Abstract
Based on the work of Alfred Schutz, this article develops a theory of intersubjectivity—one of the basic building blocks of social experience—and shows how such a theory can be empirically leveraged in sociological work. Complementing the interactionist and ethnomethodological emphasis on the situated production of intersubjectivity, this paper revisits the basic theoretical assumptions undergirding this theory. Schutz tied intersubjectivity to the way people experience the world of everyday life: a world that he held as distinct from other provinces of meaning, such as religious experience, humor, or scientific reasoning. However, as this article shows, such neat distinctions are problematic for both empirical and theoretical reasons: The cognitive styles that define different provinces of meaning often bleed into one another; people often inhabit multiple provinces of meaning simultaneously. Intersubjectivity may thus be simultaneously anchored in multiple worlds, opening a host of empirical research questions: not only about how intersubjectivity is done in interaction, but about how different kinds of intersubjective experiences are constructed, how multi-layered they are, as well as opening up questions about possible asymmetries in the experiences of intersubjectivity.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
There are other possible starting points for the study of intersubjectivity, from the foundational work of Edmund Husserl, through Max Scheler, Edith Stein or Maurice Merleau-Ponty (see, e.g. Crossley 1996; Duranti, 2010; Reich, 2010). Rather than following each of these starting points, this article hews close to Schutz, seeing his work as particularly generative.
Schutz wasn’t completely consistent in his use of “paramount reality.” At some moments he seems to use it to mean the province of meaning the person is within at that moment. However, in most places, Schutz uses the notion of paramount reality as synonymous to “the working work,” and later, increasingly “the world of everyday life” (Barber, 2017).
The notion of different “zones” that are available to us was central to Schutz, but cannot be explicated here. It became a crucial part of our being as homo faber, as developed by Berger and Luckmann (1967).
For an analysis of multiple worlds that attempts to solve similar questions while still positing the question as primarily that of communication, see Barber (2017).
See also Leder (1990) for a similar argument rooted in the phenomenology of the body.
We note that this also means that we need less recourse to “indirect communication” among provinces, a notion that Schutz adopted from Kierkegaard.
Moreover, and importantly, intersubjective calibrations do not always mean that the other does the same thing that we do. Equating intersubjectivity with alignment risks ignoring the fact that some forms of interactional disruptions are experienced as deeply intersubjectively meaningful (Tavory and Fine 2020).
References
Barber, M. (2017). Religion and Humor as Emancipating Provinces of Meaning. Dodrecht: Springer
DiBenigno, J. (2022). How Idealized Professional Identities Can Persist through Client Interactions. Administrative Science Quarterly, doi:00018392221098954
Benţa, M. I. (2018). Experiencing Multiple Realities: Alfred Schutz’s Sociology of the Finite Provinces of Meaning. London: Routledge
Berger, P. L. (2014). Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience. Walter de Gruyter
Berger, P. L. & Thomas Luckmann. (1967). The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Anchor
Bourdieu, P. (1986). The Forms of Capital. In: Richardson JG (ed.) The Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (pp. 241-258). Greenwood Press.
Cerulo, K. A., & Janet M. Ruane. (2021). Future Imaginings: Public and Personal Culture, Social Location, and the Shaping of Dreams. Sociological Forum, 36, 1345–1370
Cerulo, K. A. & Janet M. Ruane. (2022). Dreams of a Lifetime: How Who We Are Shapes How We Imagine Our Future. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1975). Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: Experiencing Flow in Work and Play. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Crossley, N. (1996). Intersubjectivity: The Fabric of Social Becoming. Thousand Oaks: Sage
Csordas, T. J. (1997). The Sacred Self: A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Healing. Berkeley: University of California Press
Dietze, P., and Eric D. Knowles (2016). Social Class and the Motivational Relevance of Other Human Beings: Evidence from Visual Attention. Psychological Science, 27(11), 1517–1527
Duranti, A. (2010). Husserl, intersubjectivity and anthropology. Anthropological Theory, 10(1–2), 16–35
Fine, G. A. (1983). Shared Fantasy: Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Flaherty, M. G. (1999). A Watched Pot: How We Experience Time. New York: New York University Press
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in Ethnomethodology. Prentice Hall.
Geniusas, S. (2020). Multiple Realities. Revisited: James and Schutz. Human Studies, 43, 545–565
Goffman, E. (1974). Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Harvard University Press
Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press
James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology. London: Macmillan
James, W. (1907). Pragmatism. London: Routledge
Katz, J. (1999). How Emotions Work?. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Koestler, A. (1964). The Act of Creation. London: Hutchinson
Leder, D. (1990). The Absent Body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Lynch, M. (1997). Scientific Practice and Ordinary Action. Ethnomethodology and Social Studies of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Mische, A. (Forthcoming). Futures in Contention: Public Scenarios and Transformative Politics in the Global Arena. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Pollner, M. (1987). Mundane Reason: Reality in Everyday and Sociological Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Pula, B. (2020). From Habitus to Pragma: A Phenomenological Critique of Bourdieu’s Habitus. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 50(3), 248–262
Psathas, G. (2014). Goffman and Schutz on multiple realities. Schutzian phenomenology and hermeneutic traditions (pp. 201–221). Dordrecht: Springer
Reich, W. (2010). Three problems of intersubjectivity—and one solution. Sociological Theory, 28(1), 40–63
Rivera, L. A. (2012). Hiring as Cultural Matching: The Case of Elite Professional Service Firms. American Sociological Review, 77(6), 999–1022
Schegloff, E. A. (1992). Repair after next turn: The last structurally provided defense of intersubjectivity in conversation. American Journal of Sociology, 97(5), 1295–1345
Schutz, A. (1962). In I. Collected Papers (Ed.), The Problem of Social Reality, Maurice Natanson. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff
Schutz, A. (1964). In A. Brodersen (Ed.), Collected Papers II: Studies in Social Theory. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff
Schutz, A. (1967 [1932]). The Phenomenology of the Social World, G. Walsh and F. Lehnert (trans.), Evanston: Northwestern University Press
Schutz, A. (1971). In R. M. Zaner (Ed.), Reflections on the Problem of Relevance. New Haven: Yale University Press
Schutz, A. and Thomas Luckmann (1973). In R. M. Zaner, & T. Engelhardt (trans.) (Eds.), The Structures of the Life-World. Evanston: Northwestern University Press
Shklovsky, V. (1965). Art as Technique. Pp. 3–25 in Russian Formalist Criticism, edited by L. T. Lemon and M. Reiss. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press
Smith, D. E. (1987). The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology. University of Toronto Press
Surak, K. (2017). Rupture and Rhythm: A Phenomenology of National Experiences. Sociological Theory, 35(4), 312–333
Tavory, I. and Gary Alan Fine (2020). Disruption and the theory of the interaction order. Theory and Society, 49(3), 365–385
Tavory, I. and Daniel Winchester (2012). Experiential Careers: The Routinization and De-Routinization of Religious Life. Theory and Society, 41(4), 351–373
Thompson, E. P. (1967). Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism. Past and Present, 38, 56–97
Timmermans, S. and Iddo Tavory (2012). Theory Construction in Qualitative Research: From Grounded Theory to Abductive Analysis. Sociological Theory, 30(3), 167–186
Acknowledgements
I thank Paul DiMaggio, Nina Eliasoph, Jack Katz, Besnik Pula, Erika Summers-Effler, Stefan Timmermans, and members of the Helsinki department of sociology for their comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript. The paper was developed as a response to the “reading slowly” theory reading group at NYU’s department of sociology. I thank Ankit Bhardwaj, Sabrina Dycus, Steven Lukes, Sonia Prelat, Nick Rekenthaler, Claire Sieffert, and Abigail Westberry, for reading along with me.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The author declares that they have no conflict of interest. The research for this paper was not supported by any external funding.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Tavory, I. A theory of intersubjectivity: experience, interaction and the anchoring of meaning. Theor Soc 52, 865–884 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-022-09507-y
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-022-09507-y