Micro-Sociology I:
Schutz
Berger & Luckmann
Blumer
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
Blumer
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
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
1) Define objective v. subjective
meanings according to Schutz, using
key passages on pages 40-41 in
Contemporary Sociological Theory.
2) 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 Interpretationthe “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=xeOaTpYl
8mE
Peter
&
Thomas
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).
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
&
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)
&
institutionalization: creating taken-forgranted 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
make
(institutionalization)
(internalization)
Reciprocal Typifications
makes
(objectification)
Society
Gwen Sharp and Lisa Wade –
Social Construction Lecture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVVWmZ
AStn8
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