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BOOK REVIEWS

The Structures of the Life-World. By ALFRED SCHÜTZ and THOMAS LUCKMANN.

Translated by Richard M. Zaner and H. Tristram Engelhardt. Jr. London:
Heinemann Educational Books, 1974. Pp. xxix + 335. £4 cloth, £2 paper.

In 1959 when Alfred Schiitz died he left incomplete a work which he intended
would bring together his investigations into the structures of the life-world.
What he left included an outline, references to published works. drafts and
aide-memoires. Recognizing that he could not realize Sch6tz’s own intentions.
Thomas Luckmann undertook to finish the work Schutz had begun. This book is
the first volume of the project.
The first sentence of Chapter One indicates the problem and the direction of
the investigations. ’The sciences that would interpret and explain human action
and thought must begin with a description of the foundational structures of what
is prescientific, the reality which seems self-evident to men remaining within the
natural attitude’ (p. 3). (t should note here that the analysis of action is contained
in the second volume of this work.) In this chapter (’The Everyday Life-World
and the Natural Attitude’), Schutz and Luckmann sketch the basic properties of
the life-world and the structure of thinking. I see these properties as central to
the direction of the analysis, so I concentrate my attentions here.
Schutz and Luckmann begin by noting that everyone and every action is
grounded in and of the natural attitude. From the outset the world is given
(known) intersubjectively. Intersubjectivity is based on a world that is know in
common. Because the analysis proceeds in part from the subjectvice. I include
the following quotation to indicate the relationship between the subjective and
the objective. The key here is of course the phenomenological understanding of
intentionality.
Since we cannot here enter into the phenomenological problem of the constitution of
intersubjectivity. we must be content with the statement that in the natural attitude of
everyday life the following is taken for granted without question: (a) the corporeal exis-
tence of other men: (b) that these bodies are endowed with consciousness essentially
similarto my own; (c) that the things in the outer world inciudec! in my environs and that of
my fellow-men are the same for us and have fundamentally the same meaning: (d) that I
can enter into interrelations and reciprocal actions with my fellow-men: (e) that I can make

myself understood to them (which follows from the preceding assumptions): (f) that a
stratified social and cultural world is historically pregiven as a frame of references for me
and my fellow-men. indeed in a manner as taken for granted as the ’natural BB orlù’: (g) that
therefore the situation in which I find myself at any moment is only to a small extent purely
created by me. [P. 5.]

The relationship between consciousness and natural objects, that is. the way
natural objects are transformed into cultural objects, is through meaning-strata
(p. 6). The analysis begins with a thinking subject who ’selects’ out of experi-
ence, through the process of reflection, a project conceived in order to accom-
plish something. The in-order-to motive leads to action which is known to
reflection as an act. The meaning of the act is formulated through a because-
motive. From the point of view of consciousness, meaning is only available in
reflection. This locates the sociologist’s analysis as based unreflectively on the
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lived experience of the natural attitude. The structures of the life-world both
make possible, and are the sense of, experience.
Schutz and Luckmann show that one of the structures of thinking is that
experience is known from the outset typically, and that these types are
sedimented as a stock of knowledge which is a resource for explicating the
world. The fundamental validity (constancy) of knowledge (world) is provided
for by the idealizations of ‘and so forth’ and ‘I can do it again’ (p. 7). They stress
that any explication is only ’until further notice’, and that the life-world is not a
closed logical system. Knowledge is given as sedimented group and biographical
knowledge. This raises the problem of co-ordinated action. Lived experience is
an horizon of determinable indeterminacy (p. 9), the totality of which is co-given
in the flow of experience. In routine action indeterminacy is given as the
background to determinacy. Generally action is routine and carried out through
recipes which are guided by the structure of relevance in individual or group
projects. When routine experience is interrupted, explication is occasioned. In
addition to what is immediately grasped in consciousness, are past and antici-
pated future experiences. This retrospective-prospective sense of occurrence is
one feature of the explication of the situation at hand. This is given in the notion
of horizon, where, for example, the perceived front of a mushroom intends its
back, etc. (p.- 11). It is incongruity which ’explodes’ (p. 11) the taken-for-
granted ; the break is healed in explication based on typically known and moti-
vated stock of knowledge. Life is then an horizon of constantly explicated and
potentially explicatable events. It is unlimited because of the horizonal reflexiv-
ity in, of and through consciousness and things.
Intersubjectivity presents itself as a subjective meaning-context (p. 1 ). That
is, understanding appears to be the work of my consciousness. This is so even
though explications consist of and rest upon objectifications of human inten-
tions, i.e., sign-systems and language (p. 16) which are prior to my conscious-
ness. Other is given to my acts of consciousness. Although my consciousness is
perspectival, in part from standpoint and in part on the basis of biography (p. 1 b).
such differences occasioned by perspective and knowledge are ignored for the
purposes of interaction at hand (see assumptions of reciprocity of perspective
and motivation). The life-world is both open to modification and given as
unalterable (p. 18).
Chapter Two, ’The Stratifications of the Life-World’, delineates the prov-
inces of reality and the temporal, spatial and social stratifications of the
life-world. Much of this can be found in the previously published writings of
Schutz.
Chapter Three. ’Knowledge of the Life-World’, outlines in detail stock of
knowledge, levels of familiarity of knowledge and the phenomenon of interrup-
tions of knowledge. It includes an unsatisfactory (for reasons given below)
section on the acquisition of knowledge. A second part of the chapter deals with
the important issue of relevance. This material has been previously published in
another form in Reflec-tiotis on the Problem of Re/eB’ance. I find the formulation
in the earlier publication more interesting, because its incompleteness more
clearly suggests areas which need work. (See, for example, evaluation of short-
comings and further problems. R.P.R., pp. 71-74.)
The final chapter. ’ Knowledge and Society’ , is an interesting but problematic
formulation to wed the structures of the life-world and social structure. This is
dealt with more fully below.
I turn now to one of the most interesting and yet problematic issues raised in
the book. This is the relationship between thinking (subjectivity), structures of
the life-world and social structure. What follows is a sketch of the argument and
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a presentation of several problematic areas. These issues are important for a

more fully developed phenomenologically based sociology.
The general issue is an analysis which can account for the life-world in terms
of product and process andprovide the links to the content of the social worid.
Schatz and Luckmann conceive the world primarily as product, and do not
provide the links to content (here, social structure). The analysis proceeds in
terms of such products as type, knowledge, etc., while recognizing them as
embedded in the flow of lived experience (p. 124). The issue I raise is the
implication of recognizing, but not topicalizing, process. The problem of proc-
ess can be seen in their formulation in which they discuss modification of type
in consciousness, the effecting of coincidence between types and how coordi-
nated interaction (intersubjective coincidence of type, etc.) is possible.

Product
That knowledge is conceived as product is evident in the discussion of knowl-
edge as sedimented. In the section on the acquisition of knowledge, Schatz and
Luckmann argue that acquisition can be conceived to be the discovery of the
steps of polythetic constitution in the now monothetically given knowledge.
This reconstruction attempts to capture what was ’carried off (p. 120). Analo-
gously to deriving the Pythagorean theorem (p. 121), they suggest the nature of
the possible reconstruction of the polythetic steps of derivation and establish the
principle of reconstruction of these steps. This analogy both implies an emphasis
on product and contains, inherently, a linear conception of time. This is con-
tradictory to other formulations, which suggest experiences as unity and total-
ity, a present given with past and future. (This is recognized even on p. I?0.)
The Geographical Metaphor
The problem of articulation of products is also raised in the following discussion.
The life world is thus grasped with the help of the stock of knowledge. much in the way one
locates himself in a countryside with the aid of maps. The explanation of signs. descrip-
tions of places etc. are taken from the now prevailing ’objective’ geography. [P. 181.]

Two important issues here are the following: one, that use of the maps, i.e..how
the map articulates with the situational hand, is not explicated: and two. an
extreme reading suggests that the articulation is made under a correspondence
theory of meaning (cf. p. ! 80). Again, this would be contrary to other presenta-
tions of how meaning is given.
PJ’()1’lllC’C’.S’ pt’Rc·crlitv
In their analysis of provinces of reality. Schutz and Luckmann also emphasize
an analysis in terms of product, i.e., the concrete idea of boundaries. The
movement from one province to another occurs through a ’leap’ given as a shift
of accent. (Note also the different cognitive styles proposed here.) Transitions
from one province of meaning to another may concretely occur in many ways.
For example, the transition from dreaming to wide-awake may occur through
falling out of bed. But theoretically such shifts must be conceived to account for
less startling transitions, such as those experienoed in a Robbe-Grillet novel. or a
Bunuel film. where transitions (from wide-awake to dream) may be unknown
except and until it is too late or never known at all. While in one sense it can be
argued that these examples are artifacts of other realities (books, films), this
simply illustrates the problem, because reading a book and viewing a film are
unproblematically wide-awake activities. While the analysis in terms of prov-
inces gives analytic power to one aspect of the phenomenon, it ignores the
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structures which must be common to all provinces. It raises the question of

whether there are two orders of analysis here, where analysis of provinces of
reality are founded on basic structures of the life-world and/or consciousness.
The analysis of provinces of reality, of explication as something which proceeds
by steps, leaves unanswered how these phenomena are possible.
Effecting of Coincidence of Stock of Knowledge and Objects inlof the World
(a) In Consciousnoss
The analytic problem of the effecting of coincidence between stock of knowl-
edge and objects in the world, for Schutz and Luckmann, is shown in the
theory’s inability to account for the special problems of the child’s world and the
world of pathological realities. Indeed, they are specifically excluded (p. 21)
from the analysis. When the acquisition of knowledge by children is dealt with it
is handled by another level of analysis (social psychology). They are asserting
that things are ’learned’ through a process of sedimentation. The gloss for the
learning is given as ’an empathic assimilation of social model’ (p. 261). Another
solution is that other, by considering certain things as ’obvious’, imparts them to
the child (p. 260). These are high-level glosses which obscure the process of how
knuwledge is acquired. Starting with the ’normal’ wide-awake adult, pp.
11l)-13~ announce the problem, and a consideration of modification of knowl-
edge in adults does not address the problem of how knowledge is acquired and
modified, but only shows that it is as products (step-by-step).
The problem of process is also evident in their consideration of the new and
atypical. An atypical situation is typically known through step-by-step explica-
tion. The atypical is given at least with a kernel of the typical. The world is
always known, but how (the process by which) it is known is still a mystery in the
I
new.’

(b) Between Illdit’iduals

The effecting of coincidence between individuals is provided for by an assumed
reciprocity of perspectives and motivations under which biographical and per-
spectival differences are disregarded for the purposes at hand. However, if
knowledge for the subject is constantly changing, and being modified in the flow
of the life-world, does the kernel of typicality constitute a sufficient link to make
possible coordinated interaction between individuals? The question raised here
is the relationship between contexted (minimally by perspective and biography)
information and context-free structures of the life-world. The reflexivity inher-
ent in the modified and modifying relationship between knowledge and concrete
objects and individuals ignores a central structure, namely. the reflexivity. The
self-organizing character of situations, and the interpretive work, can not be
dealt with in the Schiitz-Luckmann formulation.

Language and the Social

While the analysis often proceeds from subjectivity, the effecting of coincidence
is given originally objectively in language. Work in the world is in and through
language (medium).
..

To prevent from mistaking these Objects of thought as results of a contrat social, it

one
must be emphasized that they are already encountered in language by every individual
born into a historical situation. [P. 60.]

1 New knowledge seems to be given as ontologically possible rather than as generated by

structures of the life-world.
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The origin of knowledge is social (p. 263), meaning-contexts are objective (p. 89)
and objectifications are the embodiment of subjective processes in the world.
With the latter man’s modification of the world is made possible, and the circle
from objective to subjective is closed and the structure effaced.
In the book the subjective aspects of knowledge are emphasized and the
features of language central to the effecting of coincidence are under-
emphasized. In the final chapter language is conceived to be the ’way of being
independent of specific fellow men and what is immediately given’ (p. 200).
While this is undeniably an important observation for the social function of
language, it is not an analysis of the features of language which make this
phenomenon possible. The emphasis on the private misses the common.
This brings me to the central tension in the book, which can be conceived as
the tension between structure and content. The problem is given in the gap
between structure and the content of lived experience. The solution offered to
this problem fails to grapple with the fundamental insights of the investigations
of the structures of the life-world. A clear theme of social structure as a solution
is evident in the following:

Through events of intersubjective mirroring he (the child) ’learns’ relevant aspects of the
social structure, and he ’internalizes’ the relative-natural world view. [P. 246.12
It is naturally the task of empirical ethnology and sociology to describe the concrete
’contents’ of the social construction of biographical categories, and to establish causal
hypotheses about the connection of certain forms with certain ecological, demographic
and institutional factors. [P. 94.]

Schiitz and Luckmann also suggest a survey of social reality (p. 327). and
typically median values (p. 250), with both their substantive and correspondence
meaning-assumptions and grounds.
These suggest either a shift from structures of the life-world to social struc-
tures or an unexplicated relationship between the two. In either case. I cannot
see them as possibilities which are faithful to the original assumptions of the
book. Minimally, the theoretical links between structure and content would
have to be argued. While the ideal-type analysis did not specify the process, its
centrality was recognized as a constituent feature of lived experience. At the
level of social structure, process-indeed. the life-world-is unavailable. It is
the unfounded science referenced in the opening sentence.
The questions that I have raised here about the book are these: how is the
life-world grounded? and how is social structure related to an analysis presented
as structures of the life-world? If, as Schutz and Luckmann claim, knowledge of
the world is opaque and life is a continuous explication, then inlor what is the
possibility for knowing to be finally resolved, and what is the relation of this to
the content of the life-world as we know it? These issues are raised and left as
unresolved tensions in the book.
In this review, I have chosen to emphasize these unresolved issues. The
assured importance of this book is in the dialectical relationship it maintains to
the previously published writings of SchOtz. in terms of what is here solved and
what here remains to be solved; thus the directions for continued work are
provided.
University of Toronto ROBERT MACKAY

2 This is a direct tie to the social psychology of Cooley. See p. 67.