The Reduction

1. The Reduction Norm Friesen March 2006

2. Overview • Wonder - Heuristic Reduction • Openness - Hermeneutic Reduction • Concreteness - Phenomenological Reduction • Invariables - Eidetic Reduction • Flexible Rationality - Methodological Reduction (from: Max van Manen, www.phenomenologyonline.com)

3. The Reduction • Epoche: bracketing • achieve contact with the world that is as direct as possible by suspending prejudgements, bracketing assumptions, deconstructing claims, and restoring openness. • A type of attentiveness (from: Max van Manen, www.phenomenologyonline.com)

4. The Reduction • the method of the reduction is meant to bring the aspects of meaning that belong to the phenomena of our lifeworld into nearness • aims to bring into focus the uniqueness of the particular phenomenon to which we are oriented (from: Max van Manen, www.phenomenologyonline.com)

5. Heuristic Reduction: Wonder • Bracket the “natural attitude” • Husserl on the natural attitude • Awaken wonder about the phenomenon • Wonder occurs when explanation is suspended • Examples of Wonder? (from: Max van Manen, www.phenomenologyonline.com)

6. Hermeneutic Reduction: Openness • "natural standpoint” - that objects materially exist and exhibit properties that we see as emanating from them • Resist explanation (objective): • Scientific • Psychological • Logical, “intellectual” • E.g. of delusions in phenomenology (from: Max van Manen, www.phenomenologyonline.com)

7. Hermeneutic Reduction: Openness, con’t • Resist subjective or private feelings, preferences, inclinations, or expectations that may seduce or tempt one to come to premature, wishful, or one-sided understandings of an experience • E.g. of online education research (from: Max van Manen, www.phenomenologyonline.com)

8. Hermeneutic Reduction • It may be necessary to explicate assumptions and interests to “exorcise” them, in an attempt to let speak that what wishes to speak. (from: Max van Manen, www.phenomenologyonline.com)

9. Hermeneutic Reduction “I found that overall the interaction was pretty entertaining and comical. Usually with a chat bot it’s just a textbased interaction, and there’s not a lot of room to move beyond the limits of what the system can do. But here, I felt like I could ask her all sorts of questions, and that even if she didn’t respond in a w that you could call “normal”…

10. Phenom. Reduction: Concreteness • Theories need to be reviewed for how they inform experience, by ultimately fail to capture it in its inexhaustible richness. • examine how theories gloss or hide the experiential reality (from: Max van Manen, www.phenomenologyonline.com)

11. Concreteness, example It is finally my turn to step up to the machine. As I step up to what feels like a stage with an audience in the background, I notice that I have to go through a scripted set of steps; there is no opportunity for variation. Time feels like it is speeding up. I reach into my wallet, and pull out my bankcard from its protective outer casing. I slide my card into the machine, and for a moment wonder if it will correctly read my card's information. I wonder at what angle the camera embedded in the machine is monitoring me

12. Concreteness, example The space around me during my transaction seems constrained and regulated. There is a high sensitivity to the space. As I type in my information, I hover around the screen to conceal the type of transaction that I am making. When it comes time to typing in my personal identification number, I then cover the numbered keypad to not let any trace of that information leak out to anyone in line. (http://learningspaces.org/n/papers/ExperiencingSurveillance.doc)

13. Eidetic Reduction • Eidos: an immutable universal or generalization about human nature or human life. • What is see past or through the particularity & concreteness of lived experience • Concerned with "possible" human experiences-not with experiences that are presumed to be universal or shared by all humans irrespective of time, culture, gender, or other circumstance(from: Max van Manen, www.phenomenologyonline.com)

14. Eidetic Reduction • The phenomenological determination of meaning is itself always indeterminate, always tentative, always incomplete, always inclined to question assumptions by returning again and again to lived experience itself • Bracketing of incidental meaning(from: Max van Manen, www.phenomenologyonline.com)

15. Eidetic variation • Vary one aspect of the experience to make it a (slightly) different experience. Through that, discover what is “essential” to it. • Patterns of meaning or themes belonging to a particular phenomenon can begin to emerge; themes are working material for phenomenological writing (from: Max van Manen, www.phenomenologyonline.com)

16. Eidetic Variation: Example “Imagine a situation in which two mothers are speaking to one another by telephone. Their respective children are playing together in an area between their two houses. As neighbors, both mothers can watch the children through their own open windows. The subject of the telephone conversation is the behavior of the children at play and the behaviors of the children in general.”

17. Eidetic Variation: Example “Imagine an altered situation in which the two mothers have opened the windows and are calling back and forth. In reference with the objective aspect of space, this structure of social praxis is labelled, face-to-face-communication- from-a-distance.” Calling across to one another through the open window obviously includes the acoustical space in between. (See: http://learningspaces.org/articles)

18. Methodological Reduction • Bracket all established investigative methods or techniques and seek or invent an approach that seems to fit most appropriately the phenomenological topic under study. • Flexible narrative rationality • E.g.Gagnon, Rochelle (2003). Understanding Depression.