Introduction

Consistent with the phenomenological spirit, the writings of Alfred Schutz are ardently proscientific. At the same time, they provide an essential critique that seeks to ground social science in human subjectivity. A significant share of Schutz's work was methodological in a philosophical sense. It aimed to connect the empirical work of the social sciences to the life-world, the reality of everyday life, a prescientific endeavor. Along those lines, Schutz and Luckmann argue social science should begin where phenomenology ends. They state, “The sciences that would interpret and explain human action must begin with a description of the foundational structure of what is prescientific” (Schutz and Luckmann 1973, 3). Additional support for Schutz's (2011a, 60) contention that phenomenology is a prescientific undertaking can be found in a note written to Talcott Parsons in March 1941 concerning Parsons’ (1937) The Structure of Social Action. Schutz states, “I realized immediately the importance and the value of your system and also the fact that it starts exactly where my own book (Phenomenology of the Social World) ends.” Further support can be found in Schutz's letter to Felix Kaufmann dated September 25, 1945, where Schutz again situates his phenomenological writing. He writes, “My ambition would be to finish, where you begin” (2011b, 213). As for Schutz's ideas about empirical methods, the situation is more complicated.

Schutz was curiously silent about how social scientists should collect data. About such matters, he seems to defer instead to established scientific principles and standards for evidence (1962a, 37). In the absence of statements about empirical methodology, readers are left to infer what he intended. This resulted in two important but related outcomes. First, some sociologists came to frame Schutz as antiscientific, advocating for intuition over empirical method (Schutz 1962b, 99). Second, Schutzian phenomenology also became connected with so-called qualitative research that prioritizes people's accounts of their everyday experiences. Much of this research, it seems, only articulates and categorizes the themes of subjective or lived experiences voiced by their participants (Falvo et al. 2021). Whatever the usefulness of these practices, they have often become equated in a taken-for-granted way as what Schutz intended for the social sciences.