Micro-Sociology I: Schutz Berger & Luckmann

Micro-Sociology I:SchutzBerger & Luckmann Berger & Luckmann Blumer Goffman Simmel Schutz Mead Instructor: Sarah Whetstone March 19, 2012

Readings and Key Concepts • Introduction to Part 1 (25-30) • Micro-sociological analysis – three schools • Alfred Schutz: “The Phenomenology of the Social World” • Phenomenology • Intersubjectivity • Signs • Berger & Luckmann: “The Social Construction of Reality” • Social construction of reality: institutionalization, objectification, internalization • Habitualization • the objectivity of institutions

Goffman Blumer Berger & Luckmann Schutz Simmel Mead Traditions in Micro-sociology…

MICRO-SOCIOLOGY What is it? Focuses on people and interactions, distinct from “macro” approaches Reversal of Durkheim & Parsons: order produced “from below.” Social reality is constructed through everyday interactions. Common threads of emphasis: face-to-face social interaction, how meaning is created between people meanings rather than functions lived experience rather than abstract notions of “society”

Focus of Micro-Sociology Micro-sociology

Micro-sociological Theory: Three Major Schools Phenomenology  Social Construction Schutz, Berger & Luckmann Emphasizes how we form basic categories of understanding: What makes things knowable? Ethnomethodology: methods people use to construct their notion of social reality Symbolic-Interactionism Mead, Blumer Pragmatist school All knowledge “achieved in practically situated action” Dramaturgical Approach Goffman How Durkheim’s models of social life are produced and reproduced through everyday interactions Interpersonal interactions are ritualized in ways that reproduce order (more functionalist flavor)

Phenomenology and Social Construction • Phenomenology: How can we “know” things? • How do mental phenomena come to be our taken-for-granted reality? • Emphasis on “situatedness” in the world • Alfred Schutz – Subjective “knowing” is rooted in social interaction • Berger and Luckmann – Institutions are constantly produced and reproduced through social interactions

Schutz Alfred (1899-1959) Studied at University of Vienna and became a banker Never became an established academic Fled to U.S. during World War II, taught at the New School Phenomenology: seeks to understand how people produce and sustain meaning Focus on how we consciously experience the true essence of things without relying on empirical evidence We do not experience the world as an “objective” reality…huh?

How can we “know” the purpose another person? • What problems do we confront when trying to understand another person? (page 32) • How, then, do we form an understanding of someone’s subjective purposes? • Meaningful signs (ex. Language) • Significance function • Expressive function

According to Schutz, to understand each other, we rely on… Intersubjectivity, or the ability to put ourselves in the place of others and identify our life with his or hers, and Signs, or gestures meant to signify intent and elicit an interpretation by someone else. Together these create “cookery-book knowledge”: taken-for-granted recipes and schemes for interpretation. For example, how do you ask for help in the grocery store?

Using and Interpreting Signs: Creating Meaning through Conversation, pg. 36 …In a conversation, thoughts like the following may run through the heads of the participants. The person about to speak will say to himself, “Assuming that this fellow speaks my kind of language, I must use such and such words.” A moment later his listener will be saying to himself, “If this other fellow is using words the way I understand them, then he must be telling me such and such.” The first statement shows how the speaker always chooses his words with the listener’s interpretation in mind. The second statement shows how the listener always interprets with the speaker’s subjective meaning in mind.

Group Work: Meaning Making with Schutz • Define objective v. subjective meanings according to Schutz, using key passages on pages 40-41 in Contemporary Sociological Theory. • Illustrate these differences with an example of an interaction. Which parts of the interaction would be labeled “objective meaning” and which would be “subjective?”

Meaning and Context • Objective meaning: the meaning we infer from the “final product,” after the fact of meaning-production • Subjective meaning: meaning-context in mind of the producer of the meaning • Meaning-Contexts of Interpretation- the “plan” or motive behind the meaning conveyed (38)– Can be any number of deeper, contextual meanings of the expressed act

Michael Moore’s The Awful Truth (clip)How can you apply Schutz’s theory of social meaning to explain the misunderstanding in the clip? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeOaTpYl8mE

Berger Luckmann & Thomas Peter Authors of the smash hit of 1966, The Social Construction of Reality! Questioned the assumption that the world is objective and independent of the people within it. Basic argument: Habits, repeated through sustained interaction, produce patterned institutions (social reality). What are some habits that you have? What makes them habits?

Group Work, pgs. 43-47 In your groups, go through pages 43-47, and summarize Berger and Luckmann’s argument about how social reality is produced through social interactions. How do we get from two people interacting (A and B) to “This is how things are done” (pg. 46)? Explain the following concepts: Habitualization, Reciprocal Typification, Institutionalization, “Objectivity” of Institutions

Berger Luckmann & When habitualized actions are shared by and/or available to everyone in the group (built up over time) “Institutionalization occurs whenever there is a reciprocal typification of habitualized actions by types of actors.” (p.43) when actions are performed over and over again, they become routine and taken for granted (it is hard to do anything else) human-made institutions appear objective when they have been externalized or reified “An institutional world, then, is experienced as an objective reality. It has a history that antedates the individual’s birth and is not accessible to his biographical recollection.” (p. 47)

Berger Luckmann & institutionalization: creating taken-for-granted recipes through social interaction objectification: when an individual confronts an institution as an external and historical “fact” “Society is a human product. Society is an objective reality. Man is a social product.” (p. 48) internalization: when the objectified social world is “retrojected” onto the consciousness of the individual (or, socialization)

Cycle of Social Construction Human Beings make (institutionalization) make (internalization) Society Reciprocal Typifications makes (objectification)

Gwen Sharp and Lisa Wade – Social Construction Lecture http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVVWmZAStn8 • Think of your own example of a social construction in each of the following categories. How are signs or symbols working to produce meaning in each case?: • Gesture • Object • Group of people

Micro-Sociology I: Schutz Berger & Luckmann