THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF ALFRED SCHUTZ (1899-1959) TO THE EVOLUTION OF PHENOMENOLOGY

Abstract

Alfred Schutz is known for developing and expanding on Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, particularly in the realm of the social sciences. While Husserl focused on the structures of consciousness and how objects are perceived, Schutz applied phenomenology to the understanding of the social world, emphasizing how people make sense of their everyday experience. This paper highlighted the contributions of Alfred Schutz to the evolution of phenomenology. Alfred Schutz brought the term, phenomenology into the field of sociology and applied it to address and provide solutions to the problems of society. The key concepts in Alfred Schutz’s phenomenology include life-world, intersubjectivity, stock of knowledge and typifications. Phenomenology in sociology developed around symbolic interactionism and the idea that society is made by people rather than the other way round. The methodology used for this paper is content analysis and the sources of data are secondary. This paper notes that Alfred Schutz’s work emphasizes that the subjective experience of social reality will continue to be influential in the field of sociology.