Exam Questions Ch13 Phenomenology

Test Bank

Chapter 13: Phenomenology

Multiple Choice

1. Phenomenologists are interested primarily in how people ______.

a. actively produce and sustain meaning

b. individually construct interactions

c. use language and symbols

d. respond emotionally to social phenomenon

2. Phenomenology investigates the systematic ______ of all existing assumptions regarding the external world.

a. construction

b. dismantling

c. absorption

d. bracketing

3. Edmund Husserl referred to existing assumptions as they are experienced and made meaningful in consciousness as ______.

a. intersubjectivity

b. lifeworld

c. phenomenology

d. typifications

4. What does Schutz mean when he writes that the lifeworld is an intersubjective world?

a. We all share the same material world as others.

b. We all share the same consciousness.

c. We all must negotiate an objective world.

d. We each only know our own world.

5. Drawing on both Weber and Husserl, Schutz envisioned social action as ______.

a. increasingly rationalized between two individuals in modern society

b. oriented toward the past, present, or future behavior of another person

c. individualist but shaped by social institutions

d. oriented toward a lifeworld constructed via psychology

6. Which term did Schutz define as rules for interpreting interactions, social relationships, and the physical world?

a. intersubjectivity

b. feeling rules

c. stocks of knowledge

d. Verstehen

7. According to Schutz, who is our contemporary?

a. A person who lives at the same time as us but whom we do not immediately experience

b. A person who we are spending time with in the present moment

c. A person we have interacted with but who is anonymous to us

d. A person who we live with, who we may experience presently or in the future

8. ______ is the process of constructing personal ideal images based on what people tend to do rather than their unique features.

a. Verstehen

b. Bracketing

c. Typification

d. Habitualization

9. What is the process that creates narrowed choices and that allows us to interact with others on a daily basis?

a. typification

b. reification

c. institutionalization

d. habitualization

10. According to Berger and Luckmann, which of the following is necessary to maintaining social order and interaction within society?

a. typification

b. externalization

c. intersubjectivity

d. habitualization

11. According to Berger and Luckmann, how do institutions channel human behaviors?

a. They reinforce typifications for both actors and actions.

b. They create our intersubjective reality.

c. They consist of actual structures that shape our access to resources.

d. They organize behavior using strict codes of conduct.

12. In which scenario are typifications most likely to be challenged?

a. when talking virtually with someone who lives far away from you

b. when meeting a friend in person for conversation and coffee

c. when talking explicitly with others about biases we hold

d. when discussing a famous celebrity

13. Reification refers to the process through which ______.

a. people see themselves only as the product, and not the producer, of the world

b. people recognize that they are producers of the world

c. we internally fight our doubts about the world

d. we constantly create and destroy our social world

14. Objectivation and reification are related to which concept from Karl Marx’s work?

a. collective conscience

b. surplus value

c. alienation

d. capital

15. Objectivation refers to the process of ______.

a. socialization through which institutions are legitimated

b. creating and re-creating our social worlds

c. seeing others as typifications

d. encountering everyday life as an external reality

16. Differentiating various realms of social experience, Schutz use the term “umwelt” to refer to the ______.

a. overt feelings experienced via social institutions

b. unfelt subconscious feelings of the individual

c. realm of directly experienced social reality

d. realm of indirectly experienced social reality

17. What is the purpose of breaching experiments?

a. To examine how people handle discomfort

b. To make visible the assumptions that guide our behaviors

c. To analyze how people talk when interrupted

d. To study how the people breaching respond to stress

18. Ethnomethodologists’ perspective on action and order would be found within which quadrant in the authors’ figure of theoretical orientation?

a. collective and rational

b. collective and nonrational

c. individual and rational

d. individual and nonrational

19. Which term does Garfinkel use to refer to the process by which we interpret and make sense of events?

a. intersubjectivity

b. internalization

c. accounting practices

d. indexicality

20. How is ethnomethodology distinct from phenomenology?

a. Ethnomethodology is grounded in psychology more than phenomenology is.

b. Ethnomethodology is grounded in sociology more than phenomenology is.

c. Ethnomethodology focuses more on the collective than phenomenology.

d. Ethnomethodology focuses more on the rational than phenomenology.

21. According to Berger and Luckmann, which process results in a relationship between objective and subjective reality?

a. externalization

b. reification

c. typification

d. socialization

22. What was a major critique of the initial woman’s standpoint?

a. It was too hostile to men.

b. It was shaped by white, middle-class women.

c. It was too broad in scope.

d. It was largely academic.

23. The concept of ______ underscores that subordinate groups are conditioned to view the world from the perspective of the dominant group.

a. bifurcation of consciousness

b. standpoint

c. feminism

d. discrimination

24. The term ______reflects Smith’s multidimensional approach to action and to order.

a. accounting

b. breaching

c. indexicality

d. standpoint

25. Drawing on her experience, Smith argued that the workplace relies more on the ______ and the home relies more on the ______.

a. mind; abstract

b. abstract; body

c. body; mind

d. masculine; feminine

True/False

26. The lifeworld is the taken-for-granted backdrop within which all situations are measured and given meaning.

27. Stocks of knowledge, recipes, and typifications are Schutz’s attempts to clarify Durkheimian notions of social action.

28. Each person has their own biographically articulated stock of knowledge.

29. Schutz’s theoretical orientation can be classified as nonrational and collective.

30. Intersubjectivity means that we share the same consciousness.

31. The elements in our stock of knowledge can be usefully applied in all situations.

32. Typifications can help us have meaningful interactions with people who we do not know personally.

33. Even when we share others’ experiences, we are still interpreting those experiences through our own lens.

34. The “we-relationship” is oriented toward an imagined other.

35. Berger and Luckmann’s work can best be described as theoretically multidimensional phenomenological sociology.

36. Over time, habitualized actions become taken-for-granted institutions that channel individuals’ behaviors.

37. Unlike Marx, Berger and Luckmann viewed reification as inherent to the human condition.

38. Society is created via a sequential dialectical process.

39. In contrast to phenomenology, ethnomethodology pays attention to how people differentially interpret meanings.

40. Ethnomethodologists are primarily individual and nonrational.

41. According to Berger and Luckmann, the reality of everyday life is organized around the “here” of my body and the “now” of my present.

42. By focusing on taken-for-granted aspects of society, Berger and Luckmann take a nonrational approach.

43. According to Berger and Luckmann, everyday life is organized around the intersection of our present and our past.

44. Parents readily adjusted when their children started acting like boarders during breaching experiments.

45. Expressions and actions must be interpreted within a particular context to be fully understood.

46. Smith studied relations of ruling, including both bureaucracy and discourse.

47. Berger and Luckmann stress that no individual can fully internalize all objective aspects of their society.

48. Sociology as a discipline emerged as fairly gender neutral.

49. According to Smith, some standpoints are valued more than others.

50. An institutional ethnography analyzes both everyday activities and structures of power.

Essay

51. What is a lifeworld? What role does bracketing play in it?

52. How does Schutz’s concept intersubjectivity connect to Émile Durkheim’s concept of collective conscience?

53. Discuss the role Max Weber played in Schutz’s work on meaning.

54. How are stocks of knowledge, recipes, and typifications necessary building blocks of the lifeworld?

55. Explain the relationship between habitualization and institutionalization.

56. Explain the processes of externalization, objectivation, and reification and how they connect.

57. Explain the dialectical relationship between humans and society, as laid out by Berger and Luckmann.

58. Explain the primary similarity and the central difference between phenomenology and ethnomethodology.

59. Define ethnomethodology in detail. Then imagine that you need to perform a breaching experiment. What would you do, and how do you think others would respond?

60. What is the bifurcation of consciousness, and how does it relate to everyday experiences?

61. How does an institutional ethnography address both individual and collective aspects of order?

62. Discuss Husserl’s intersubjective lifeworld and explain how Schutz expanded on Husserl’s theorizing.

63. How do stocks of knowledge, recipes, and typifications shape how you act as a student in college? Be sure to include concrete examples from your life.

64. Using concepts from Berger and Luckmann’s work, analyze the family unit. How does habitualization and institutionalization shape family life in the United States?

65. Define “umwelt” and “mitwelt” and show how they connect to stocks of knowledge.