Thomas Eberle

The aim of the present paper is to specify and discuss the relation between the phenomenological lifeworld analysis developed by Alfred Schutz and the methodology of the social sciences. First, the Schutzian project of providing a phenomenological foundation for the social sciences is outlined. Second, I present Schutz’s postulates concerning social-scientific constructions. Then, I analyze the way in which Max Weber and Schutz conceive of the so-called postulate of adequacy. Finally, some contemporary attempts to apply the lifeworld analysis to empirical social research are presented.

This essay presents an analysis of a patient’s experiences after she had a sudden cerebral hemorrhage and was put into an artificial coma. Her husband, a sociologist, collected a wealth of different sorts of data during the many years of recovery. When the patient had recovered, they collaboratively reconstructed and analyzed what she had experienced. Phenomenological concepts proved helpful for interpreting the patient’s experiences at different stages such as her disorientation after awakening from the coma, the blurred borders between fact and fiction, her problems with time and space, her loss of smell, her oscillation between despair and overestimation of her capabilities in the rehabilitation clinic and her long way “back to normal”. The social context of family support is considered, and conclusions are drawn what sociologists can learn from this case.

Regarding the relationship between phenomenology and the social sciences, significantly different traditions exist between German-speaking countries and the Anglo-Saxon world, which create many misunderstandings. Phenomenology is not just a research method; in its origin, it is a philosophy and has epistemological and methodological implications for empirical research. This essay pursues several goals: First, some basic tenets of Husserl's phenomenology and Schutz's mundane life-world analysis are restated. Second, an approach of "phenomenological hermeneutics" is presented that complies with the postulate of adequacy and aspires to understand other people's life-worlds more profoundly than the widely accepted research practice of treating interview transcripts as data. The methodical procedure is illustrated using selected pieces from a case study of a patient who suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and became severely disoriented. Third, some crucial implications of such an approach are discussed in regard to a phenomenology-based ethnography.

This article explores the application of an integral framework for sociological practice to a case study of White Afrikaans-speaking identity in South Africa. In addition to the introduction of the framework, identity is conceived as a multi-dimensional phenomenon which is formed and shaped biologically, psychologically and socially. Using the empirical examples of the case study, the socially constructed aspects of identity are interpretively investigated. The stories and their narrative repertoires, structures and contents are integrally reconstructed and analysed by means of an approach that includes in-depth interviews, a hermeneutical interpretation and the contextualisation of these stories within the broader meta-narrative of South African history. The analysis demonstrates that White Afrikaans-speaking identity has diversified since the end of apartheid in 1994, i.e. the self-definitions and self-understandings of White Afrikaans-speakers do not (exclusively) refer anymore to the formerly dominant notion of the Afrikaner. The analysis concludes that there exist three contemporary White Afrikaans-speaking identities in South Africa, namely the Afrikaners, the Afrikaanses, and the Pseudo-Boers.