Abstract
The intentionality of perceiving social objects has a multiple directional structure. This main hypothesis requires a redefinition of theme, thematic field, context, and social relevance. Subsequently, social types and typificatory processes are shown to be intrinsically related to social inconsistencies and their intersubjective solution by incipient events.
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References
The vague contours of social objects are a central theme in poetry and literature. But descriptive studies in sociology (Goffman, Anselm Strauss, et al) have dealt with this problem, too. For example: Glaser and Strauss describe “the tendency to treat a recently deceased kinsman as if he were still alive,” a tendency which takes into account “the deceased person’s awareness.” They illustrate: though the immediately attendable “living body” has vanished, it may still be constituted as a social object of extremely vague contours. B. G. Glaser and A. L. Strauss, Awareness of Dying, ( Chicago, Aldine, 1965 ), p. 114.
Schütz has written a most admirable paper on “Don Quixote and the Problem of Reality,” Coll. Pap., vol. 2, pp. 135–158.
George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self and Society ( Chicago, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1934 ), p. 150.
This assumption is practically self-evident for any sociological study of major social problems. But theoretically it raises some important methodological questions. Husserl and Peirce both accepted that assumption. Husserl defended it with his basic notion of the horizonal character of every experience. (“Die typische Vorbekanntheit jedes einzelnen Gegenstandes der Erfahrung.” Erfahrung und Urteil, pp. 26ff.) — Peirce developed the negation of his own question: “Whether there is any cognition not determined by a previous cognition?” (Coll. Pap., 5.258), into a critique of the Cartesian notion of the priority of first and ultimate origins. (Coll. Pap., 5.264–314, published in 1868 ).
For the rôle of language in this process of reconstructing social reality in marriage see: Peter L. Berger and Hansfried Kellner, Marriage and the Construction of Social Reality, Diogenes 46, 1964, pp. 13ff.
This is a notion of Anselm Strauss. See his Mirrors and Masks ( Glencoe, Free Press, 1959 ), p. 66.
Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (Garden City, Doubleday, 1966), pp. 29ff.
The second of Festinger’s “basic hypotheses” for his theory of cognitive disso¬nance has thus been established for the case of a permanent gap. “When dissonance is present, in addition to trying to reduce it, the person wül actively avoid situations and informations which would likely increase the dissonance.” Leon Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Stanford, Stanford Univ. Press, 1957), p. 3.
The term is close to G. H. Mead’s notion of “emergent event.” See esp. his Philosophy of the Present (LaSalle, Open Court, 1959), p. 23. Starting from this point, the notion of social temporality wül be developed later.
For a detailed presentation of this notion see: Husserl, Ideen, vol. 1, chap. 1. A concise summary may be found in Schütz, Coll. Pap., vol. 1, p. 114.
Schütz’ theory of “finite provinces of meaning” (Coll. Pap., vol. 1, pp. 229–234) is the result of that method.
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© 1970 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Grathoff, R.H. (1970). Social Inconsistencies and Social Types. In: The Structure of Social Inconsistencies. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-3215-5_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-3215-5_4
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