Methodological Individualism

Society as subjectively meaningful interaction 139realized the strategic importance of an adequate theory of human action for themethodology of social science’ (p. xix).Alfred Schutz’s theory of the social world and the method of its study is laiddown in all essentials in his The Phenomenology of the Social World (1932). Thecentral problems of this work are set by the interpretive sociology of Max Weberand his predecessors. In the first paragraphs of his Phenomenology, Schutz makesclear that the fundamental problem of the social sciences is that of the relationshipbetween individual and society.Is society prior to the individual, so that apart from the social whole theindividual does not exist at all? Or should we put it quite the other way andsay that the individual alone exists and that social organizations, includingsociety itself are mere abstractions – ‘functions’ of the behavior of separateindividuals?(Schutz [1932] 1972: 4)In trying to answer these questions and improve upon the answers given byWeber, Schutz appeals first of all to the philosophy of Husserl, but also to that ofHenri Bergson. Schutz makes clear, however, that in grounding his analysis ofWeber on the phenomenology of Husserl, he leaves aside all problems of transcendentalphenomonology and stays at the level of phenomenologicalpsychology (Schutz [1932] 1972: 43f). 22 There are, in particular, two elements ofWeber’s methodology which Schutz wishes to improve upon. First, there isWeber’s analysis of the subjectively intended meaning of action. According toSchutz, Weber is not absolutely clear about whose subjective meaning, theactor’s or the observer’s, he is talking about (ch. 1). Weber also fails to make theimportant distinction between because motives and in order to motives, the firstreferring to the conditions in the past which make an individual act in a certainway and the latter referring to what the individual wants to achieve with hisaction in the future, the goals of his projected action (pp. 86ff). Second, there isWeber’s notion of ideal type, which Schutz analyses as a matter of common senseand of scientific typifications of differing degrees of anonymity (pp. 176ff).There is, however, one element of Weber’s methodology which Schutz acceptswithout reservations; his methodological individualism.we frequently use sentences in which ideal types like ‘the state’, ‘theeconomy’, ‘the nation’, ‘the people’, or perhaps the ‘working class’ appear asgrammatical subjects. In doing this, we naturally tend to personify theseabstractions, treating them as if they were real persons known in indirectsocial experience. But we are here indulging in an anthropomorphism.Actually these ideal types are absolutely anonymous … From the sociologicalpoint of view, therefore, the term ‘state’ is merely an abbreviation for ahighly complex network of interdependent personal ideal types.(Schutz [1932] 1972: 198f)