The Phenomenological Life-World Analysis and the Methodology of the Social Sciences

This Alfred Schutz Memorial Lecture discusses the relationship between the phenomenological life-world analysis and the methodology of the social sciences, which was the central motive of Schutz’s work. Two major goals are pursued: Firstly, I scrutinize the postulate of adequacy as it is the most crucial of Schutz’s methodological postulates. Max Weber devised the postulate ‘adequacy of meaning’ in analogy to the postulate of ‘causal adequacy’ (a concept used in jurisprudence) and regarded both as complementary and for sociological analysis critical. Schutz extracted the two postulates from the Neokantian epistemology, dismissed the concept of causality and reduced Weber’s two postulates of adequacy into one, the adequacy of meaning. I discuss the benefits and shortcomings of this reduction. A major problem is in my view that Schutz’s reformulation lost the empirical concern that was inherent in Weber’s ‘causal adequacy’. As a result, the models of economics (which shaped Schutz’s conception of social science) count as adequate if only they are ‘understandable’ to an everyday actor, even when they are based on most unrealistic assumptions. To recapture Weber’s empirical orientation I recommend a more restrictive interpretation of the postulate of adequacy which links it to qualitative research and unfolds the critical potential of Schutz’s phenomenological life-world analysis. – My second goal is to report on some current developments in German sociology where a number of approaches explicitly refer to Schutz’s analysis of the life-world and attempt to pursue ‘adequate’ empirical research. I focus on three approaches: ethnophenomenology, life-world analytic ethnography, and social scientific hermeneutics.