Alfred Schutz: Appraisals and Developments

Alfred Schutz: Appraisals and Developments

Alfred Schutz: Appraisals and Developments Edited by KURT H. WOLFF Reprinted from Human Studies, Vol. 7(2), 1984 1984 MARTINUS NIJHOFF PUBLISHERS a member of the KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS GROUP DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LANCASTER

Distributors jor the United States and Canada: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 190 Old Derby Street, Hingham, MA 02043, USA jor the UK and Ireland: Kluwer Academic Publishers, MTP Press Limited, Falcon House, Queen Square, Lancaster LAI lrn, UK jor all other countries: Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, Distribution Center, P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands ISBN-13: 978-90-247-3114-5 e-isbn-13: 978-94-009-6228-6 DO I: 10. \007/978-94-009-6228-6 Copyright 1984 by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht. Softcover reprint of the hardcover I st Edition 1984 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, P.O. Box 163, 3300 AD Dordrecht, The Netherlands.

CONTENTS Preface by Kurt H. Wolff [VII} Helmut R. Wagner, Schutz's Life Story and the Understanding of his Work [ 1] Jonathan B. Imber, The Well-Informed Citizen: Alfred Schutz and Applied Theory [ 11] David M. Rasmussen, Explorations of the Lebenswelt: Reflections on Schutz and Habermas [ 21] Kurt H. Wolff, Discussion of Wagner, Imber, and Rasmussen [ 27} Ingeborg Katharina Helling, A. Schutz and F. Kaufmann: Sociology Between Science and Interpretation [ 35} Ilja Srubar, On the Origin of 'Phenomenological' Sociology [ 57] Kurt H. Wolff, Surrender-and-Catch and Phenomenology [ 85} Judith Feher, On Surrender, Death, and the Sociology of Knowledge [l05] Funmilayo M. Jones, The Provisional Homecomer [121} Review Section Helmut R. Wagner. Alfred Schutz: An Intellectual Biography (David M. Rasmussen) [143] Burke C. Thomason. Making Sense oj Reification: Alfred Schutz and Constructionist Theory (Timothy Casey) [146] Helmut R. Wagner. Phenomenology oj Consciousness and Sociology oj the Life-world: An Introductory Study [149] The page numbers within square brackets indicate the pagination of this book edition.

PREFACE This issue of Human Studies is dedicated to Alfred Schutz on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death. It also is meant as a fond and admiring salute to one of Schutz's most outstanding students and his intellectual biographer, Helmut R. Wagner, on the occasion ofhis eightieth birthday. The first paper, by Wagner himself, is the first of three that were presented at the session in honor of Alfred Schutz, which was chaired by George Psathas, at the annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society on March 9, 1984 in Boston. It is based on Wagner's intellectual biography of Schutz, reviewed in this issue by David M. Rasmussen, and shows how Wagner found the main conceptual tools of this biography in Schutz's own theoretical work. The second paper, by Jonathan B. Imber, presents a fresh and far-reaching interpretation of Schutz's "The Well-Informed Citizen," and the third, by David M. Rasmussen, compares Schutz with Habermas, especially Habermas's most recent major work, Theory of Communicative Action. The discussion of these three papers by the present author tries to show that they all touch, despite differences in focus and perspec,tive, on a problem in Schutz's conception of phenomenology and social science. In Ingeborg Katharina Helling's essay, the relationship between Alfred Schutz and Felix Kaufmann, and thus the interplay between phenomenology and the positivism of the Vienna Circle, is analyzed. Ilja Srubar's paper, which follows, gives a history of those currents in German social thought that converge on a phenomenological approach to social science, most explicitly presented in Schutz's work. The papers by the present author and by Judith Feher do not have Schutz as their central focus but could not have been written without him. The present author attempts to articulate similarities and differences between phenomenology, particularly in its Schutzian version, and the idea of "surrender-and-catch." In "Surrender, Death, and the Sociology of Knowledge," Feher also moves in this direction, showing affinities with the idea of "surrender" in Schutz's "we-relation," especially as analyzed by Arthur S. Parsons. The final article by Funmilayo M. Jones is based in Schutz's "The Homecomer," which dates back to the time when he also wrote "The Stranger" and "The Well-Informed Citizen" - and Imber's discussion of the latter well serves Jones's. This discussion develops Schutz's presentation by articulating several types of homecomers and, on the basis of her own experiences, carefully describing some of the stages that one of these types goes through. 105/ [VII]

106 [VIII] This issue contains two reviews of books on Alfred Schutz: Rasmussen's afore-mentioned article on Wagner's Alfred Schutz: An Intellectual Biography, and Tim Casey's analysis of Burke C. Thomason's Making Sense of Rei/ication: Alfred Schutz and Constructionist Theory; and it concludes with David Rehorick's review of another recent work by Wagner, Phenomenology of Consciousness and Sociology of the Life-world: An Introductory Study. All contributors to this issue hope that this issue will promote interest in Alfred Schutz's work even further - an interest which has been much stimulated by Helmut Wagner's efforts. Kurt H. Wolff