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Human Studies
Published in: Human Studies 2/2008

01-06-2008 | Research Paper

A Continuing Dialogue with Alfred Schutz

Author: Hisashi Nasu

Published in: Human Studies | Issue 2/2008

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Excerpt

Let me begin by describing my encounter and connection with the work of Alfred Schutz.1 I discovered his work during the preparation for my master’s thesis on Max Weber’s verstehende Soziologie, submitted to the Graduate School of Waseda University in 1976. Before then, the name of Alfred Schutz had not found a place in my memory. Until 1976, there was just a little Japanese paper on Schutz (cf. Website of the Schutz Archives in Waseda University. http://​www.​waseda.​jp/​Schutz). When I discovered the first edition of his masterpiece, Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (Schutz 1932), in our University library, I took it out, read it as carefully as possible, and realized that it was very important and relevant to my research project for a master’s thesis. I could not, however, deal with it at that time, because Schutz’s studies in this book, especially in its Chapter 2, were so fundamental, elaborate, and ingenious that I had no confidence that I could treat them sufficiently. …
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Footnotes
1
A part of this section is a revised version of my essay in Human Studies (Nasu 2002).
 
2
A volume has been published from the three conferences in Tokyo, Konstanz, and Oregon, to celebrate the centennial of the birth of Alfred Schutz (Endress et al. 2005).
 
3
As for Schutz’s postulates of scientific constructs, see Nasu (2005). For his attempt to restrict the fundamental concepts of sociology, see Nasu (1998).
 
4
Schutz said clearly that “methodology is not a preceptor or the tutor of the scientist, but always his pupil.” It is great masters in the scientific field who could “teach the methodologists how to proceed. … the methodologist has to ask intelligent questions about the technique” of the science involved (Schutz 1943, p. 88).
 
5
For describing these processes sufficiently and adequately, the topics of “monothetic and polythetic constituting” and the “passive synthesis of identification” become most important topics (See Kersten 1976).
 
6
On more detailed accounts of Schutz’s theory of relevance, see Embree (1977), Srubar (1988), Srubar (1994), and Nasu (1999).
 
7
The idea of characterizing Schutz’s work as a sociology of knowledge is not original with me. S. Hekmann has already insisted that “it is plausible that the entire corpus of Schutz’s work has been defined as a sociology of knowledge” (Hekmann 1986, p. 27). The well-known work of Berger and Luckmann (1967) has tried to take over substantially and develop Schutz’s sociological work as a “sociology of knowledge.” They insisted that the sociology of knowledge must concern itself with whatever passes for “knowledge” in a society, regardless of the ultimate validity or invalidity of such “knowledge.” Not only is the focus on theoretical thought unduly restrictive for the sociology of knowledge, it is also unsatisfactory (cf. Chap. 3, pp. 14–15). This is exactly Schutz’s view. The exploration in their work, especially in its Part 1, is indeed heavily influenced by Schutz, but their work can be also characterized as a kind of conceptual eclecticism. Endress and Psathas have already examined the relation between Schutz and Mannheim intensively, emphasizing their similarities (Endress 1999) and their differences (Psathas 2003).
 
8
Regarding Schutz in Vienna in general as well as in the Mises Seminar in particular, see Wagner (1983) and Barber (2004).
 
9
As for a distinction between “selection” of “problematic possibilities” from “open possibilities” and “choice” from “problematic possibilities” or “true alternatives,” see, for instance (Schutz 1951, pp. 77–78), also (Nasu 1997, pp. 29, 44, 108–109).
 
10
His “stock of knowledge” has nothing to do with Machlup’s “stock of knowledge” which Machlup used in comparison to a “flow of knowledge” (Machlup 1979).
 
11
The term “relationship” in this sentence was chosen for an English translation of “Seinsverbundenheit” by the translators, L. Wirth and E. Shils.
 
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Metadata
Title
A Continuing Dialogue with Alfred Schutz
Author
Hisashi Nasu
Publication date
01-06-2008
Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Published in
Human Studies / Issue 2/2008
Print ISSN: 0163-8548
Electronic ISSN: 1572-851X
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-008-9080-2

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