Alfred Schütz’s approach
Schütz thought about…
Q. How do we perceive and understand social life?
Q. How do we communicate our understanding to others?
(cf. Alfred Schütz (1899-1959)
Q. Compare next three pictures. What are they?
(1) The Stranger in a crowd.
(2) Complex representation of airplane route in the US
(3) Simplification of the London city airport link map.
• Illustration (1) is the scene you may experience in the everyday life.
• Illustration (2) tried to understand airplane routes on the map, but it is too complex for the people to understand.
• On the contrary, Illustration (3) provides an example of how it is possible to bridge the gap between everyday life and social science. (Smith 1998:18)
• What social science tries to do is to understand or to explain our complex social life in a simple way.