Existential Sociology

Category: Theoretical approaches

Existential sociology is a version of the sociology of everyday life, and it studies human experience in all its forms. For existential sociologists, the modern world is marked by change as it influences the lives of individuals, their sense of self, and how they experience the social world, and it shapes the culture that provides meaning for people's life. Existential sociology integrates several theoretical concepts from different approaches. It takes concepts of the self and the situation from symbolic interactionism, the social construction of reality from phenomenology, the centrality of embodiment and feelings to human agency, and a critique of conventional sociological theory and methods from ethnomethodology. One of the first existential sociologists was American sociologist Jack Douglas (1937-), while other notable authors are Andrea Fontana, John M. Johnson, Kotarba Joseph, Stanford M. Lyman, and Marvin B. Scott.

Douglas, at the beginning of his career, practiced an ethnomethodological approach, but later he developed his approach which he called "existential sociology". Douglas initially outlined the basis of his approach in Social Meaning of Suicide (1967). He deviates from the classical sociological way of studying suicide, which originates from Durkheim. Douglas believes that the structural-functionalist approach to suicide is not good and that in methodological terms it is too much based on official statistics, which are always inadequate. The family of a well-integrated person can influence the coroner not to declare the act as a suicide, while this does not happen in the families of poorly integrated persons who have taken their own lives. In this way, a person's degree of integration affects official statistics, not suicide rates. Douglas also criticizes Durkheim for viewing all types of suicides as the same type of act, because suicides have different social meanings in different socio-cultural circumstances. He believes that it is necessary to study suicide in the context of the situational significance that the person who is prone to suicide gives to his activities. Using diaries, notes, and statements of observers, he shows that the motives for suicide, which can be different, always have social significance for the person who committed suicide.

Douglas presents a thorough presentation of his approach in the book Existential Sociology (1977). He emphasizes the relative freedom that individuals have in relation to their social and cultural context. Social and cultural reality is a product of social constructs. To understand the meaning that people give to their behavior, it is necessary to analyze their choices, will, intentions, and interpretations. Douglas believes that emotions have their independence and that they even dominate our decisions, hence they are more important than thoughts, reason, and values. Sociology should know our deepest self, which is directed by emotions and passions.

Authors: Douglas, Jack. Fontana, Andrea; Johnson, M. John; Kotarba, Joseph; Lyman, M. Stanford; Scott, B. Marvin; Leszek, Dziegel; Edward, Tiryakian; Clark, C.

Books:

Douglas. Social Meaning of Suicide (1967);

- Youth in Turmoil (1970);

- Everyday Life: Reconstruction of Social Knowledge (1970);

- Understanding Everyday Life: Toward the Reconstruction of Sociological Knowledge (1971);

- American Social Order (1971);

- Investigative Social Research (1976);

- Existential Sociology (1977);

- The Nude Beach (1978);

- Introduction to the Sociologies of Everyday Life (1980);

- Sociology of Deviance (1984);

- Creative Interviewing (1984);