Phenomenological Anthropology Philosophical Concepts for Ethnographic Use

Abstract

As a philosophical discipline, phenomenology is interested in how and as what things appear to a subject from the first-person perspective. Phenomenological analyses can be applied to objects, others, the self, feelings and much more. Yet, how do they appear? Within experience! While this is also accepted in anthropology, I show how we can benefit from some of the theoretical concepts that phenomenology has developed, including intentionality, being-in-the-world, embodiment, empathy, responsivity and atmosphere, to explore specific experiences more thoroughly. To demonstrate this, I introduce the foundations of these concepts: of-ness (Husserl), in-ness (Heidegger), embodied-ness (Merleau-Ponty), with-ness (Stein), responsive-ness (Waldenfels) and between-ness phenomenology (Schmitz). Then I discuss how these ideas have been mobilized in anthropology before applying them to a single ethnographic scene about the weather in Namibia. This allows a phenomenological anthropology to be developed positing that as what a thing appears for the subject depends on how it appears. This how encompasses transcendental structures of experience and the social contexts that shape what people live through, including the normative views they face when acting in the public sphere. By tracing entanglements between first-person perspectives and social, material and normative structures, phenomenological anthropology can make visible what otherwise remains obscured. In concluding, I carve out the unique critical potential that emerges from such an analysis and show the potential it offers for imagining a possible otherwise, two salient components of my version of a future phenomenological anthropology.