Abstract
The aim of my paper is twofold. First, I show how the notion of phenomenal field can be used to examine, describe and understand particular collective patterns pertaining to the everyday domain of our common social experience. Secondly, I outline the role of the notion of “phenomenal field” in ethnomethodology. I briefly discuss Gurwitsch’s notion of functional meaning. After presenting the argument, I show “the locally achieved ordinariness of a common task”, that is the lining up of the player of the two teams in the pitch, as an embodied coherence of figural contexture in its empirical perceptual details, as Garfinkel says.
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Notes
For a survey of the concept of ‘field’ in sociology see Martin (2003), who examines the development and success of field theory in the social sciences, setting it in relation to kindred approaches like systems theory or network theory. Martin describes three main lines of inquiry: that of social psychology associated with Lewin (1951); that of stratification or domain associated with Bourdieu (1992); and that of neo-institutionalism associated with Powell and Di Maggio (1983). However, despite its merits, Martin’s survey makes no reference to social phenomenology, although it is an important component of contemporary social theory, and in particular of ethnomethodology, which is the subject of this paper.
I would mention a possible ‘micro’ of the ‘macro’ version of classical field theory. This too is omitted by Martin (2003), and corresponds to the notion of “social world” of interactionist derivation. See the works by Strauss (1993, chap. 9) and Becker (1982). The notion of “social world” does not concern the local organization of practices but rather the conventions, norms, careers, identity, etc. connected with a profession; cf. Lynch (1993, p. 132, note 32).
In 1946 Garfinkel met Aaron Gurwitsch in Cambridge (Garfinkel 2002, p. 84). In Ethnomethodology’s Program Garfinkel emphasised a debt hitherto insufficiently acknowledged: “Gurwitsch’s argument on the functional significations and their coherence of figural contexture in its empirical perceptual details … has been a foundational point of departure in all my teaching. It has lasted a long time. It has also been missed as Ethnomethodology’s key resource” (2002, p. 84). Cf. Maynard (1996).
Like phenomenology, Gurwitsch (1966, p. 23) observes, Gestalt theory gives absolute pre-eminence to direct observation before any theoretical consideration is made; what matters is not what is present to consciousness but only what is actually given to perception, what is accessible to direct observation. But the assumptions differ. In a letter to Schutz, Gurwitsch points out somewhat disdainfully that Wolfgang Köhler was interested in the physics of the brain and Kurt Koffka was still using the language of behaviourism (Grathoff 1989, p. 143).
This “imposing itself” of the whole rather than of its constituent parts means that this “whole” is immediately seen as such. It is an immediate perceptive phenomenon with a force such that no reasoning, no conviction nor process of judgment can repress or weaken this primary perceptive state of affairs. Hence, we may sometimes acknowledge that we are mistaken, or we may ‘know’ that what we see is not what we perceive; but this does not prevent us from still seeing a certain form in the first place.
Interestingly, this is the example adduced by Edmund Husserl when discussing the nature of “totalities” in the Philosophy of Arithmetic (1891, chap. XI). It is an example of how a typically philosophical problem is founded on a typically sociological observation.
To tell the truth, not only visual stimuli but also auditory and musical stimuli.
An idea of what is meant by “immediately directed” is conveyed by the following expressions taken from Wertheimer (1938): “as a matter of fact it is for most people impossible to see…, quite obvious…, spontaneous arrangement…, natural grouping…, it is still more compelling…, the objectives arrangement dictates…, imperatively dictates…, more obvious groupings…, the stimulus points ‘obviously’ yield simpler, surer, more elementary results”. We could observe that society applies the same sort of binding constraint, although its origin may be different.
Here resounds the reason for Garfinkel’s polemic against Talcott Parsons, whom he considered the leading representative in the social sciences of a theoretical position which viewed in the distinction between the concreteness of activities, on the one hand, and the analytical process that establishes and recognized those activities on the other, as its heuristic and epistemological principle. In other words, Parsons maintained that there is no order in concrete activities, even though we are inexorably and relentlessly caught up in them: “With Parson’s plenum the concreteness of organizational things is not yet real organizational things. Nor is it yet organizational things produced according to, let alone consisting of, methodic procedures” (Garfinkel 1988, p. 105).
Hume’s view seems to be preferred by large part of contemporary sociology under a variety of names (methodological individualism being one of them): cf. Giglioli (1989). As Rawls (2000, p. 551) points out, Garfinkel regards Parsons’ theory as implying that the social structure is nothing but the result of a statistical conformity: norms are nothing but tendencies for individual to comply to a lesser or greater extent with external “constrictions.” This also has methodological consequences, given that the statistical processing of large aggregates of individual numerical data is one of the principal ways in which the social sciences demonstrate the existence of order.
The dualism may assume another form. Gurwitsch detects in the Graz school (Alexius von Meinong, Stephan Witasek, Vittorio Benussi), for example, a dualism which he calls “functional” (different from Husserl’s “descriptive” dualism). Also for the Graz school, sensations are the basic structural elements of a Gestalt. But a Gestalt given in immediate experience—for example a melody, a pattern of dots or lines—is deemed to be the product of a process whereby the sensations are grouped and shaped, altered or changed. For Husserl, a Gestalt is the application of a higher sensible order. For the Graz school the second layer is instead furnished not by the activity of the senses but by other non-sensory processes of production. The structure of a Gestalt corresponds to its genesis: the grouping and assembling of sensations by non-sensory processes which intervene subsequently.
Traditional theories of perception also affirm the importance of the past and of history in perception. The past is viewed as a store and source of images, memories and residues which “add” themselves to immediately produced sense data. In this case sensations are interpreted in terms of the materiality of perception, but they are reproduced, brought to light, and judged by residues drawn from memory. Traditional explanations of the constancy of certain perceptions—like those of colour, size and shape—are of this type. For Gestalt theory, by contrast, the perception can in no case be explained by previously acquired knowledge. For an argument on this point very similar to Gurwitsch’s see Schutz (1951) article on “making music together”, which I deem is of great importance for ethnomethodology.
We could see adumbrated here one of the key policy of ethnomethodology, that of reflexivity. Cf. Lynch (2000).
There are numerous classical sociological theories on this aspect, but they are generally centred on the theme of identity (i.e. on the side of an individual subject put in front of a social structure).
On the theme of “context” in linguistics as the figure/ground relationship see Goodwin and Duranti (1992).
It was Merleau-Ponty (1945) in particular who placed the presence of the body in the world, and not an abstract “perceiver” in a psychology laboratory, at the centre of phenomenological experience. Merleau-Ponty is another important source of ethnomethodological “appropriation”: “Maurice Merleau-Ponty is another author whose investigations offer EM investigations indispensably valuable rivals. His chapter ‘The phenomenal field’ is the origin of heavy sloganeering in EM” (Garfinkel 2002, pp. 167, 177). Cf. In particular Merleau-Ponty (1945, chap. 4; 1997).
In perception a “thing” is not the opposite of nothingness, but rather of what is considered to be ground.
Adumbrated here is another key policy of ethnomethodology, that of indexicality. Cf. Garfinkel and Sacks (1970).
Garfinkel’s unique achievement is that he has made us look at the world differently. This signifies that we must completely change our point of view (in this sense, from my point of view, ethnomethodology is an “alternate” way to social phenomena—cf. Garfinkel and Wieder (1992)), whence derives its incompatibility with more classical and traditional sociology. Garfinkel shows how social phenomena can be viewed with a veritable Gestalt reversal so that what was once the ground now becomes the figure. Consequently, appreciating Garfinkel means not so much “comprehending” his work intellectually as just to “seeing” things differently.
Compare this formulation with another more recent: “for ethnomethodology the objective reality of social facts, in that and just how it is every society’s locally, endogenously produced, naturally organized, reflexively accountable, ongoing, practical achievement, being everywhere, always, only, exactly and entirely, member’s work, with no time-out, and with no possibility of evasion, hiding out, passing, postponement or buy-outs, is thereby sociology’s fundamental phenomenon” (Garfinkel 1988, p. 103).
Garfinkel enables us to fully appreciate Durkheim when he writes that a collective phenomenon “it is in each part because it is in the whole, but far from being in the whole because it is in the parts” (Durkheim 1982, p. 56). The example that he provides (“if all hearts beat in unison, this is not as a consequence of a spontaneous, pre-established harmony; it is because one and the same force is propelling them in the same direction. Each one is borne along by the rest,” cf. 1982, p. 56), is an excellent illustration of the reflexivity of practices.
Garfinkel is therefore not concerned with the characteristics of small groups as the smallest assemblies of individuals in society. He examines our presence in the world in every context in which we may find ourselves, also among perfect strangers, as in a queue waiting to receive a service. In this sense Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology has many similarities with Erving Goffman’s idea of the “interaction order,” although it distances itself from it insofar as the requisites for social order are not rituals but comprehensibility and recognizability. Cf. Giglioli (1990); Rawls (2003).
Personally I believe that also conversation analysis may warrant special mention here, although this might seem surprising. Conversation analysis has found a phenomenon (a principle of order) previously ignored because it was believed that the matter was regulated by chaos. Conversation is exactly that phenomenon sui generis which does not require reference to individual actors or dominant structures (whether of language or society) but to a local Gestalt. Many of the figures in conversation (sequences, adjacency pairs, turn-taking procedures, etc.) can be analysed in terms of the constitution of local, concrete, practical Gestalten. In general it could be said that the structures of conversation and interactional dynamics during a conversation can be described as a respecification of some laws of form or configuration; see Fele (2007). For an analysis of some social actions—“showing concern,” “asking for advice,” and “testing the other”—as Gestalt forms, see Maynard (2005).
Not everyone would agree: “not just any busload or haphazard crowd of people deserves the name of society; there has to be some thinking and feeling alike among members” (Douglas 1986, p. 9). This implies that there is no order in the plenum, as Garfinkel would say. Here Mary Douglas performs the same theoretical shift that Parsons does with Durkheim: societal association requires some sort of symbolic agreement on thoughts and sentiments: an occasional crowd is only analytically interesting after something has happened to unify it (like a street demonstration).
“Football” has no reference to the American game of that name but refers instead to what is known in the USA as “soccer.”
This is not the place to develop this theme. But I would point out that also Bourdieu (1992) directly relates the notion of field to that of game. I would love to take this relation literally. Football, in particular, has furnished excellent empirical materials for Gestalt theory (Hartgenbusch 1927) and phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty 1942; Sartre 1960). Moreover, football provides excellent material for analysis of what Elias (1978; Elias and Dunning 1986) call figurations; in some respects the term is similar to the Garfinkel’s notion of phenomenal field while in other important ones it differs from it. Game has become a widespread metaphor in sociological theory. On the limitations on applying the notion of game to social life see Garfinkel (1967) and Maynard (1991). Garfinkel in particular offers on this point an account remarkably different from Goffman’s (1961).
This sentence should be qualified. For we also recognize the players as individuals (Maldini, Klinsmann, etc.). But we recognize them as “functional” parts of the team, as “constituting” the team. This is in some way the other side of what I am describing here, namely the forms of individuation in a team. In certain respects, recognizing the player “Maldini” implies “Ah, Italy’s playing.” This type of perception makes it possible to take account also of what is not there. For example, we do not see Del Piero. The player who does not take the field can be pictured sitting on the substitutes’ bench or in the stands, for example. Or we can obtain information from the commentator (who in this case says, “The Italian formation is as announced, apart from Del Piero. He suffered a stomach upset due to nerves during the night and has a slight fever. He’s getting better but he can’t play”). But the problem lies further back. It concerns recognition of the team as a whole. In this sense, I believe that we can say strongly that a player is one-eleventh of the team. He is the n-th component of it.
“More or less” is important in so far as the presentation of the teams on the pitch is not a military parade, which instead requires extreme precision in coordinating movements.
There is, moreover, an evident and visible separation between those on the pitch, in whatever capacity, and those who are not, namely the spectators. Accordingly, there are at least two large, distinct sets of people in the stadium. On the dividing line between spectators and players; see Dal Lago (2001). Architectural structures obviously constrain behaviour and action closely. But these structures are not “inert”; rather they are “enacted,” as becomes evident when fighting fans break down the barriers separating them, or when the pitch is “invaded.”
The advantage of this arrangement is that it places the captains of the two teams, who have led them on to the pitch, next to the referee, one on either side of him. The captains are the legitimate representatives of the two teams, and they are required to perform complex ritual opening work (exchange pennants, shake hands, choose ends, salute the referee, etc.) which requires proximity. Moreover, this arrangement constructs the row of players only item by item, moment by moment, and not all together, as would instead happen if all the players continued to file past the referee until the last of them had done so, and only then simultaneously change their orientation towards the main grandstand. This more spectacular pattern, where a group is seen moving in unison, is typical of military parades.
There are particularly evident forms of meaningful human “grouping.” Besides ritual, military marches and bands provide excellent examples (McNeill 1995). In general, themes like collective behaviour, mass movements, and the crown offer important prompts for reflection (Gilbert 1996). It is time to re-examine much of the literature on small group behaviour and social circles in the light of the value of the concreteness of immediate social relationships, beginning with the classic second volume of The American Soldier: Combat and Its Aftermath by Stouffer et al. (1949). The extreme conditions of battle (the battle “field”!) specify what is meant by the perception of bonds with one’s fellow soldiers, the sense of belonging, an extra-personal identity. When faced by a dire threat to his person, the soldier attends to the circle of his or her closest comrades; he or she fights for the survival of those closest to him or her because his or her own survival closely depends on them. Cf. Keegan (1976); Hanson (1989); Goldsworthy (1997).
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Acknowledgements
I have had opportunities to present the gist of this paper to several meetings and occasions. I am indebted to several people who are not acknowledged in the text as they should be. I wish to thank in particular for their comments and thoughts Andrea Brighenti, Harold Garfinkel, Jack Katz, Ken Liberman, Eric Livingston, Gino Muzzetto, Mel Pollner, George Psathas, Sandro Segre, Davide Sparti and the anonymous reviewers of this journal.
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Fele, G. The Phenomenal Field: Ethnomethodological Perspectives on Collective Phenomena. Hum Stud 31, 299–322 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-008-9099-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-008-9099-4