Affiliation:
1. Department of Sociology, Temple University, Philadelphia, United States.
Abstract
In 1932, phenomenological sociologist Alfred Schutz provided a theory of mutual knowledge that explains how individuals come to understand one another in the increasingly differentiated lifeworld. Schutz’s main argument was that the contemporaneous lifeworld consists of two distinct realms and human mutual knowledge is constituted differently in each realm: in the realm of consociates, people get to know each other by way of growing older together in corporeal copresence; and in the realm of mere contemporaries, people come to know each other based on ideal types constructed through generalized typification. This article extends Schutz’s theory to an emergent realm of the lifeworld brought about by the advent of the Internet—the realm of consociated contemporaries. In this new realm, which is spatially divergent but temporally convergent, anonymous individuals become intimately familiar with one another through mutual biographical disclosure in telecopresence. This analytic extension not only expands the scope of Schutz’s theory but also deepens our understanding of the essence and purpose of human mutual knowledge.
Cited by
22 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献