Theorizing with phenomenology

Abstract

Social scientists often rely on philosophy as a source of theory. Among others, phenomenology has played an especially significant role in the social sciences. However, despite the now century-long history of phenomenological theory in the social sciences, there has been remarkably little in the way of explicit or systematic reflection on what, exactly, social scientists are doing when they use phenomenology as theory or to theorize. In this article, we identify a largely unarticulated use of phenomenology, which stands between what we might call “grand theory” on the one hand and the “application of theory” on the other. Between these two poles, we find social scientists developing new theory intended to conceptualize a particular class of phenomena or domain of inquiry. We call this use “theorizing with phenomenology.” After identifying and unpacking some examples, we systematize its distinctive features and present it as an alternative mode of empirically anchored theorizing.