The question of “what is phenomenology?” was asked by Merleau-Ponty (2002) at the beginning of the Phenomenology of Perception, and phenomenology is still seen today as multifaceted, complex and evolving. The effect is that phenomenological research can take many forms and the debate continues within the social sciences as to what constitutes
‘true’ phenomenological research (Caelli, 2001; Giorgi, 2000). This is in part because phenomenology is both a theoretical, as well as a methodological approach to studying experience (Kerry & Armour, 2000). The previous chapter discussed the philosophical underpinnings of phenomenology associated with this study; this section highlights phenomenology as a methodological approach drawing particularly from Giorgi’s (1989, 1997, 2009) descriptive phenomenological method.
3.3.1 Principles of Phenomenological Research
The ‘phenomenological method’ is, however, not really a method per se, at least not in the traditional meaning of a research method, for example interviewing. Instead the phenomenological method is more of an approach that embraces a whole way of thinking and being; a whole worldview or Weltanschauung; a way of thinking that is characterised by an attitude of openness, curiosity and a sense of wonderment; the phenomenological attitude (Allen-Collinson, 2009, 2016).
The phenomenological attitude can be understood by contrasting it with phenomenologists term the ‘natural attitude’ of everyday life. Within the natural attitude, the world is as Schütz and Luckmann (1973, p. 4) note “taken for granted and self-evidently real” where we do not question many features of our world. As Merleau-Ponty (2002, p.
xv) maintains, however, in order for us to see the world phenomenologically we need to
“break with our familiar acceptance of it”, taking a step back, temporarily allowing us to
73 watch with wonder the mysteries and paradoxes of the world. This requires a suspension (as far as possible) of our ‘adult’ knowledge and preconceptions to once again allow us to gaze upon the world with fresh, naïve eyes in order “to provide rich, textured detailed descriptions of phenomena as they are lived and experienced by participants in actual concrete situations without an overemphasis on accounting for and theorising these”
(Allen-Collinson, 2011b, p. 51). How this is done in empirical phenomenology is neither easily described nor practiced, especially as the different strands of phenomenology have their own distinctive ethos and principles. Giorgi (1985, 1997, 2009), however, notes that there are certain core characteristics, or qualities, derived from Husserlian phenomenology that can provide researchers with a helpful guiding structure for employing the phenomenological approach. These core characteristics are:
i. Intentionality. A key Husserlian concept critically developed by Merleau-Ponty, intentionality highlights how consciousness is always conscious of something; it is thus intentional, directed towards someone or something (object or idea), so that intentionality brings said thing into frame. As Sokolowski (2000, p. 8) notes “[e]very act of consciousness, every experience, is correlated with an object. Every intending has its intended object”. It is thus argued, that a thing must present itself to us as something recognisable within our schema of the world, for it to be perceived and recognised at all. Intentionality allows us to explain how the same things can be experienced very differently by different people. Allen-Collinson (2016) uses the example of being out running and perceiving a dark shadow as a bear, while her running partner perceives the same dark shadow as a deer. As a result, their corporeal reactions to the same dark shadow will be very different. For Merleau-Ponty (2002) intentionality has two forms: intentionality of acts, when we consciously and actively take up a position; and operative intentionality, a form of pre-reflective intentionality, a tacit, background noise to our lives which can only be ‘placed in the light’
via the phenomenological reduction (Allen-Collinson, 2016).
ii. Epochē, bracketing and eidetic reduction. As Nesti (2004, p. 41) notes “phenomenology requires the researcher and the subject5 to maintain their penetrating gaze at the
5 ‘participant’ would be the more usual term in sociological-phenomenology
74 phenomenon under consideration, without moving off target and starting to try and account for its existence”. In order to focus this penetrating gaze, descriptive phenomenologists following Husserl’s (1983, 1999) exhortation ‘to return to the things themselves’, attempt to suspend as far as possible their own ‘natural attitude’. This
‘attitudinal suspension’ (Zahavi, 2018) is sought via the process of epochē (derived from the Greek: to stand aside from, or keep a distance from), via which phenomenologists aim temporarily to set aside their tacit assumptions about a phenomenon, for example, competitive swimming. This methodological step allows them to approach said phenomenon freshly, without prejudgment, seeking to cut through the layers of received knowledge, ideas and assumptions that envelop it in both every day and ‘scientific’ thinking (McNarry et al., 2019), to arrive at and describe the essential characteristics of said phenomenon (Allen-Collinson, 2016). With the natural attitude suspended (as far as possible) via epochē, eidetic reduction is used to make sense of what remains, to reduce the phenomenon to an exemplar of an essence or an eidos (Giorgi, 1997; Langdridge, 2017).
Husserl’s notion of the epochē has however been criticised by those working from an existential or hermeneutic position, due to the inherent idealism in Husserl’s notion of the transcendental ego and the ability to completely bracket out the world and all personal assumptions, preconceptions and interpretations. In the present study, as it is for others working with sociological phenomenology, I am in agreement with Merleau-Ponty (2002) that the full epochē is an impossibility as we can never fully remove ourselves from our culture/social structure. We can however, via the epoche, make best efforts reflexively to be aware of our assumptions and standpoints, and to render these explicit (Allen-Collinson, 2009). Although complete bracketing is thus an impossibility, Husserl’s notion of epochē is useful as it can encourage a more self-critical and reflective approach to research to be adopted. A detailed description of how the epochē was engaged with in this study is presented in section 3.4.
iii. Description. Given the significance of the relationship between perceiver and perceived in phenomenology, description is never a merely abstract recording of phenomena devoid of reference to the person perceiving and recording them (Allen-Collinson, 2009). While all phenomenology is descriptive in the sense of aiming to describe rather than explain, differing phenomenological traditions do distinguish between descriptive versus
75 interpretive or hermeneutic phenomenology (Finlay, 2009). For those who follow a Husserlian approach with its aim to ‘go back to the things themselves’ (zu den Sachen selbst), description involves portraying the essential core characteristic(s) and meaning(s) of an experience without resorting to more abstract intellectualisation and theorisation.
However, for many phenomenologists who followed in Husserl’s footsteps, including Merleau-Ponty, attaining Husserl’s level of ‘pure’ description was deemed an impossibility (Allen-Collinson, 2009, 2016). Alternatively, for those who follow a Heideggerian, hermeneutic stance, were “the meaning of phenomenological description as a method lies in interpretation” (Heidegger, 1962, p. 37), interpretation is seen as an inescapable, and inevitable part of human Dasein, of our being-in-the-world. To Heidegger we experience a thing as something that has already been interpreted (Finlay, 2009). There is of course, as many would argue, no hard or fixed boundaries between description and interpretation and it is thus more apt to employ a descriptive-interpretive continuum, as neither ‘pure’
description or interpretation would makes sense within many forms of phenomenology (Finlay, 2009; Giorgi, 1997). Such a dichotomy, should it exist, would also be in opposition to the open, non-dualistic thinking that underpins phenomenology as a philosophy and methodology.
iv. Essences: For Husserl (1965, pp. 5-6) a central aim of phenomenology was the discovery of the universal essences of experience, in order to create a “systematic and disciplined methodology for the derivation of knowledge”. An essence is the sine qua non of a thing but is often misunderstood as a concept. As Giorgi (1997, p. 240) argues “the term essence has a negative connotation in scientific circles, but for Husserl it does not refer to Platonic substances nor simply to word analyses”. Rather an essence is best described as the essential meaning(s) of an object, without which it would cease to be recognisable to the perceiver as that particular phenomenon (Giorgi, 1997). For existential or sociological phenomenologists, however, any universality of existence of essences outside of sociocultural frameworks is highly problematic (Allen-Collinson, 2016). The ‘essence’ is therefore more about seeking generalities or typical structures as opposed to making a definitive statement about its invariance (Allen-Collinson, 2011b).
76 These then are the core characteristics within the philosophical phenomenological approach, as illuminated by Giorgi (1989, 1997). Giorgi (1985, 1997) additionally offers a way of operationalising phenomenology in order to satisfy these characteristics. Giorgi’s approach is widely used in empirical phenomenological research (Creswell & Poth, 2018;
Moustakas, 1994) and its strength lies not only in its grounding in phenomenological foundations but in Giorgi’s focus on seeking and analysing people’s experiences whilst still remaining faithful to the full complexity of the participants’ descriptions (Giorgi, 2009;
Webster-Wright, 2010). It is for this reason that the current study draws influence from Giorgi’s (1985, 1997) approach that advocates:
1. the collection of concrete descriptions of phenomena from an insider perspective;
2. the adoption of the phenomenological attitude;
3. initial impressionistic readings of the descriptions in order to gain a feel for the whole;
4. in-depth re-reading of these descriptions as part of a lengthy process of data immersion, to identify themes and sub-themes; and
5. the production of general statements of the essential patterns or structure(s) of the experiences.
Although originally devised to investigate psychological phenomenon, others have noted that it can also be applied to the study of sociological and sporting phenomena (for example: Allen-Collinson, 2009; Kerry & Armour, 2000; Ravn & Høffding, 2017), and any method that can provide rich, in-depth, detailed descriptions of participants own concrete, subjective lived experiences, has the potential to generate data to which phenomenologically inspired analysis can be applied. For example, phenomenological analyses have been applied to data derived from a wide spectrum of methods including semi-structured interviews and autoethnography. The methodological tools that have been selected as appropriate to this study will be detailed later in this chapter (see sections 3.4 - 3.7), but for now it should be cautioned that any tight prescription of method(s) would run counter to the open nature of phenomenology. Phenomenology is highly complex, constituted of several different strands meshed together in a tangled web (Ehrich, 1999) and as Mortari and Tarozzi (2010, p. 9) note “there is no place for phenomenological orthodoxy, or for so-called purism”. With this in mind, what Giorgi offers is not a rigid methodological step by step process to be followed strictly, but a set of guiding principles to be shaped according to the needs of the project. Figure 3.1 therefore shows how these
77 guiding principles were adapted and used within this current project, highlighting the cyclical nature of the approach, where much to-ing and fro-ing between steps was required in order to effectively engage with data collection and analysis.
Figure 3.1 Adapted Version of Giorgi’s (1997) Phenomenological Approach
Figure 3.1 also highlights the adoption of the phenomenological attitude as the first and main overarching step in the process of doing phenomenology in this way, and it is this process that the following section describes.