Abstract
The purpose of this article is to vindicate the viability of Kurt H. Wolff's methodology of surrender-and-catch for the human and social sciences. The article is divided into three sections. The first section explicates the fundamental significance of surrender-and-catch and Wolff's motivation for advocating its practice. The second section compares surrender-and-catch with phenomenological methodology as well as objective science and the province of the everyday. The third section illustrates surrender-and-catch through my own practice. In this section I contextualize surrender-and-catch in a triangulated design, which exhibits its flexibility and compatibility for use in conjunction with other forms of research.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bachelard, G. (1969). The Poetics of Space: The Classic Look at How We Experience Intimate Places, trans. M. Jolas. Boston: Beacon Press.
Bentz, V.M. and Shapiro, J.J. (1998). Mindful Inquiry in Social Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Berger, P.L. and Luckmann, L. (1966). The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Anchor Books.
Buttimer, A. (Ed.) (1983). Creativity and Context: A Seminar Report. Lund Studies in Geography Ser. B. Human Geography No. 50. Lund, Sweden: Royal University of Lund.
Casey, E.S. (1993). Getting Back Into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Frisby, D. (1992). The Alienated Mind: The Sociology of Knowledge in Germany 1918-1933. London: Routledge.
Gendlin, E. (1981). Focusing, 2nd edition. New York: Bantam Books.
Gendlin, E. (1996). Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy. New York: The Guilford Press.
Gendlin, E. (1997). Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning: A Philosophical and Psychological Approach to the Subjective. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Gurwitsch, A. (1985). In L. Embree (Ed.), Marginal Consciousness. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.
Husserl E. (1970). The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, introduction and trans. David Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Husserl, E. (1981). "Phenomenology," Edmund Husserl's Article for the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1927). In P. McCormick and F. Elliston (Eds.), Husserl: Shorter Works, pp. 21-35. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
James, W. (1950). The Principles of Psychology Volume Two. New York: Dover.
Mannheim, K. (1936). Ideology and Utopia. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers.
Maslow, A.H. (1970). Religion, Values, and Peak-Experiences. New York: The Viking Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of Perception, trans. C. Smith. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1963). The Structure of Behavior, trans. A.L. Fisher. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968). The Visible and the Invisible, trans. A. Lingis. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Norberg-Schulz. C. (1984). Genius-Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture. New York: Rizzoli.
Schutz, A. and T. Luckmann. (1973). The Structures of the Life-World, trans. R. Zaner and H. T. Engelhardt Jr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Simmel, G. (1971). "The Conflict in Modern Culture," in Donald N. Levine (Ed.), Georg Simmel: On Individuality and Social Forms, pp. 375-393. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Wolff, K.H. (1976). Surrender and Catch: Experience and Inquiry Today. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company.
Wolff, K.H. (1989). O Loma! Constituting a Self (1977-1984). Northampton, MA: Hermes House Press, Inc.
Wolff, K.H. (1991). Survival and Sociology: Vindicating the Human Subject. London: Transaction Publishers.
Wolff, K.H. (1995). Transformation in the Writing: A Case of Surrender-and-Catch. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Press.
Wolff, K.H. (2002a). A Whole a Fragment. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Wolff, K.H. (2002b). What It Contains. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Backhaus, G. Vindication of the Human and Social Science of Kurt H. Wolff. Human Studies 26, 309–335 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025702527816
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025702527816