Keywords

The concept of the Lifeworld was introduced into the philosophical discourse of phenomenology by Edmund Husserl. The background to this was the dominance of positivism, founded by August Comte in the nineteenth century (1908). Positivism required the sciences to exclude anything metaphysical and limit themselves only to what is verifiable. Physics came to be the dominant discipline and was regarded as a universal science. In his Physique Sociale (2010a, b), for instance, Adolphe Quetelet wanted to use physical methods to explain society. Husserl denounced this ethos of objectivity for lacking the experiential dimension: What people experience as real had, on his account, nothing to do with mathematical and physical formulas, but with our subjective being in the lifeworld (Husserl 1996, p. 54). Husserl’s phenomenology was then developed further by existential philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and subsequently Jean-Paul Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. More interesting in the ethnographic context is Alfred Schütz’s introduction of the concept of the lifeworld into sociology, where the world of everyday life is described as paramount reality (Schütz and Luckmann 1973, p. 3). Paramount reality is not to be understood ontologically. Rather, it is produced through stores of knowledge: from the way we tie our shoes to the operation of a light switch or the interface of a smartphone—we have internalized implicit knowledge. When we move around in our own city on public transport, we do so by rote. A ticket vending machine in Tokyo or a microbus ride on the outskirts of Mexico City, on the other hand, can pose an existential challenge. What we experience as “normal,” then, has arisen out of the social context of our lifeworld. This social, intersubjective level is one side of the reality in which we live. The other is our individualized consciousness.

From a phenomenological point of view, consciousness is separate from the world (Husserl 1995, p. 66) and at once intertwined with it. Thus, it is not for instance possible for us to actually communicate our inner being through speech because all communication is based on a previously existing language. And language “typifies experience” (Berger and Luckmann 1967, p. 39).Footnote 1 The difficulty of communicating dreams demonstrates this: It is not possible to definitively translate a dream into the form of language (Berger and Luckmann 1967, p. 40). What should one describe? The moods and images that can only be conveyed through language to a limited extent? The actions, which are often diffuse? When we tell the events of a dream, this narrative is not a depiction of the dream but rather something produced through the act of the telling.

Language can also transcend the here and now: It can describe reality (“This is a tree”) or negate it (the sentence “This is not a tree” can also be said of a tree).Footnote 2 In the language of religion, there are many terms that refer to the transcendent, which is at once absent and made accessible through naming the experience: “paradise,” “hell,” or “angel” are such terms. Phenomenology refers to this as appresentation, which is a kind of concomitant visualization of what is not there (Husserl 1995, p. 111; Schütz and Luckmann 1973, p. 11). In design theory, this term means that aesthetic phenomena evoke certain meanings and images: We see a house at night with a beer logo on it and hear music playing inside—so we know there is a bar in there without even looking inside. We even know what kind of bar it is: a hipster bar, a red-light bar, a jazz bar. We see individual signs and elements and complete the rest based on social knowledge.

There are “multiple realities” (Schütz 1945): the reality of quantum physics, art, religion, etc. But when we speak of the world of everyday life, we mean the segment of reality that we experience as “normal.” A lecture hall is one example: It is designed in such a way that the attention of the majority of those present is directed to the front, where a professor gives a lecture. This hierarchy manifests itself in the seating arrangement, the tables, the projector, the screen, etc. A lecture hall obviously resembles a theatrical space, which makes it a “front region” (Goffman 1956, p. 67). The design of the lecture hall manifests, among other things, humanistic educational ideals and a politics that ascribes value to these ideals. A lecture hall elicits a specific behavior and social roles from the lecturers, the students, the janitorial staff, etc. A lecture hall is therefore a cultural construction. Construction here does not mean something arbitrary, but rather something binding—or at least, it is the consequence of what was suggested by the Chicago sociologist William S. Thomas in his famous pronouncement: “If men define their situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (Thomas and Thomas 1928, p. 572).

One critique of the classical phenomenological theory of the lifeworld and everyday life is that the term is formulated in the singular, which suggests the above-mentioned notion of Paramount Reality, which is superior to other realities. The sociologist Benita Luckmann has remedied this deficit by pluralizing the concept of the lifeworld: On her account, modern man does not live in one lifeworld, but in many that cannot be hierarchized. Luckmann speaks of “small lifeworlds” that often have no relation to one another and exist only for a limited time (1978, p. 282 ff.). People thus operate in single-purpose-communities: A student, for example, operates in her parents’ house, in her shared flat with her roommates, at a university, at a Kung Fu school, in a relationship, at a bar, where she works on weekends, etc. These “places” constitute specific social identities: She behaves differently at her parents’ house, in her flat, and at the university. All these social “places” or situations are designed. They conceal a script and lead to specific role behavior. The description of these lifeworlds as small is not due to the number of people involved or the territorial size of the field, but to the fact that the complexity of possible redundancies is reduced to a certain system of relevance (Hitzler 2008, p. 136). These “places” can also be described as sub-universes (James 1921, p. 283 ff.) or microcultures (Cranz 2016, p. 40).

3.1 Symbolic Interaction and the Generalized Other

The fact that small social lifeworlds are experienced by individuals as “normal” is “a product of intersubjectivity, not of the individual” (Soeffner 2004, p. 22). The concept of intersubjectivity can be traced back to the pragmatism of George Herbert Mead. In his work, MIND, SELF & SOCIETY, Mead makes a distinction between a personal I and a social Me (2015, p. 173 ff.). The I is a spontaneous sensation, while Me is social patterns. Mead also distinguishes between Play and Game (2015, p. 152 ff.). In play, roles can be changed spontaneously in response to the situation, the way children do. In a Game, on the other hand, a generalized other is established, which may be demonstrated by the example of boxing. The only thing allowed in boxing is punches (straight, hook, and upwards hook) to the head and upper body—no low punches, no kicking, and no biting. Fighting takes place in an area delimited by a ring during a time delimited by acoustic signals, and not in the breaks in between. These rules are made binding by the generalized other. The boxer does not just expect his opponent to obey the rules, but he himself complies with them and incorporates them because his opponent, the trainers, referees, organizers, audience, sponsors, TV stations, boxing associations, etc., all expect it from him. If a boxer bites off his opponent’s ear, then he substantially damages his identity as a boxer. The generalized other is thus something like an abstract and normative identity foil on which the boxer orients himself. This leads, on the one hand, to empathy—especially since one’s own consciousness is simultaneously reflected in the generalized other and in the opponent. George Herbert Mead thus shows how human consciousness emerges; namely, on the basis of the reflection between a personal and a social identity. Similar approaches can be found in the thought of other representatives from the field of American Pragmatism—such as, for instance, Charles Horton Cooley, who called on sociologists to practice empathy toward people from other lifeworlds with his notion of “sympathetic introspection” (1909, p. 7) and who speaks of the “looking-glass-self” (1922, p. 184), in which the other becomes the mirror of the self.

On the basis of Mead’s theory, Herbert Blumer developed symbolic interactionism—a micro-sociological theory relevant to design, which is founded on three premises (1986, p. 2):

  1. 1.

    Human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that the things have for them.

  2. 2.

    The meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with one’s fellows.

  3. 3.

    These meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretative process used by the person in dealing with the things they encounter.

With its anti-essentialist positions, symbolic interactionism often functions as a theoretical starting point for ethnographic field research (Prus 1996, 1997; Rock 2009). Harold Garfinkel advocates for a similar micro-sociological approach with his ethnomethodology, which also investigates how people constitute reality in their everyday worlds (Garfinkel 1967; Suchman et al. 2019). In conversational analysis (Sacks 1984), individual sequences of everyday communications are transcribed and analyzed in detail. This process aims to lay bare at the sociolinguistic level how everyday reality arises and becomes experienced as a certainty. In his now famous so-called breaching experiments, Garfinkel (1967, p. 35) challenged his students to behave in ways that differed from the norm—for instance, to act as guests in their own parents’ home. In this way, deviant behavior is used to attempt to explore the limits of that which is considered normal. These disturbances of “natural” situations correspond to the interventions of design ethnography (Otto and Smith 2013, p. 11). Situations are “natural” when the researcher has not done anything to alter them (Dellwing and Prus 2012, p. 54 ff.). A design intervention, on the other hand, or a natural science experiment are “artificial” situations that have been evoked by the researcher.

Goffman observes everyday situations guided by the question: “What is it that’s going on here?” (1986, p. 8). In this way, he seeks to find out how we ever got to the point where certain situations are experienced as normal to begin with. His assumption is that situations have certain frames that organize them in their existence as events. For instance, as is evident in how we handle physical proximity, we behave completely differently in different situations in which proximity arises. Western society has certain standards regarding what degrees of proximity are allowed in what situations, on which Goffman’s studies on the territories of the self shed light. At a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu school, we have very close physical contact with other people, with whom we otherwise have no contact at all outside that place. In an elevator, on the other hand, we might feel quite uncomfortable when it is crowded. An individual thus has certain Territories of the Self (Goffman 2010, p. 28 ff.): These are: (1) Personal Space, which is contiguous with the individual and can feel threatened in crowded elevators or vehicles. (2) The Stall, which is the visible and spatially delimited area that an individual has at their disposal, for instance on a bar stool or in a theater seat. (3) The Use Space, which is the space around the individual. (4) The Turn, which is a sequential position that an individual takes up in relation to others—for instance standing in line at a supermarket. (5) The Sheath, which is the skin that covers the body and the clothing that in turn covers the skin. (6) Professional Territory, which includes the objects that surround the body and are identified with the self—such easily portable possessions as jackets, hats, gloves, packs of cigarettes, matches, purses with their contents. (7) The Information Preserve, which is the store of information to which an individual would like to control access in the presence of others (this could be aspects of their biography as well as personal objects in pockets and purses). And (8) the Conversational Preserve, which means that an individual can decide with whom to enter into conversation.

These are informal rules that are culturally variable (Collier 1967, p. 39) and lack of compliance with them is understood as a violation of one’s private sphere. This, however, depends on how the situation is framed. Thus, nakedness, for instance, can mean something different depending on the situational context—at the doctor, in public, in a sexual relationship, or in a life drawing class at an art studio. A naked model, according to Goffman, is in a certain sense not naked, but rather an “embodiment of the body” (1986, p. 78).

3.2 Professional Indifference and Lack of Moral Judgment

In the context of ethnography, we should turn to the aesthetic world with as unbiased a gaze as possible. Of course it is not possible to see the world from a neutral perspective, because there is no such thing as neutral and value-free knowledge. Nonetheless, Robert E. Park’s premise—“A moral man cannot be a sociologist”—still applies (quoted in Girtler 2001, p. 82). Anyone who goes through the world in a moralizing and normative way is hardly likely to find out anything new about a lifeworld, but will at best confirm their own prejudices. This is clearly evident in the ethnographic research of the social anthropologist Sarah Pink on Spanish bullfighting (1997, 2013, p. 76 ff.). If she had either condemned or idealized bullfighting, then her point of view would have been one-sided and she would have found out very little about the cultural grammar in which bullfighting is embedded. Pink’s impartiality is what allows her to open up different perspectives onto bullfighting.

This is why Crabtree et al. emphasize “professional indifference” (2012, p. 70 ff.) in design ethnography. Design ethnography aims to explore the grammar and patterns through which the reality of the lifeworlds it investigates is produced, not to colonize those worlds with their own values. It is especially important not to moralize when dealing with popular and everyday culture, such as online games, fast food, fashion, commerce, pornography, alcohol, selfies, and of course advertising. The value attached to these can be traced back to bourgeois educational ideals and the Frankfurt School, which distinguishes between a serious and a popular culture, whereby the former is “good” and the latter naturally “objectionable.” This assessment is normative, which is not tenable from the perspective of cultural anthropology.