Phenomenological sociology

Phenomenological sociology is a kind of understanding sociology whose supporters characterize society as a phenomenon that has been created and is constantly being recreated in the spiritual interaction of individuals. The phenomenological philosophy was founded by Edmund Husserl. Engaging in the development of radical concepts, he wanted to create a philosophy that would address the source of our experience and knowledge. He believed that scientific knowledge is increasingly moving away from reality, and that phenomenology can restore such a connection. After 50 years, Husserl's argument was used by several other sociologists and aimed at eliminating an established social theory, especially against structural functionalism, which was considered detached from social life and experience.

The phenomenological philosophy of science was also studied by another famous person, Alfred Schütz, who was a disciple of Edmund Husserl. Being influenced by symbolic interactionism and the ideas of the American pragmatic theory, A. Schutz attempted to combine these two directions with a phenomenological understanding, which is vividly reflected in his main work - "The Phenomenology of the Social World." Another significant phenomenological social study is the work of T. Luckman and P. Berger "Social Construction of Reality." The beginning of their work is a phenomenological analysis of everyday knowledge, which is almost always inherent in typing. In their essence, knowledge is always directed at solving certain practical problems. Further, Lukman and Berger argue that practical knowledge is produced by individuals who are affected by the entire amount of knowledge produced by other people.

The emergence of phenomenological sociology in literary sources is often associated with the confrontation of positivism, naturalism, structural functionalism with empiricism. To some extent, this is true. And yet, in order for phenomenological sociology to emerge, there were other important reasons, some of which were in the logic of the development of the whole sociological science. One of the main reasons is the need to study the social world as the everyday, the so-called everyday world of the individual. Here, there is an individual who knows how to feel, experience, and strive to achieve something. Proceeding from this, the social world, being the object of sociological research, turned into a world of subjective experience, in other words, a phenomenal world. Now the social world is a vital world of people whose actions have a subjective meaning and completely depend on those objects that affect them. Here such a world of life should also be studied by phenomenological sociology.

Modern phenomenology in sociology, and in particular its supporters, is guided by the fact that the surrounding (external) world of people is the result of their creation of consciousness. Without denying the existence of an objective world, sociologists believe that it becomes important to people only when they perceive it real, and also when it turns from an objective external to people's inner subjective. In this case, individuals perceive not so much the world itself as its phenomena, ie, phenomena. Phenomenological sociology in this case has one main task - to find out, understand and know how people organize (structured) the phenomena of the perceived world in their minds, and then embody their knowledge of the world in everyday life. To make it more convenient to solve such a problem, along with phenomenological sociology, the sociology of knowledge is applied. Thus, phenomenological sociology is interested not so much in the objective world of social processes and phenomena, as in the way that the world and numerous structures perceive ordinary people in their daily lives. That is why we can confidently say that supporters of this direction set themselves the following goal: to comprehend and understand the world in its spiritual being.