 89
CONSTRUCTIVISM 89
(‘local products’). (On the distinctions between that we use and construct. Perception is seen
these different variants of constructivism not as a passive-receptive process of representa-
cf. Knorr-Cetina 1989.) tion but as an active-constructive process of
production. This has consequences for the
Constructivism is not a unified programme, question whether a representation (of reality, a
but is developing in parallel fashion in a process or an object) can be verified for its
number of disciplines: psychology, sociology, correctness against the ‘original’. This form of
philosophy, neurobiology, psychiatry and infor- verifiability, however, is questioned by con-
mation science. In what follows we shall deal structivism, since an original is only accessible
briefly with the first two of the three levels we through different representations or construc-
have presented here from the point of view of tions. And so the different representations or
what is relevant to qualitative research. The empir- constructions can only be compared with one
ical programme of (laboratory)-constructivism another. For constructivist epistemology, and
has not so far been applied to qualitative empirical research based on it, knowledge and
research. The following sections are guided by the constructions it contains become the rele-
the idea that constructivism is concerned with vant means of access to the objects with which
how knowledge arises, what concept of knowl- they are concerned.
edge is appropriate and what criteria can be
invoked in the evaluation of knowledge. For
qualitative research this is doubly relevant since, 4 CONSTRUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE
like all research, it engenders knowledge and
therefore (at least very often) looks empirically Taking three main authors we may clarify how
at specific forms of knowledge – for example, the genesis of knowledge and its functions may
biographical, expert or everyday knowledge. be described from a constructivist viewpoint.
1 Schütz (1962: 5) begins with this premise:
‘All our knowledge of the world, in common-
3 EPISTEMOLOGICAL ASSUMPTIONS sense as well as in scientific thinking, involves
ON THE NATURE OF SOCIAL REALITY constructs, i.e. a set of abstractions, generaliza-
tions, formalizations and idealizations, specific
Alfred Schütz has already claimed that facts only to the relevant level of thought organization.’
become relevant through their meanings and For Schütz, every form of knowledge is con-
interpretations: structed by selection and structuring. The indi-
vidual forms differ according to the degree of
Strictly speaking there are no such things as facts structuring and idealization, and this depends
pure and simple. All facts are from the outset on their functions – more concrete as the basis
selected from a universal context by the activities of everyday action or more abstract as a model
of our mind. There are, therefore, always inter- in the construction of scientific theories.
preted facts, either facts looked at as detached Schütz enumerates different processes which
from their context by an artificial abstraction or
have in common that the formation of knowl-
facts considered in their particular setting. In
either case, they carry along their interpretational
edge of the world is not to be understood as the
inner and outer horizon. (Schütz 1962: 5) simple portrayal of given facts, but that the
contents are constructed in a process of active
A considerable part of the criticism of construc- production.
tivism is devoted to the questions of the 2 This interpretation is developed further in
approach to reality, and it is for this reason that radical constructivism, whose ‘core theses’ are
Mitterer (1999: 486) insists ‘no kind of con- formulated by Glasersfeld (1992: 30) as follows.
structivism is of the opinion that “everything is
constructed”’. Glasersfeld (1992: 30) underlines 1 What we call ‘knowledge’ in no sense repre-
the point: ‘radical constructivism in no way sents a world that presumably exists beyond
denies an external reality’. On the other hand, our contact with it. … Constructivism, like
the various types of constructivism, from pragmatism, leads to a modified concept of
Schütz to Glasersfeld, do question whether cognition/knowledge. Accordingly knowl-
external reality is directly accessible – that is to edge is related to the way in which we orga-
say, independent of perceptions and concepts nize our experiential world.
Flick 3.04.qxd 3/19/04 7:15 PM Page 90
2 Radical constructivism in no sense denies an Construction

external reality. … of concepts and knowledge
3 Radical constructivism agrees with Berkeley
that it would be unreasonable to confirm the
existence of something that can/could not at
some point be perceived. … World of Interpretation
4 Radical constructivism adopts Vico’s funda- experience
mental idea that human knowledge is a Natural and social Understanding
human construct. … environment Attribution of
5 Constructivism abandons the claim that cog- Events meaning
nition is ‘true’ in the sense that it reflects Activities
objective reality. Instead it only requires that
Figure 3.4.1 Construction and interpretation as means
knowledge must be viable, in the sense that
of access to the world of experience
it should fit into the experiential world of
the one who knows … .
in such relationships, and it has above all social
Seen in this way, knowledge organizes experi- functions. The eventualities of the social
ences that first permit cognition of the world processes involved have an influence on what
beyond the experiencing subject or organism. will survive as a valid or useful explanation.
Experiences are structured and understood In accordance with these three constructivist
through concepts and contexts that are con- positions, our access to the world of experience –
structed by this subject. Whether the picture the natural and social environment and the
that is formed in this way is true or correct can- experiences and activities it contains – operates
not be determined. But its quality may be through the concepts constructed by the per-
assessed through its viability, that is, the extent ceiving subject and the knowledge deriving
to which the picture or model permits the sub- from these. These are then used to interpret
ject to find its way and to act in the world. Here experiences, or to understand and attribute
an important point of orientation is the ques- meanings (see Figure 3.4.1).
tion of how the ‘construction of concepts’ func- The ideas of radical and social constructivism
tions (Glasersfeld 1995: 76–88). relate to cognition and knowledge in general
3 For social constructionism the processes of but not (or only in specific ways) to scientific
social interchange in the genesis of knowledge cognition. In particular, for radical construc-
take on a special significance, and in particular tivism there is as yet no translation of the basic
the concepts that are used. In this sense Gergen ideas into a conceptualization of empirical
formulates the following ‘assumptions for a research (the first guidelines were presented by
social constructionism’. Schmidt 1998). Here the focus should be on the
importance of constructivism for research, and
The terms by which we account for the world and
especially qualitative research. What remains
ourselves are not dictated by the stipulated
objects of such accounts … . The terms and forms to be clarified is the relationship between
by which we achieve understanding of the world knowledge and research (see section 5) and the
and ourselves are social artefacts, products of his- links between the world of experience and con-
torically and culturally situated interchanges structs, between constructs and interpretations,
among people … . The degree to which a given and between interpretations and the world of
account of the world or self is sustained across experience (see section 6).
time is not dependent on the objective validity of
the account but on the vicissitudes of social
processes … . Language derives its significance in
5 SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE
human affairs from the way in which it functions
AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION
within patterns of relationship … . To appraise
existing forms of discourse is to evaluate patterns
of cultural life; such evaluations give voice to For the social sciences Schütz assumes that their
other cultural enclaves. (Gergen 1994: 49ff.) knowledge starts from everyday understanding:
‘The thought objects constructed by social
Knowledge is constructed in processes of social scientists refer to, and are founded upon, thought
interchange; it is based on the role of language objects constructed by the common-sense
Flick 3.04.qxd 3/19/04 7:15 PM Page 91
CONSTRUCTIVISM 91
thought of man living in his everyday life Gergen 1989). A similar direction is taken by
among his fellow men‘ (1962: 6). Social scien- ideas that there is no fundamental difference, at
tific knowledge is developed on the basis of pre- the level of modes of experience, between inter-
existing everyday knowledge and socially pretations of texts, persons and artefacts
constructed through this developmental (Dennett 1991), or that cognitive processes
process. The main idea is the distinction that should first be analysed through the analysis of
Schütz makes between constructs of the first discourses, rather than memory and experiment
and second degree: ‘the constructs of social (Edwards and Potter 1992; see 5.19). In all these
science are, so to speak, constructs of the second approaches the contexts being investigated and
degree, that is, constructs of the constructs the modes of action and experience are pre-
made by the actors on the social scene’. sumed to be in texts or are investigated in them.
Accordingly Schütz holds that ‘the exploration Social scientific constructs therefore often
of the general principles according to which become textual constructs, linked in part to the
man in daily life organises his experiences, and idea that everyday constructs are textual con-
especially those of the social world, is the first structs. This approach has found particular
task of the methodology of the social sciences’ favour in the context of the postmodernist
(1962: 59). For Schütz, everyday knowledge and debate and is related to the most recent devel-
cognition become the basis on which the social opments of symbolic interactionism (see 3.3)
scientist develops a more strongly formalized and the work of Denzin (see 2.7, 5.7). If this
and generalized ‘version of the world’ thought is pursued further, it may be asked what
(Goodman 1978). Schütz (1962: 208ff.), there- processes of construction (Schütz’s first or
fore, assumes ‘multiple realities’, of which the second degree) or of world-making (Goodman)
world of science represents only one, which is, are going on in the transformation of modes of
in part, organized according to different princi- action and experience into texts or at least text-
ples compared to the everyday world. Social sci- like constructions. To answer this question
entific research becomes a kind of research that, we shall refer to the concept of mimesis
on the basis of pre-existing everyday constructs, (cf. Gebauer and Wulf 1995), which will also give
constructs another version of the world. Its pointers for a social science working with texts.
results – the knowledge and objective meanings
that it produces – are social constructs in the
everyday world that is under investigation and, 6 MIMESIS AND
by extension, constructs in scientific analyses. WORLD-MAKING IN TEXTS
Schütz’s ideas were further developed for sociol-
ogy by Berger and Luckmann (1966) and have Mimesis is concerned with the representation of
subsequently exerted a strong influence, partic- worlds – and in Aristotle this originally meant
ularly on biographical research (see 3.6, 3.7, natural worlds – in symbolic worlds. In
5.11) and on the development of ethnomethod- Blumenberg (1981) this is discussed as ‘the imi-
ology (see 2.3, 3.2, 5.17). tation of nature’. In the critical theory of
Horkheimer and Adorno (1972) and Adorno
(1973), the term was used as a counter-idea to
Scientific knowledge as text the rationality of conceptual thinking in the
context of an increasingly scientized world-view
Social scientific analyses are increasingly using (cf. also Wellmer 1985). At present growing
the medium of text for their constructs: data are interest may be detected in a broader under-
collected as text (for example, in the form of standing of mimesis: ‘Mimesis can therefore be
interviews, see 5.2), and processed and inter- used in a comprehensive way to mean represen-
preted as such (see 5.10, 5.21). Ultimately, all tation’ (Reck 1991: 65). As an example, the rep-
discoveries are presented in textual form resentation of natural or social contexts in
(see 5.22). In concrete terms text is already par- literary or dramatic texts or stage performances
tially used as a metaphor or a concept: from the is often discussed: ‘in this interpretation mime-
‘world as a text’ in general terms (Garz and sis characterizes the act of producting a sym-
Kraimer 1994a) to the city as a text (Darnton bolic world, which encompasses both practical
1989); life as a story (Bruner 1990) to people and and theoretical elements’ (Gebauer and Wulf
identities as texts (Gergen 1988; Shotter and 1995: 3). Current interest also focuses on this
Flick 3.04.qxd 3/19/04 7:15 PM Page 92
concept outside literature and the theatre. The authors, and readers. … It will appear as a corollary
debate thematizes mimesis as a general principle at the end of this analysis, that the reader is that
that can be used to demonstrate understanding operator par excellence who takes up through
of the world and texts: ‘the individual assimi- doing something – the act of reading – the unity
of the travel from mimesis1 to mimesis3 by way of
lates himself or herself to the world via mimetic
mimesis2. (Ricoeur 1984: 53)
processes. Mimesis makes it possible for indivi-
duals to step out of themselves, to draw the outer The understanding of texts – and by extension
world into their inner world, and to lend expres- of social reality – becomes an active process of
sion to their interiority. It produces an other- producing reality in which not only the author
wise unattainable proximity to objects and is of texts, or versions of the world, is involved but
thus a necessary condition of understanding’ also the person for whom these are produced
(Gebauer and Wulf 1995: 2–3). and who ‘reads’ or understands them. For
In applying these considerations to the pro- Ricoeur the three forms of mimesis are distin-
duction and functioning of social science and its guished as follows.
texts mimetic components can be identified in The mimetic transformation in the ‘process-
the following places: in the translation of expe- ing’ of experiences from the social or natural
riences into narratives, reports and so on by environment into textual constructs – into con-
those under investigation,1 in the construction cepts, knowledge or everyday stories to others,
of texts on this basis on the part of researchers, into particular types of document during the
in their interpretation of such constructs and, production of texts for research purposes – is
finally, in the reflux of such interpretations into always to be understood as a process of con-
everyday contexts. This reflux of science into struction. According to Ricoeur, mimesis2 is
everyday life is discussed more fully in the taking place here:
theory of social representations (Moscovici 1984)
or Matthes (1985). This means that social science Such is the realm of mimesis2 between the ante-
has already contributed to determining and con- cedance and the descendance of the text. At this
structing the world it is investigating by means level mimesis may be defined as the configuration
of its results – so long as these, as individual of action. This configuration is governed by a
results, can attract to themselves the attention of schematization which is historically structured in
a broader public (cf. also Gergen 1973 for further a tradition or traditions, and it is expressed in
discussion of this). In this way its interpretations individual works that stand in varying relation-
and modes of understanding again feed back ships to the constraints generated by this schema-
into the modes of everyday experience. The fact tism. (Ricoeur 1984: 53)
that in this process such interpretations are not
accepted one-for-one but are transformed in The mimetic transformation of such texts in
accordance with the rationalities of the everyday modes of understanding by transformation
world has been shown by Moscovici (1961), on takes place in processes of the everyday under-
the reception of psychoanalysis, and utilization standing of narratives, documents, books,
research (cf. Beck and Bonß 1989, see 6.3) in a newspapers and so on, and in the scientific inter-
number of different case studies. pretation of such narratives, research docu-
ments or texts. Ricoeur refers to this as
mimesis3. It ‘marks the intersection of the world
Mimesis as a process of text and the world of the hearer or reader’
(1981a: 26).
A fruitful starting point to illustrate mimetic Finally, in the reflux of such everyday and/or
transformation processes in the production and scientific interpretations into modes of action via
reception of social scientific texts may be found prior understanding of human action and social
in the ideas of Ricoeur (1981a, 1984). He breaks or natural phenomena, mimesis1 plays a role:
down the mimetic process, ‘playfully yet seri-
ously’, into the steps of mimesis1, mimesis2 and Whatever may be the status of these stories which
mimesis3: somehow are prior to the narration we may give
them, our mere use of the word story (taken in
Hermeneutics, however, is concerned with recon- this pre-narrative sense) testifies to our pre-
structing the entire arc of operations by which understanding that action is human to the extent
practical experience provides itself with works, that it characterises a life story that deserves to be
Flick 3.04.qxd 3/19/04 7:15 PM Page 93
CONSTRUCTIVISM 93
Construction knowledge, in texts and generally – and can

of concepts and knowledge complement the conceptions of radical con-
texts as versions of the world structivism and social constructionism.
Mimesis3 Mimesis3
7 CONSTRUCTIVISM AND
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
Mimesis1
From this point of view, mimesis may be used to
provide a conception of understanding in the
World of Interpretation
experience Understanding
social sciences that takes account of the fact that
Natural and social Attribution of material to be understood should be dealt with
environment meaning at various levels as something that is con-
Events structed and presented: mimetic processes can
Activities be found in the processing of experiences in
everyday practice. They also take place in inter-
Figure 3.4.2 Process of mimesis
views and thereby in every construction of tex-
tualized and textualizable versions of the world
told. Mimesis1 is that pre-understanding of what which are thus rendered accessible to social
human action is, of its semantics, its symbolism, science. Finally, they also play a role in the pro-
its temporality. From this pre-understanding, duction of texts for research purposes – for
which is common to poets and their readers, example, transcripts, reports or interpretations.
arises fiction, and with fiction comes the second This idea of the mimetic process can also be
form of mimesis which is textual and literary. applied to a type of design (see 4.1) that is wide-
(Ricoeur 1981a: 20) spread in qualitative research – the reconstruction
of life-histories or biographies (see 3.6, 3.7) in
According to this view, which Ricoeur formu- interviews (see 5.2). In this, narratives (see 5.11)
lated to handle literary texts, mimetic processes are considered to be the appropriate form for the
can be found at the following points in social representation of biographical experiences.
scientific understanding as an interplay of con- Ricoeur (1981a: 20) supports the ‘thesis of the
struction and the interpretation of experiences narrative or pre-narrative quality of experience’.
(see Figure 3.4.2). With regard to the mimetic relationship between
Gebauer and Wulf (1995) explain that under- life-histories and narratives Bruner explains:
standing as a constructive process, by involving
the person who understands, extends to under- that the mimesis between life so-called and narra-
standing as a whole in social scientific research. tive is a two-way affair: … Narrative imitates life,
They base this on Goodman’s (1978) theory of life imitates narrative. ‘Life’ in this sense is the same
different modes of world-making and the ver- kind of construction of the human imagination as
sions of the world that derive from this as a ‘a narrative’ is. It is constructed by human beings
result of cognition: ‘knowing in terms of this through active ratiocination, by the same kind of
model is a matter of invention: modes of orga- ratiocination through which we construct narra-
tives. When someone tells you his life … it is always
nization “are not found in the world but built
a cognitive achievement rather than a through the
into the world”’ (Gebauer and Wulf 1995: 28).
clear-crystal recital of something univocally given.
Gebauer and Wulf discuss mimesis in processes In the end, it is a narrative achievement. There is no
of cognition in general terms. Ricoeur develops such thing psychologically as ‘life itself’. At very
this concept for processes of understanding in least, it is a selective achievement of memory recall;
relation to literature in a manner that emerges beyond that, recounting one’s life is an interpretive
without the narrow and strict idea of the por- feat. (Bruner 1987: 12–13)
trayal of a given reality, and without the corre-
sponding narrow concept of reality and truth: Seen in this way the biographical narration of
‘Mimesis in this sense is ahead of our concepts one’s own life is not a portrayal of factual
of reference, the real and truth. It engenders a sequences. It becomes a mimetic representation
need as yet unfilled to think more’ (1981a: 31). of experiences that are constructed more generally
This interpretation of mimesis can extend the in one’s knowledge and more specifically for
process of the social construction of reality – in this purpose – in the interview – in the form of
Flick 3.04.qxd 3/19/04 7:15 PM Page 94
a narrative. On the other hand, the narrative In more general terms we may ask, in the sense
provides a general framework within which of social scientific constructivism, what processes
experiences are ordered, represented, evaluated of decision-making belong to the qualitative
and so on – in short, within which they are research process (see 4.1) and how they influence
experienced. The object that qualitative research the process of cognition and the desired results
is investigating (here) already has, in everyday (cf. Flick 1995, 2002 for further discussion).
life, the form in which it seeks to investigate, Finally, constructivist assumptions may be used
construct and interpret it. In the interview situ- as a starting point for the debate on the question
ation these everyday modes of interpretation of justifying the validity of qualitative research
and construction are used to allocate these expe- (cf. Steinke 1999, and 4.7) – in particular, because
riences to a symbolic world – that of science and the validity of knowledge and its determination
its texts. The experiences are then interpreted are a major problem for radical constructivism
from within this world. which has to be dealt with under the key-word of
Through reconstructing life by means of parti- the viability2 of knowledge, models, theories or
cular questions a version of the particular expe- discoveries (cf. Glasersfeld 1995).
riences is constructed and interpreted. The
extent to which the life and experiences actually
occurred in the form reported cannot be checked, NOTES
but it can be established what construction of
both the narrating subject is presenting, and also 1 Here the understanding of mimesis which Bruner
which version arises in the research situation. develops, with reference to Aristotle and Ricoeur,
These experiences and the world in which they becomes relevant: ‘mimesis was the capturing of
happened should ultimately be presented and “life in action”, an elaboration and amelioration of
what happened’ (Bruner, 1990: 46). ‘Mimesis is a
seen in the representation of the results of this
kind of metaphor of reality. … It refers to reality
reconstruction in a specific way – perhaps in the not in order to copy it but in order to give it a new
form of a (new) theory (see 2.1, 5.13, 6.6) with reading’ (Ricoeur 1981b: 292–293). Mimetic processes
claims of validity. Mimetic processes create ver- can then be understood as a principle of the repre-
sions of the world which can then be understood sentation in everyday language of modes of action,
and interpreted through qualitative research. events and situations, ‘brought’ by the latter into a
Ricoeur’s different forms of mimesis and Schütz’s communicable and intelligible version – for the
distinction between everyday and scientific con- subject and for others.
structs provide further content for the frame- 2 Viability means that knowledge or other constructions
work that was set up by Goodman with his must show themselves to be useful and sustainable
(capable of life) in the particular context of use – they
assumption of different versions of the world
must fit and allow the individual to act and survive
created by everyday, artistic and scientific modes in the particular environment. This does not mean
of construction. that constructions must be true or contain correct
For qualitative research constructivist assump- depictions: neither of these can be checked since they
tions become relevant for the understanding of cannot be directly compared with the original.
collected data – for example, biographies as con-
structs (cf. Bude 1984 for discussion). Here we
must ask whether qualitative research succeeds FURTHER READING
in gaining access to the constructs of the inter-
view partner or the members of a research area.
As may be shown in the case of objective Flick, U. (2002) An Introduction to Qualitative
hermeneutics (see 5.16), constructivist assump- Research, 2nd edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
tions also become relevant for the critical analysis
of procedure and methodological requirements Gergen, K. J. (1994) Realities and Relationships.
(cf. Flick 2000a for an application to this process Soundings in Social Construction. Cambridge,
of the idea of mimesis outlined here), or in the MA: Harvard University Press.
sense of some further development (cf. T. Sutter
1997 on the linking of this approach or conver- Glasersfeld, E. von (1995) Radical Constructivism.
sation analysis (see 5.17) to constructivism in the A Way of Knowing and Learning. London: The
sense given in Luhmann 1990a). Falmer Press.
Flick 3.05.qxd 3/19/04 2:26 PM Page 95
3.5 Social Scientific Hermeneutics
Hans-Georg Soeffner
1 Phenomenology of understanding 95
2 Particular features of social scientific understanding 96
3 Hermeneutics as a self-reflective enterprise 97
4 Problems of methodologically controlled understanding 99
In the course of its history the teaching of the 1 PHENOMENOLOGY OF

interpretative procedure known as hermeneu- UNDERSTANDING
tics has undergone many changes, seen many
extensions and – as a self-reflective mode of dis- We can give the name understanding to the
covery – has contributed critically to its own process that gives meaning to an experience.
modification. From a historical and systematic The name understanding the other we can give to
viewpoint it is bound up with the principle of the process by means of which we give meaning
the written nature of phenomena, then with the to an experience in such a way that it relates to
recording of language (or texts), but then – by some event in the world which has already been
logical extension – with the recorded nature of given a meaning by the alter ego.
‘data’ in general, that is to say, with the fixed- Understanding, as a process related to the
ness and implicit tendency to infinitely achievements of my own consciousness, is on
repeated recursivity (or ‘discursivity’) of both the one hand logically at the root of the under-
linguistic and non-linguistic documents: these standing of the alter ego, and on the other hand
include human utterances, actions and produc- self-understanding is empirically a product what,
tions, or human objectivizations of every kind. in the tradition of symbolic interactionism (see
The general questions with which hermeneu- 3.3) since Charles H. Cooley (1902), has been
tics is concerned, however, have also been sub- called the ‘looking-glass self’: a transference of
ject to supplementation and change. Whereas the understanding of others to my own con-
in the past it was concerned exclusively with sciousness. Self-understanding is, in principle,
the ‘value’ of understanding, today – particu- continuously and fully possible, since experi-
larly in those procedures that may collectively ences have no immediate meaning in them-
be referred to as social scientific hermeneutics – selves. It is, rather, the subjective consciousness
it is interested to an ever-growing extent in the which constitutes meaning by relating an
‘how’. It is therefore interested in the under- experience to other phenomena. This act of
standing of understanding itself, in procedures, meaning-making contains in essence what is
‘rules’, ‘patterns’, implicit premises, modes of meant by understanding as self-understanding.
meaning and understanding that are communi- Conversely, other-understanding – and this is
cated as part of the socializing processes of crucial for the problems of understanding in gen-
adaptation, instruction and the passing on of eral – takes place according to perspectives of inter-
traditions. pretation. This means that other-understanding
Flick 3.05.qxd 3/19/04 2:26 PM Page 96
is only possible in a discontinuous and partial constitute the human interpretative horizon
manner. Self-understanding is, in principle, an (Wundt 1928; Bühler 1934; Mead 1934). Here
unquestionable act; other-understanding is, in the different types of signs and their varying
principle, a questionable act. semantics and associations also correspond to
Other-understanding is based on my experi- different interpretative procedures (cf. Schütz
ences of the alter ego. Every meaning that I and Luckmann 1989: 131–147).
ascribe to it can deviate from the meaning that Understanding is therefore not at all an
the alter ego itself gives to its experiences. I invention of the human and social sciences.
always grasp only fragments of its actual experi- Furthermore, it does not initially happen in a
ence. And I always understand possibly only its particular theoretical perspective, but is a con-
actual subjectively intended meaning. The constantly practised everyday routine for human
sciousness of alter ego is available to me only beings. The permanent problem of hermeneutic
through signs and tokens. These demonstrate scientists therefore consists of giving a plausible
three layers of meaning (cf. Eberle 1984): (1) an explanation of what makes their activity into a
objectivized, inter-subjectively valid meaning; scientific undertaking, even though it is based
(2) a subjective meaning; and (3) an occasional explicitly on a completely everyday competence
meaning. If I wish to understand the alter ego, that is common to all human beings.
then, hypothetically, I have to display its sub-
jective motives and reconstruct the objective,
subjective and occasional meaning of its deno- 2 PARTICULAR FEATURES OF
tations. In this way it becomes plausible that SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING
understanding of the meaning of the ‘other’ can
only be achieved in an approximate way. Every social scientist, before he or she dares to
Unquestionably, the ego does not have a make prognoses, is concerned with the descrip-
monopoly on the interpretation of the world in tion and analysis of those constructs that relate
everyday life but empirically is always to be to the actions and plans of members of society
found in a world that has been pre-interpreted in an everyday, pragmatic perspective: con-
by others. In the everyday world the maxim structs of the ‘first degree’ (Schütz 1962: 3–47) of
applies that the viewpoints of the one and the everyday socio-historically based types, models,
other are, in the main, interchangeable, and routines, plausibilities, forms of knowledge,
that what is valid for the one would also be contents of knowledge and (often implicit)
relevant for the other, if he were in the same place, inferences. This means above all that the ‘data
and that this is and always will be the case. This of the social scientist, unlike those of the nat-
means that other-understanding in everyday life ural scientist, are pre-interpreted, that his con-
is not difficult in itself but a matter of unques- structs are constructs of constructs. The social
tionable routine. While, from an epistemological scientist develops constructs “of the second
point of view, the problem of other-understanding degree”. These are controlled methodically
also consists of explaining how this is at all tested and testable, interpretative reconstruc-
possible, in everyday opinion it represents a tions of constructs “of the first degree”’.
rather banal achievement of the consciousness: The scientific interpreter is doing, in prin-
for human beings it is ‘normally’ so normal that ciple, nothing different from what humans do
it is not a matter of everyday interest. in their daily life: he or she is interpreting per-
Human behaviour, as an observable form of ceptions as evidence of a meaning that underlies
human action – be it linguistic or non-linguistic – them. But unlike the ordinary person, the scien-
is interpretable by and for human beings tific interpreter seeks to create clarity through
because, in addition to many other properties, it the preconditions and methods of his or her
always displays that of being (proto-)symbolic. understanding. For it is in this way, and only in
From the gesture to the ‘significant’ symbol, this way, that interpretation becomes a scien-
from the token and symptom to the constructed tific method. And it is only through this that
and unambiguously defined mathematical sign, interpretation becomes systematically teachable
from the body and facial expression to clothing, and learnable.
from the natural impression to the human pro- Between constructs of the ‘first degree’ and of
duct, we attribute to ourselves and our environ- the ‘second degree’ there is therefore a logical dif-
ment the qualities of signs, and with these we ference (cf. also Carnap 1928), and also more than
Flick 3.05.qxd 3/19/04 2:26 PM Page 97
SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC HERMENEUTICS 97
this alone. The action to which reconstructions Social scientific understanding, therefore,
relate is, by the time these begin, long past, is always essentially an understanding of
gone for ever and unrepeatable. If it can still be understanding, an understanding ‘of the second
at all accessible to understanding, it must be degree’.
represented in particular ‘data’ (or traces), and it
‘presents’ itself in the data as a completed action.
Because they are concerned with testable, that is, 3 HERMENEUTICS AS A
intersubjectively and rationally feasible, recon- SELF-REFLECTIVE ENTERPRISE
structions, social scientists cannot hope either
to replicate these actions congenially, or to enter Most human interpretative achievements are
empathetically into the souls and minds, the carried out, as we have already said, in a manner
thoughts and feelings of the (original) actors: that is not methodically controlled, but is rather
instead they are subject to ‘reconstructive- unquestioning – and perhaps incidentally –
hermeneutic’ models of possibility for the against the background of an implicit knowl-
courses of action and the actors. edge of the ‘here and now’ and of what has to
The understanding of the social scientist, there- be done. To what is implicitly known, always
fore, takes place according to a special rather than indicated and involved in the interpretation of
an everyday perspective, which Schütz calls a the- actions, we must add what, in phenomenologi-
oretical sub-world of meaning. This is a perspec- cally oriented social-philosophy or ‘proto-
tive of fundamental doubt in a taken for granted sociology’, is known as the ‘daily life-world’
social reality. It is characterized by the fact that it (Luckmann 1983, 1990), and in social research
discounts concern about one’s own existence and as the ‘milieu’ (Grathoff 1989) or ‘small social
is only interested in seeing reality clearly and in life-world’ (e.g. Hitzler and Honer 1984, 1988;
recognizing the ‘truth’ (that is, the make-up) of Luckmann 1970; see 3.8): the human being’s
social reality. In this perspective there is no pres- concrete environment, the totality of all that
ence of the social world, no being-in-situation, no humans experience as having an effect on them,
living people, but only idealized models of social irrespective of the question of what affects them
phenomena and artificial beings constructed by ‘objectively’ (Gurwitsch 1977/1979: 60).
the social scientist. Social scientific understanding For a social science of the forms of social
differs from everyday understanding in that inter- orientation, action, production and knowledge
pretative achievements do not happen here with the same is true as for phenomenological phi-
reference to everyday understanding but with ref- losophy: ‘environment’ is a concept that ‘has
erence to extensively activated knowledge and in its place exclusively in the spiritual sphere’
reliance on a reservoir of specialist professional (Husserl 1936/1978: 272), that is, a concept that
knowledge. This kind of understanding is, unlike represents the specifically human forms of
everyday knowledge, not related to the pragmatic denotation, symbolically organized perception,
needs of daily living but to the relevance system interpretation and action, ‘behind’ which
of a pragmatically disinterested observer (Schütz human beings cannot look. Accordingly, it is
1932/1967: 220–241). unreal to describe the natural environment or
Social scientific understanding has as its goal the non-spiritual world as something alien to
the discovery of the constitutive conditions of the spirit and ‘to buttress humanistic science
‘reality’ and the demystification of social con- with natural science so as to make it supposedly
structs. It has to reconstruct phenomena on exact’ (Husserl 1936/1978: 272).
which the scientist is focusing in a manner that The human environment, or life-world, there-
corresponds to the meaning, is adequate to the fore cannot be described either by a model of
problem and logically consistent. It must also ‘external/internal’ or ‘subject/object’ or with the
make it possible to explain them in a way that is aid of spatial measurements and territorial
‘adequate to meaning’ and also ‘causally ade- demarcations. For us it is not something opposed,
quate’, in the sense of Weber (1949a). The prac- it is neither a cage nor an unlimited space but,
tical social value of this enterprise lies in making rather, a horizon of perception, orientation and
human beings aware of the circumstances, con- action. It moves with us, when we move, it
texts and rules that are not normally prominent changes us – and our action – when we change
in everyday understanding but within which it. It does not exist without us, and we do not
their life is conducted (cf. Luckmann 1983). exist without it. But we are not our environment:
Flick 3.05.qxd 3/19/04 2:26 PM Page 98
we have it. Our relationship to it and to becomes visible; this is, in other words, the
ourselves – if we agree with Plessner (1970: 41f.) – problem of context, of the embedding of the
is determined by our ‘eccentric positionality’, by meaning horizon of signifier, meaning and
the ‘ambiguous character’ of our existence, which objects of meaning (see also Bühler 1934). From
represents two distinct but overlapping orders. this it follows that (1) hermeneutics is, in terms
Empirical milieu-analysis, or life-world analysis, of this claim, universal, as an interpretative
represents an attempt to describe the concrete human approach to the world and human exis-
forms of orientation, action and organization of tence within it which is carried out in everyday
individuals in and with their environment, and to life (and which is therefore also scientifically
interpret concrete action against this background. reconstructable and capable of methodological
Descriptions of milieux or ‘small life-worlds’ definition); (2) because signifier, interpretation
therefore document – in addition to spoken and and objects of meaning, however, are indepen-
transcribed texts – the modes of orientation of a dent of their respective embedding in milieux,
human being in space, in the concrete environ- history, narratives and meaning-communities,
ment, in the time lived in, to the personal phys- the various results of hermeneutic interpreta-
ical essence and to other human beings: in this tion are relative. They exist in relation to a given
sense they document the largely non-linguistic socio-historical context of meaning and acquire
production and reproduction of a social interac- their validity relative to this.
tive structure, the singularity of which is trans- This relativity is not in any sense arbitrary,
lated into the collective semantic types of for – in scientific hermeneutics – it does not
language and which must therefore also be inter- exclude rigorous processes of checking: these
preted.1 At the same time, however, there arises checking processes focus on the relationship
the fundamental problem of recording and between interpretation and its specific sur-
describing milieux and/or situations: putting rounding conditions, and this relationship can
non-linguistic phenomena into language. be made plausible intersubjectively. By taking
Beyond the sensually perceptible world – to conscious account of the principle and the
order, classify and interpret it – a separate world actual instance of relativity, the claim to inter-
of collective signs and symbols is constructed subjectivity of the procedure and of the results
(Cassirer 1953–1996; Langer 1957), both in lan- is maintained and implemented: arbitrariness is
guage and in action and orientation (see Berger excluded by linking relativity and intersubjecti-
and Luckmann 1966: 97–146). Small life-worlds, vity to each other in a controlled way.
milieux and the actions which take place within From a perspective of milieu theory and life-
them and which form them are constituted world analysis, which makes visible an objec-
symbolically: life in social order and in milieux tively operating layer of meaning of subjective
as components of this order means life in orientation prior to the historical perspective,
symbols and symbolically organized referential the whole scope of what is perceptible is deter-
contexts. To this extent linguistic and milieu- mined by the cultural relevances of the observer.
analysis are also the analysis of symbols, and to The approach to intersubjectively possible
this extent the symbolic context as a whole understanding must therefore fulfil the follow-
also determines the forms and typology of ing (Scheler 1923; Srubar 1981):
human action. Accordingly, science as the
analysis of symbols consists of the attempt to 1 conscious and controlled abstraction on the
reconstruct the symbolic total context of the part of the interpreter from his or her own
forms of human action, orientation and cultural certainties and historical perspective
knowledge. (Concrete examples of this are in (reflection of personal prejudice);
Soeffner 1997.) 2 reconstruction (as far as possible) of the
Beyond (linguistic) texts and, in scientific structure of the ‘alien’ milieu and the histor-
hermeneutics, often underlying them, the uni- ical linking of a transmitted document or
versal interpretative claim of hermeneutics ‘record’, and of the ‘other’ life-world of the
becomes recognizable together with this change producer (getting the ‘other’ to speak);
of focus to the milieu or everyday life-world: for 3 allocation of one’s own and the other’s expe-
hermeneutics there are no materia nuda, no riential structure and interpretation, and the
‘brute facts’. Instead, the problem of the delimi- object of meaning, to a scientific ‘universe of
tation of texts and/or meaning objects now discourse’ of objectively possible (that is,
Flick 3.05.qxd 3/19/04 2:26 PM Page 99
SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC HERMENEUTICS 99
intersubjectively realizable) milieux, contexts and reconstruction of case-transcending

and meanings (location in semantic space). patterns, to the description and reconstruction
of case-transcending and, at the same time, case-
generating structures. The type that is recon-
4 PROBLEMS OF METHODOLOGICALLY structed in this way encompasses and illuminates
CONTROLLED UNDERSTANDING the structural difference of evolutionary and
historically changing structural formations, on
Social scientific interpretations are essentially the one hand, and their concrete historically
sample case studies. They are carried out at two and culturally specific defining characteristics,
levels: (1) in seeking, testing and fixing the rules on the other.2
of interpretation and procedures; (2) in recon- In this way single-case analyses assist in the
structing a particular case-structure in which gradual discovery of general structures in social
they make visible the conditions and constitu- action, while the single case itself is interpreted
tive rules of social phenomena and objects in as an historically concrete response to a concrete
their concrete manifestation, their concrete historical (problem-)situation and formation of
effect and their mutability. In this process, on structure: with the individual phenomena the
the one hand, the case in its particularity and development of structure is advanced, and with
the conditions of its individualization should be the single-case analyses the development of
made visible (see, for example, Soeffner 1997: theory is updated.
ch. 1). And on the other hand, this typicality The route from interpretative understanding
and comparability should be developed and to ‘causal’ explanation of the sequence and the
‘explained’ from the analysis of the forms effects of social action therefore passes through
and structures involved in the development and a construct of a conceptually pure type of the actor
changing of types. or actors thought to be acting as a type and the
The interpretation of a case requires objecti- meaning subjectively intended by them (Weber
vity in two directions: (1) with regard to verifia- 1972/1978: 1–10), that is to say, a construction
bility, that is, clarification of the interpretative of the ‘second degree’ (Schütz 1962). Then and
procedure and the prior knowledge that informs only in the world of these ideal-typical, purposive-
it, as well as the related obligation to verify rational constructs can it be decided how the
which interpreters impose on themselves and actors would have behaved and acted in a case
other scientific interpreters; (2) with regard to of ‘ideal purposive-rationality’ (Esser 1999).
the direction and goal of the procedure: the Only with the assistance of these ideal-typical
analysis of what is from a social viewpoint constructs, which achieve their terminological,
‘objectively’ effective – to the social institutions classificatory and heuristic purpose better the
and their historically valid meaning as determi- more ‘alien’ they are, can comparisons be made
nants of an action, and to the meaning-structure with the action that has been documented. And
of the action, which is possibly hidden, or only then is it possible to give a ‘causal’ expla-
‘latent’, for the actor (Oevermann et al. 1979). nation of the ‘distance’ between action in this
The goal of analysis is the concise reconstruc- ideal-typical purposive rationality, on the one
tion of an objectivized type of social action from hand, and the documented action, on the other
its concrete, case-specific manifestations. This hand, so that one can name the elements that,
objectivized type is an ‘ideal type’ in so far as it in the case being studied, have interfered in the
is constructed on the one hand with the aim of ‘pure purposive-rationality’ and infiltrated these
falsifying empiricism to the extent that it gives with other features.
an unreliable reproduction of what is specific in The concrete single case is therefore causally
a particular case; and on the other hand to help explained exclusively with regard to its distance
justify the individual case precisely because it and difference from the conceptually ‘pure’ and
highlights what is historically particular against purposive-rational ideal type. The single case is
the background of structural generality (Schütz not interpretatively understood through this
and Luckmann 1973: 229–241; Weber 1949b: causal explanation of difference, but rather the
89–101). reverse: through interpretative understanding of
The reconstruction of an objectivized type of social action one arrives at a construct of ideal
social action is built up from (extensive) single- types which for their part make the single case
case studies via case comparison, description visible and help it achieve its goal. In so far as
Flick 3.05.qxd 3/19/04 2:26 PM Page 100
they clarify its difference from the ideal type, 2 As a ‘famous’ example we may refer here to the
they assist in the understanding of its singular- hospital studies of Barney Glaser and Anselm
ity and concrete manifestation. Strauss, in the context of which the so-called
Interpretative social science is, in this sense, ‘grounded theory’ – the principle of abstracting a
theory step by step on the basis of single-case
the progressive reconstruction, the progressive
studies – was developed (Glaser and Strauss 1965b,
interpretative understanding of social action 1967, 1968; Strauss 1987; see 2.1, 5.13, 6.6).
which takes seriously the single case and
thereby human beings, their norms and their
history. Scientific ‘constructs of the second
degree’, the historical-genetic ideal-types, are FURTHER READING
seeking precisely this historical understanding
of the single case and, equally, the understand-
ing of history. Denzin, N. K. (1989) Interpretive Interactionism.
Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
NOTES Dewey, J. (1934) Art as Experience. New York:

Menton, Balch & Co.
1 At a clear distance in time from the related research
activities in the USA, an everyday ethnography, in Psathas, G. (ed.) (1973) Phenomenological
the sense given here, has developed in the German- Sociology. New York: Wiley.
speaking world since the 1980s (see 3.8). Examples
of this are to be found in studies of the agricultural
Soeffner, H.-G. (1997) The Order of Rituals. The
milieu (Hildenbrand 1983), of the small life-world
of the body-builder (Honer 1985) and the water-
Interpretation of Everyday Life. New Brunswick,
diviner (Knoblauch 1991a), of the labour situation NJ: Transaction Books.
(Knorr-Cetina 1981, 1989), of punk culture (Lau
1992), of police work (Reichertz 1991a) and of the Strauss, A. (1991) Creating Sociological Awareness.
making of donations (Voß 1992). See also the rele- Collective Images and Symbolic Representa-
vant contributions in Soeffner (1988). tions. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.

The Theory of Qualitative Research

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Theory of Qualitative Research

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Theory of Qualitative Research

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Flick-03.

qxd 3/19/04 2:16 PM Page 63

The Theory of Qualitative Research

66 A COMPANION TO QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

Background Theories of Qualitative Research

3.1 Phenomenological Life-world Analysis

Ronald Hitzler and Thomas S. Eberle

1 The idea of a life-world phenomenology 67

1 THE IDEA OF A LIFE-WORLD to achieve an ‘adequate’ methodological

68 A COMPANION TO QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

PHENOMENOLOGICAL LIFE-WORLD ANALYSIS 69

70 A COMPANION TO QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

PHENOMENOLOGICAL LIFE-WORLD ANALYSIS 71

1 Scientific and historical background 72

1 SCIENTIFIC AND General rules, in Garfinkel’s opinion, must

74 A COMPANION TO QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

3 CENTRAL CONCEPTS AND 1 The place where for EM the meaningful

76 A COMPANION TO QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

4 DEVELOPMENTS AND PERSPECTIVES: specific types of professional activity. In the first

78 A COMPANION TO QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

80 A COMPANION TO QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

Fehr, B. J., Stetson, J. and Mizukawa, Y. (1990)

Heritage, J. C. (1984) Garfinkel and Ethnometho-

Hilbert, R. A. (1992) The Classical Roots of Ethno-

Sacks, H. (1992) Lectures on Conversation,

Turner, R. (ed.) (1974) Ethnomethodology:

3.3 Symbolic Interactionism

1 Basic principles of symbolic interactionism 81

82 A COMPANION TO QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

other. By using the term interaction symbolic 3 ROOT ASSUMPTIONS

information technologies produce (Smythe 1 Interpretative (and symbolic) interactionists

84 A COMPANION TO QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

8 RECENT DEVELOPMENTS: stories, rituals, myths), represents experience.

86 A COMPANION TO QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

Interpretive interactionists (see Denzin 2000) 11 DISPUTES OVER TRUTH

Holstein, J. A. and Gubrium, J. F. (2000) The Self

Musolf, G. R. (1998) Structure and Agency in

Strauss, A. (l993) Continual Permutations of

1 INTRODUCTION ‘Constructivism’. What is common to all

90 A COMPANION TO QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

2 Radical constructivism in no sense denies an Construction

92 A COMPANION TO QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

Construction knowledge, in texts and generally – and can

94 A COMPANION TO QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

3.5 Social Scientific Hermeneutics

In the course of its history the teaching of the 1 PHENOMENOLOGY OF

96 A COMPANION TO QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC HERMENEUTICS 97

98 A COMPANION TO QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC HERMENEUTICS 99

intersubjectively realizable) milieux, contexts and reconstruction of case-transcending

100 A COMPANION TO QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

NOTES Dewey, J. (1934) Art as Experience. New York:

You might also like