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.

Introduction

Social scientists often rely on philosophy as a source of theory. The Continental, or post-Kantian, tradition has been particularly influential in this respect, with social scientists drawing upon the work of Henri Bergson, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Ernst Cassirer, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and, more recently, Michel Serres. Among these philosophers, phenomenologists have played an especially significant role in the social sciences. We find not only the influence of individual phenomenologists, such as Edmund Husserl or Maurice Merleau-Ponty, but also the formation of phenomenological approaches, methodologies, or schools in disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, and organization studies.

Despite the now century-long history of phenomenological approaches in the social sciences, there has, however, been remarkably little in the way of explicit or systematic reflection on what exactly social scientists are doing when they use phenomenology as theory. 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 poles, we find social scientists developing new theories intended to conceptualize a particular class of phenomena or domain of inquiry. These conceptualizations are intended neither to provide foundations for a discipline, nor exclusively to make sense of a particular case. Rather, they provide a new way of thinking about or making sense of a class of phenomena. To do so, these social scientists draw upon phenomenological philosophy as theoretical foundation and inspiration. But rather than import this phenomenological theory as-is, they develop new concepts not found in the philosophical literature itself. This is what we call “theorizing with phenomenology.”

To illustrate this use of phenomenology, we provide two key examples from contemporary work in sociology and anthropology. In each case, we show how a social scientist draws upon the philosophical tradition of phenomenology to help them understand not just an individual case, but to better conceptualize the class of phenomena that the case belongs to. In doing so, they might develop new concepts to address larger disciplinary debates or theoretical issues, but this remains a second step that follows the initial conceptualization of the class of phenomena.

Kristin Surak, a political sociologist, draws upon Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology to develop the concept of the “stylistics of action.” While she uses the concept to articulate the embodied and sensory-motor dynamics of the Japanese tea ceremony, the concept itself is intended to capture a hitherto unexplored dynamic through which identities, practices, or events are interpreted in national terms. The concept, in turn, suggests a new sociological model to understand the relationship between culture and action.

Jarrett Zigon, an anthropologist, draws upon Heidegger’s phenomenology to develop the concept of the “situation.” While he uses the concept to capture the nature of the drug war, the concept is also intended to capture a range of phenomena that are also temporally and spatially diffused, such as climate change. Similarly, the concept suggests a different way to conceive of multi-site ethnographic work and to connect ethnographic cases with the global scale.

While these two social scientists draw on the work of Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, respectively, theorizing with phenomenology is not limited to the work of a specific phenomenologist or phenomenological tradition (e.g., transcendental, hermeneutic, and existential). We assume that most major phenomenological thinkers have been used in these ways, and that such examples can be found across all of the social science disciplines—although confirming these assumptions is beyond the scope of this article.

The article proceeds as follows: In Section 2, we articulate how phenomenology has been used as “grand theory.” In Section 3, we show how phenomenology is commonly applied in more empirical social-scientific studies. In Section 4, we present an approach that stands between these two poles, which we call “theorizing with phenomenology,” and illustrate this approach with key examples from sociology and anthropology. In Section 5, we elaborate on the distinctive features of theorizing with phenomenology, providing brief examples to illustrate how it provides an alternative to middle-range theory for connecting data and theory in productive ways.

Phenomenology as grand theory

Sociology and phenomenology have a relationship that precedes the disciplinary canonization that transformed social thought into sociological theory. Husserl, for one, was a keen reader of Georg Simmel, who is counted by some as one of the founding fathers of sociology. The phenomenological movement ran in parallel to, and often in dialogue with, the vast currents of social thought of the early 20th century (Szanto, 2020). Once canonized into classical sociological theory, these currents of social thought were refashioned to address more specific theoretical questions and methodological concerns associated with sociology as a scientific discipline (see Wagner, 1991). ¹ Part of what contemporary sociologists inherited from this process of canonization was the theoretical frames and conceptual coordinates associated with the problem of order, as well as the “micro-macro,” “subjectivism-objectivism,” “agency-structure, and the “interpretation-explanation” debates. These ways of framing the problems and subject matter of sociology (together with questions of modernity and its associated processes of urbanization, rationalization, bureaucratization, etc.) constituted the kernel of the sociological version of “big” or “grand” theory.

How does phenomenology fit into the development of big or grand theory in sociology? Originally, phenomenological concepts were presented as the foundation for an alternative programmatic solution to the big questions of the discipline. This way of employing phenomenology starts most explicitly in the works of Alfred Schutz, who drew on Husserl’s phenomenology to provide a more robust foundation to Weber’s interpretative sociology. For Weber (2019), the object of sociology is social action, which always has an attached subjective meaning; the appropriate methods of sociology should, therefore, be capable of attending to this subjective meaning and offering causal explanations that are adequate to it. From this follows the thematic concerns of Weberian sociology associated with the types of social action, rationality, and the methodology of ideal types.

Schutz agreed with Weber’s programmatic statement, but cashed it out through Husserl’s phenomenology. This intention is most clear in his major work, The Phenomenology of the Social World, which starts with Weber’s view of sociology before turning to Husserl’s phenomenology with the intention of developing “a philosophically founded theory of method” (Schutz, 1967: xxxi). ² In particular, Schutz takes issue with Weber’s notion of subjective meaning, and finds in Husserl’s concepts of intersubjectivity and the lifeworld a way to “analyze step by step the meaning structure of the social world” and thus “be able to anchor the methodological apparatus of interpretative sociology at a far deeper point than Max Weber was able to do” (Schutz, 1967: 13, see also Schutz, 1962). For Schutz, the strategy clearly consists of importing phenomenological concepts into the “core” of the discipline. For him, phenomenology was first and foremost a way of grounding sociology: a set of concepts that belong to the paradigmatic level and help to clarify and justify the presuppositions of the social sciences (see Schutz, 1972: 116–117).

The phenomenological concepts of intersubjectivity and the lifeworld have since been used to address questions at the core of sociological theory and are typically assumed to offer a coherent alternative that stands on the more interpretative, micro, and action-centered side of the debates. It is because it operates at this core that we can talk about a version of “grand” theory. ³ Even when appropriations of phenomenology are challenged, contestations remain tied to “paradigmatic” questions. Today, for instance, phenomenology is still reclaimed at this level, when phenomenological sociologists insist on its usefulness to account for macro-social realities (Belvedere and Gros, 2023) or in its capacity to fold social objects (as interpreted by participants) into social “facts” (as explained by observers) (Pula, 2022). The situation remains that the theoretical usefulness of phenomenology is assessed explicitly only from the vantage point of the questions and problems of grand sociological theory, which was evident in the idea that phenomenology can provide a coherent foundation for the discipline (as in phenomenological sociology). Variations of this strategy can be found in the attempt to make phenomenology constitute, in its own right, a dimension (as in Habermas’s lifeworld-system distinction), a phase (as in Bourdieu’s theory of practice), or a precursor (as in Berger and Luckmann’s social constructivism) of a full-blown sociological analysis (Eberle, 2012; Raza, 2024).

Similar foundational uses of phenomenology can be seen across several other disciplines. Anthropologists, for instance, also appeal to key phenomenological concepts as a “paradigm” for their discipline. One of the most explicit statements is in the work of Alessandro Duranti, a linguistic anthropologist who argues that Husserl’s concept of “intersubjectivity can constitute an overall theoretical frame for thinking about the ways in which humans interpret, organize, and reproduce particular forms of social life and social cognition” (Duranti, 2010: 2). He suggests that the concept of intersubjectivity may be able to unite several subfields of anthropology by providing a comprehensive account of the basic elements of human sociality, even going so far as to say that the concept of “intersubjectivity” may prove just as important to the discipline as the concept of “culture” (Duranti, 2010: 11).

Another example is in the work of Thomas Csordas, who presents the concept of embodiment as a paradigm for anthropology, defined as “a consistent methodological perspective that encourages reanalyses of existing data and suggests new questions for empirical research” (Csordas, 1990: 5). Drawing on the work of Merleau-Ponty, Csordas argues that the concept of embodiment collapses problematic dualities (such as subject-object). He shows how Merleau-Ponty develops a concept of embodiment that is eminently useful to anthropologists because it accounts for, among other things, the culturally constituted and indeterminate nature of perception, as well as the nature and function of embodied expression. In other words, Merleau-Ponty provides a way of thinking about embodied subjectivity that captures how people perceive and make sense of themselves, others, and their environments in everyday life; arguably the foundational problem that for some defines the subject matter of anthropology.

Phenomenological analyses and interpretations

While a few major figures have imported and adapted phenomenological ideas at the level of grand theory, phenomenology is most commonly used as a resource for facilitating analyses or interpretations of empirical studies. These two uses of phenomenology might be understood as existing on two poles: establishing the foundations of a field on the one hand, and making sense of a specific case on the other. But they also constitute two sides of the same coin.

Consider Csordas’ use of the phenomenological concept of embodiment. He introduces the concept as a paradigmatic foundation for anthropology. But he also illustrates concrete or specific applications of this theoretical concept in how he analyses and makes sense of his own ethnographic data. One example is his analysis of glossolalia, or speaking in tongues, as practiced in charismatic Christianity. To an outsider, speaking in tongues is nothing more than gibberish; it is not a genuinely linguistic act, since it conveys no propositional content. But Csordas wants to understand the meaning and significance of this practice for the practitioners themselves. How can we understand speaking in tongues as language for them? To make sense of this experience, Csordas appeals to Merleau-Ponty’s broader conception of speech as a verbal gesture, rather than an external representation of thought (Csordas, 1990: 25). Despite having no semantic content, speaking in tongues nevertheless expresses that the speaker, and those around them, inhabit a sacred world. It conveys the presence of the divine—and perhaps in a purer form than could be achieved through standard linguistic utterances.

In the analysis of this case, Csordas appeals to Merleau-Ponty’s conception of speech and language as something fundamentally embodied, as an expressive gesture rather than a representation of thought. His aim, in this particular case, is not to develop or modify Merleau-Ponty’s theory. His aim is to apply the theory—and, in so doing, to provide an interpretation that he could not have provided without it.

The application of phenomenological theory and concepts in empirical studies is arguably the most common way that social scientists use phenomenology. In most cases, the purpose of applying phenomenological theory is primarily, if not exclusively, to make sense of a particular case or phenomenon; there is no reciprocal development of the theory or concepts. However, by applying phenomenology in this way, the need for new theoretical concepts sometimes becomes apparent. While many phenomenological concepts provide innovative ways of thinking through problems, they are not tailor made for social science research. So, in some cases, social scientists not only apply existing phenomenological concepts, but also adapt and develop their own concepts, which are tailored and oriented to their disciplines and its problems and questions. This is what we refer to as “theorizing with phenomenology.”

Theorizing with phenomenology

The use of phenomenological concepts as grand theory has proved foundational for several strands of social-scientific research—and, at least in the case of sociology, led to the establishment of a significant disciplinary school. But many social scientists also engage in their own phenomenological theorizing. They not only import phenomenological theory into the core of a discipline, but also create new phenomenologically-inspired theory that is, in a sense, fit for purpose, engaging disciplinary questions in a bottom-up (instead of top-down) way.

Again, we can understand this kind of theorizing as existing between two poles. On the one hand, social scientists import theory from phenomenology into their own discipline; the theory itself remains unchanged and provides a way of conceptualizing the discipline’s relevant domains of research (e.g., the lifeworld, embodied subjectivity, and intersubjectivity). On the other hand, social scientists use phenomenological theory to analyze concrete empirical cases, or phenomena; the theory itself again remains largely unchanged, but provides a new and productive way of understanding or interpreting a relevant topic of interest. The former approach aims at the foundation, whereas the latter aims at application. Theorizing with phenomenology is something in between. It is the development of a new theory that is grounded in phenomenology but modified to better capture a specific kind of phenomenon that the social scientist is trying to grapple with; in doing so, the new concepts have larger repercussions to crucial disciplinary questions.

Here, we provide two examples of social scientists theorizing with phenomenology. In the first example, we show how Surak draws on Merleau-Ponty to develop her concept of the stylistics of action. In the second example, we show how Zigon draws on Heidegger to develop his concept of the situation. While we have selected these articles because we find them particularly illustrative of what it means to theorize with phenomenology, we also want to acknowledge that countless other social scientists engage in this kind of theorizing—including many of the social scientists whose work we used as examples of using phenomenology as grand theory, or to analyze specific cases.

Theorizing with phenomenology in sociology

In sociology, we find one example of theorizing with phenomenology in Kristin Surak’s (2017) study of the Japanese tea ceremony. Drawing on her extensive fieldwork, she shows how Japanese tea ceremonies are coded in terms of the nation; it is a practice and experience in which the nation is felt. Surak’s example is particularly interesting because she initially employed a “praxeological” approach to study how the social practices of the tea ceremony establish and maintain Japanese national identity (Surak, 2012). ⁴ In this way, the study originally focused on how the nation is made and remade through social practices. Phenomenology comes later, and allows her to construe the tea ceremony differently, not as a site and practice where the nation is actively performed, but as an experience where national meanings are invoked by the aesthetics of the experience itself.

One can raise many challenges to this switch. In particular, one can question whether data collected with a different framework in mind can be so easily cased in a different theoretical language. In our opinion, this alternation of casings is what makes Surak’s piece such an important illustration of the upshots of theorizing with phenomenology, and partially an argument against the idea that phenomenological theorization always requires “frontloading” phenomenology at the start of the research process itself (Køster and Fernandez, 2023; Stilwell et al., 2025).

Be that as it may, Surak’s phenomenology of national experiences constitutes a crucial theoretical intervention in the sociology of nations and nationalisms. This subfield has the conceptual resources to study how the nation is performed into being and enacted in interactions, or simply part of the tacit background furniture of social life. And yet, the Merleau-Pontian casing of the tea ceremony makes evident that it lacks the conceptual tools to understand how the very form of an event or practice might bring the nation into being, not as its explicit outcome nor as the taken-for-granted condition of action, but as something in between.

Surak draws inspiration from Merleau-Ponty’s analysis and description of embodied perception to develop a new conceptual resource to understand how the nation might be felt. The sociology of nations has focused on how nations are embedded in the experiential field in two ways. One strand focuses on the nation as a practical device that agents employ to create boundaries of belonging and perform identities. The nation, in this case, is the focal point of actions that are performed into being in crucial moments, as in situations where national differences are relevant to actors. The other strand focuses on how the nation remains the implicit and taken-for-granted background framing social life. A phenomenology of national experiences introduces nuances that open a whole domain of crucial questions and puzzles that can propel the sociological study of nations and nationalisms in a different direction. It does so by showing that the nation is neither the tacit background of social life, nor explicit outcome of certain practices, rituals, or actions, but is suddenly felt by virtue of being embedded in the way agents carry out certain actions—it comes into focus on the aesthetic aspects of social life. Surak develops the concept of the stylistics of action to analyze this class of phenomena.

In fact, the phenomenology of embodied perception helps us to clarify why some heightened sensorial experiences are coded in national terms. These are situations when it is not the case that actions are performing the nation into being (as in elections or commemorative rituals), but rather when an aesthetic experience (a mood, an atmosphere, the feeling of an interaction, etc.) is coded by actors themselves in national terms. A joke can feel too American, an interaction too British, a friendship too German. The tea ceremony—its atmosphere, mood, rhythm, and tempo of the interactions—constitutes a particular case when the whole experience is coded as extraordinarily Japanese: it is a multisensorial experience that disrupts the natural flow of everyday life and is interpreted in distinctly national terms; or, put it the other way around, a moment when the nation is the focal point of experience despite not being performed as such.

Surak (2017) argues that the real puzzle is to determine why the rupture in habitual orientations induced by the tea ceremony is experienced in national (and not gender or sexual) terms. She suggests that Merleau-Pontian phenomenology offers a clue to solve this puzzle because it allows us to “examine the ways the ongoing negotiation of being-in-time, proprioceptive orientation of bodies in space, and disruptions in perceptual experiences afford or encourage particular interpretative f[r]ames” (Surak, 2017: 314-5). Surak’s point is profoundly Merleau-Pontian: what connects perception and interpretation is “the form that actions take within the rupture,” by which she means its “stylistic contours” as evident not only in the “corporeal configurations” but also in its “rhythms, flow, and interactional modes.” For Merleau-Ponty (2012: 152–3), the expressive motility of the body is what makes it “a knot of living significations and not the law of a certain number of covariant terms,” what renders it comparable to a work of art and not to a physical object. Merleau-Ponty (1978: 54, 67), in short, found in every perception the interpretative traces of an embodied style, infusing perception with deep cultural meanings, not so much by the implicit frames or explicit objects in what we see, but by how we see things.

Surak (2017: 325) argues that certain elements or aspects of the tea ceremony might “evoke national resonances, but on their own, they are insufficient to invoke them.” It is the “stylistics of action” (particularly, the corporeal orientations and rhythms of the practice) that silo the interpretative frames of the nation. The complicated tempo and cadence of the ceremony are not only a pragmatic requirement for agents to move into the practice, but it prefigures aesthetically the meanings that become associated with the nation, so that “the alertness to harmonized action is read as expressing thoughtful consideration—a trait often praised as a national hallmark” (Surak, 2017: 327).

The consequences of this phenomenological account of the Japanese tea ceremony for the sociology of nations and nationalisms are not inconsequential. The phenomenologically-inspired concept of stylistics of action can help us to discern analytically three ways in which the nation embeds itself into the field of experience. One way, which is largely explored in the scholarship of banal nationalism, is by remaining unnoticed, unremarked, by and large taken for granted, and tacitly shaping national ways of seeing and thinking. The focus is on the taken-for-granted frames of action and interaction, our habits of thought and interactions—the deep national scripts, collective representations and the hidden doxa (Billig, 1995). A second way, explored in the scholarship on everyday nationhood, consists of studying how the nation is actively and explicitly performed, acted out, and talked into being—it is achieved as the outcome of a set of actions and interactions. Here, the nation is seen as a repertoire, a toolkit, that agents employ in specific moments and interactions to produce practical categorizations, symbolic boundaries, or nationalizing accounts of events (Brubaker, 2004; Fox and Miller-Idriss, 2008).

But the phenomenology of national experiences, as laid out by Surak, makes evident a third way: The nation can also be constitutive of the aesthetic form of experience or practices, and this is different from it being an implicit frame or the explicit outcome of an action; it is part not so much of what we do, but how we do things. She offers the concept of stylistics of action to attend to this dimension that is occluded and unattended by the sociology of everyday nationhood and banal nationalism alike.

Surak’s findings furthermore suggest new ways of thinking about national identity and membership in at least two ways. First, they demonstrate that national identity is not automatically achieved by negotiation of boundaries nor homogeneous (as banal nationalism or everyday nationhood approaches suggest), but that it relies on the cultivation of a range of complex postures, embodied styles, and corporeal skills; it is truly a know-how incorporated in the ways and manners coded as national. To be British or American or Japanese is an effortful and not an automatic achievement that requires embodied cultivation. Second, concomitant to this, since national identification is a matter of skill-acquisition, some members might master these embodied skills better than others within the national community; hence, the contours of a nation incorporate the internal differentiation of types within a “we.” In other words, nations are not constituted only by external boundaries marking a difference between “we” and “they”; but by internal differentiation between different ways of being a member of the nation. Our aim so far has been to contrast between the importation of phenomenological concepts to the discipline in sociology and the integration of phenomenological insights in empirical studies from which emerge larger theoretical and conceptual arguments. While the influence of Merleau-Ponty is evident, Surak is not merely importing or applying his concept. Rather, the concept represents a new development that emerges in conversation with debates and frameworks in the sociology of nations and nationalisms, and that is tailored to have repercussions in larger sociological questions about culture and action.

Theorizing with phenomenology in anthropology

Anthropologists, like sociologists, have also engaged in their own phenomenological theorizing—refining and developing concepts that help us grasp a particular aspect of human life or domain of anthropological inquiry. One example is found in the work of Jarrett Zigon, a cultural anthropologist who has written extensively on societal impacts of the drug war, but also more broadly on the anthropology of ethics and phenomenological ethics, among other topics (see, e.g., Zigon, 2007, 2023). The drug war, as Zigon points out, is an especially difficult phenomenon to conceptualize. We can point to its local manifestations in various organizations, events, government policies, and direct impact on individuals’ lives. But we also understand these manifestations as belonging to something larger, something with a global presence that nevertheless remains difficult to adequately grasp. Zigon argues that existing concepts used to characterize the drug war fall short of capturing this complexity, and therefore proposes a new concept—what he calls a “situation.” As an initial definition, he writes, “by situation I mean a nontotalizable assemblage widely diffused across different global scales that allows us to conceptualize how persons and objects that are geographically, socioeconomically, and culturally distributed get caught up in shared conditions that significantly affect their possible ways of being-in-the-world.” (Zigon, 2015: 502).

At first glance, one might read this definition as more consistent with the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, rather than with the philosophical tradition of phenomenology. Zigon does, after all, rely on their concept of assemblage as it has been adapted into anthropological theory. But this is just one line of philosophical influence. Phenomenology—specifically Heideggerian phenomenology—arguably plays a more significant role in how Zigon develops and formulates his concept.

He suggests, for example, that his concept is at least partially captured in how we use the word in everyday speech, “when we say something like ‘we found ourselves in this situation’, or ask, ‘what can I do, this is the situation I’m in?’” (Zigon, 2015: 503). Grounding technical terms in the original meaning of everyday words and phrases is a common technique in Heidegger’s works. But Zigon’s Heideggerian approach to theory development is not limited to a certain style or method of establishing new concepts. He also borrows and builds upon Heidegger’s account of human existence, not only using the notion of “being-in-the-world,” but also explicitly describing a situation as something that “falls upon us” or that we “get caught up in,” and that “provides the conditions for possible ways of being, doing, speaking, and thinking within that situation” (Zigon, 2015: 503).

This is an adaption of Heidegger’s theory of thrown projection: the idea that we always already find ourselves thrown into a particular, meaningful world, and that we project futural possibilities for ourselves from this position of thrownness (Heidegger, 1962). I cannot simply become anything I want to be; I can only take up roles and possibilities that are intelligible within the concrete circumstances of my life. I cannot, for example, simply decide that I am a father without a relation to a child, a professor without the opportunity to research and teach, or a prime minister in a country that has no such governmental role. My situation does not provide the conditions for any of these possibilities. This insight, however, does not have to lead us toward fatalism. In fact, Zigon sees in it just the opposite: If our situation determines our possibilities for who and what we can be, then we should aim to change our situation through political action—and, thus, create a world that offers us the kind of possibilities we want for ourselves. This is, arguably, a departure from Heidegger’s own thinking—at least in Being and Time—wherein his notion of authenticity may be read as a deep commitment to one’s own situatedness, rather than an opportunity to construct a radically new identity.

Unpacking the concept of a situation, Zigon highlights three key features that distinguish it from competing concepts, such as Alain Badiou’s “world” ⁵ (Badiou, 2009) and Timothy Morton’s “hyperobject” (Morton, 2013). First, he characterizes a situation as a “nontotalizable assemblage” (Zigon, 2015). In doing so, he builds upon but also contrasts his concept with one more common in the anthropological literature: “global assemblage” (Ong, 2004). Whereas global assemblages have been characterized as supplements to environments, contexts, or situations, nontotalizable assemblages should be understood as more deeply constitutive of our lived worlds. As Zigon writes, “our worlds are nothing other than densely intertwined knots of several much more widely diffused and nontotalizable assemblages that constantly flow together and slip apart in a potentially infinite number of combinations” (Zigon, 2015: 505). The drug war, for example, is a nontotalizable assemblage—but so is global militarism. While an “assemblic ethnography” should, according to Zigon, attempt to disentangle the complexity of such phenomena, it must also acknowledge that this complexity constitutes the very conditions for our possible ways of being.

Initially, situation-as-assemblage may seem far from Heideggerian, since the term assemblage is more commonly, again, associated with the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari. But Zigon reconceptualizes a situation—and an assemblage—in an eminently Heideggerian way. He considers assemblages to be at least partly constitutive of our worlds, insofar as they provide the sense, meaning, and intelligibility that shape who we are and determine the possibilities of who we might become. In this respect, the drug war is not only a global complex of state, military, and criminal activities. It is something that shapes how we can make sense of the world, ourselves, and others—including how we perceive drug users, police, and even specific ethnic groups. It does not necessarily do so in a constant or stable way. Situations, and various aspects of situations, might be foregrounded or backgrounded in our experience depending on personal and social circumstances. But the possibility of finding oneself in such a situation remains ever-present.

Second, Zigon says that a situation is not something that can be isolated or singularly located (Zigon, 2015: 506); a situation is not synonymous with a place. People across the globe can find themselves in the same situation, despite having no personal connections or shared physical circumstances. This is easy to see in the case of the drug war, where the same situations seem to unfold time and again—for instance, the use of anti-drug policies to justify increases in police and military forces, which are in turn used primarily to search and detain members of marginalized groups. Members of ethnic or racial minorities being stopped and searched, whether in the United States or in Brazil, can be said to find themselves in the same situation, despite being physically located in two completely different parts of the globe.

This idea also has a clear Heideggerian influence. For Heidegger, our world is always something shared. To find ourselves thrown into a world is to find ourselves caught up in, and subject to, a shared space of intelligibility, including shared words and concepts that orient us in similar ways. A drug user who thinks of himself as a criminal, as someone who must exist on the margins of society, is in some sense caught up in the same situation as the police officer who arrests him. Despite their antagonistic relationship, they operate within a shared space of intelligibility that sets the norms for how they relate to each other. Their situation, then, belongs to neither party, but is something that they—and countless others—find themselves moving in and out of on a near-daily basis.

Third, Zigon says that the space between situations provides potential opportunities for political activity (Zigon, 2015: 507). Since situations are never totalizable, they take hold of us in different ways and to different degrees, affecting the conditions of our lives at several levels. Because of this partial or always incomplete nature of situations, they have gaps, or what Zigon refers to as “interstices.” By recognizing these interstices, we can put ourselves in a position to transform, but perhaps not entirely escape, the situation. By understanding situations in this way, we can also better understand anti-drug war activities. As Zigon writes, “[. . .] if Situationists saw the first political task as the construction of situations from which political experiment and play could begin [. . .], then the anti-drug war movement begins by disclosing already existing situations that must be permanently transformed so as to build new worlds in which drug users can dwell” (Zigon, 2015: 507).

Zigon suggests that with this concept of situation in hand, we may be in a better position to identify the relevant interstices that provide such an opening for political action. In other words, this theoretical work helps us not only to understand the world, but to change it.

Zigon’s politics are of course at odds with Heidegger’s. But their bases for thinking about the nature of political action are largely shared. Rather than draw on Heidegger’s account of authenticity—the idea of choosing, or owning, one’s life and situation—Zigon draws inspiration from Heidegger’s later work on poetry and dwelling. While he does not unpack Heidegger’s thought in detail here, he develops these ideas in other works on the drug war and the ethics of world building (Zigon, 2014, 2018). His characterization of the transformation and construction of situations is clearly inspired by Heidegger’s idea that the true poet is one who opens up new worlds within which we can dwell.

While the Heideggerian inspiration in Zigon’s work runs deep, it is important to stress that his concept of the situation is not equivalent to a concept already developed by Heidegger. Zigon’s concept is doubtless Heideggerian. But it is also his own. It is tailored to the needs of his own discipline, serving to better capture and characterize a particular domain of anthropological research and work through problems in anthropological theory. In this respect, it serves as a clear example of theorizing with phenomenology, in contrast to importing phenomenological theory.

From grand theory to theorizing with phenomenology

Our aim has been to chart a distinctive theoretical use of phenomenology in social-scientific research, with illustrations from sociology and anthropology. Now we turn to making explicit and offering an initial systematization of the landscape we have so far delineated. For lack of a better term, we want to use the term “theorizing with phenomenology” to mark a distinction from what can be called “phenomenological grand theory” on the one hand and the “application of phenomenology” on the other. Theorizing with phenomenology in the social sciences might bear resemblances with what Robert K. Merton called “middle-range theory.” However, we want to make evident throughout this discussion that the procedure we are identifying and characterizing is significantly different from it, and in fact constitutes an alternative approach to generating concepts that maintain a dynamic relationship with empirical research and larger theoretical questions. ⁶

We have first foregrounded a theoretical strategy—common to sociologists and anthropologists, and other social scientists—that employs phenomenology for grand theory. This idea can be cashed out in different ways. One way, which is recurrent throughout the literature, is the elevation of one phenomenological concept to the status of “paradigm” for the discipline at hand. These are the terms that, for instance, Csordas (1990) suggests in relation to embodiment as a paradigm for the study of culture and self in anthropology, which conceives of the lived body as a core subject matter of anthropology. Accordingly, anthropologists can expect to derive from the concept of embodiment a consistent methodological perspective for the discipline, questions for empirical research, and a coherent perspective to reanalyze, reconsider and refashion past findings and problems central to discipline (such as the nature of the sacred or the status and role of language in culture) (see Csordas, 1990: 5, 23, 31).

Put differently, in these cases, a phenomenological concept is used primarily to address “metatheoretical” issues, and from this initial application can be derived different empirical research questions, crucial conceptual definitions, and explanatory or interpretative alternatives. This is clear, for instance, also in the work of Schutz. In fact, many of his empirical studies on social types (as the home-comer or the stranger) or the social distribution of knowledge, as well as his conceptual studies on rationality and social action, are derived from the initial operation through which Weber’s program of interpretative sociology is cast through Husserlian concepts of intersubjectivity and the lifeworld (see Schutz, 1962, 1967).

“Phenomenological grand theory,” hence, is better seen as an exercise of “paradigmatic importation”: It consists of the importation of phenomenological concepts to form a paradigm for the discipline at hand. In this sense, there is an attempt to create a synthesis between phenomenological concepts and the “grand” problems in sociology, anthropology, etc.

Writing in a different context, Robert K. Merton (1968) introduced the idea of middle-range theory as part of a critical commentary on Parsons’s approach to sociological theory. Merton’s target was a similar type of systematic and foundationalist approach to theory that proceeds in a top-down way by first addressing the “core” questions and obtaining a unified theory of culture or the social world capable of generating—typically in an overdetermined way—empirical questions and concepts. The target of Merton’s criticism was the attempt at theoretical synthesis and conceptual unification. In contrast, Merton proposed the idea of middle-range theories, which has since been hailed by some as one of the most productive ways to integrate empirical and theoretical analysis in a consistent and dynamic way. Merton’s proposal remains appealing because it acknowledges the role of theory in guiding empirical analysis, but balances this out by giving a generative role to empirical data and case studies. Empirical studies are conducted to test, reform, and challenge concepts and theoretical frameworks and even generate new theory (see Boudon, 1991; Pawson, 2000).

Similarly, “theorizing with phenomenology” has two components that contrast with what we called the logic of paradigmatic importation. The first component is that phenomenology is used to generate an initial conceptual framework in relation to empirical material, problems, or cases. This initial conceptual framework is oriented to specify relevant existential dimensions, experiential structures, or interpretative dynamics. Yet, this framework is seen as an evolving or embryonic set of interrelated concepts, rather than a complete system. In the second component, this initial phenomenologically-informed conceptual framework engages with theoretical frameworks in the discipline. The initial framework simultaneously undergoes conceptual development in reference to specific fields of research and confronts larger disciplinary conceptualizations and theories. These two moments are not independent or autonomous, but it is worth distinguishing them analytically. On the one hand, the initial framework is developed in critical dialogue with specific fields of research or bodies of scholarship (say, the sociology of nations or anthropology of religion). On the other hand, these conceptual developments can invite further reflections or introduce a wedge into how the discipline has traditionally thought of culture, social structures, the self, or globality and the practice of multi-site ethnographies. Typically, these two moments can lead to a third moment of re-thinking theory, where its contours are shifted and its limits and scope specified.

From these components and moments, we can discern three crucial characteristics of theorizing with phenomenology. The first characteristic is that it relates indirectly with general questions of social-scientific theory, and more directly with specific theoretical issues, puzzles, or shortcomings in subfields, such as the sociological or anthropological study of emotions, religion, boundaries, and cultural or political sociology or anthropology. Second, phenomenological argumentation and insights, and the subsequent conceptual development, refer and remain anchored to empirical evidence or cases. There is no attempt to solve issues or puzzles at high levels of abstraction, but primarily in reference to empirical observation or problems. Third, synergy and contestation replace synthesis. There is no attempt at a unified paradigmatic way of thinking, or an encompassing theory of the self, objects, or the social or cultural world. Rather, there is a set of evolving concepts that cluster and spread throughout disciplinary concerns at different levels. The question is not about the compatibility or incompatibility of phenomenology with sociology or anthropology, and their subject matter is defined at an abstract level. Rather, phenomenology is seen as one theoretical resource, among others, that helps to clarify, sharpen, or improve our understanding of particular social or cultural phenomena—and hence the room is open for it to act in synergy and in contest with insights from other traditions or to connect with different fields of study (see also Scott-Fordsmand and Grytter, Forthcoming).

Theorizing with phenomenology can enrich conceptual frameworks in multiple ways through operations of local conceptual integration in specific research fields (which invites further empirical studies and opens new research questions), or transversal conceptual integration in the discipline (which invites further conceptual discussion, challenges established ways of thinking, or creates bridges between fields of study). Put in this way, we hope to make clear that while phenomenological grand theory operates according to a logic of “paradigmatic importation,” theorizing with phenomenology follows what we can call a logic of “refracted integration.”

An interesting example is the introduction of the concept of interactional expectations, emerging from unattended aspects of the field of experience and action, in the sociological study of boundaries (Tavory, 2010). Tavory observes how objects that are unattended as a result of habitualization (in this case, the yarmulke) remain interactional hooks that render identification and boundaries dormant, yet not completely unexpected. Habitualized objects create potentialities in social life. This conceptualization makes evident that social boundaries are not necessarily the explicit outcome of a performance nor actively guarded or imposed by institutions, but a latent expectation at the margins of interactions. More interestingly, it makes evident that boundaries are often delegated to others who can use unattended interactional hooks at any point. This is a case of local integration of a concept (that of “interactional expectation”) obtained through theorizing with phenomenology in a field of study. But it has also been employed for more transversal conceptual integration into the discipline. Seen in more detail, what sustains this discussion is a phenomenological consideration of objects in relation to notions of embodiment, habitualization, and marginal consciousness. Jerolmack and Tavory (2014) build upon this in a wide-ranging and empirically anchored discussion of “nonhumans” and the constitution of the social self. This results in a more fleshed out theoretical alternative—developed in tandem with pragmatism and insights from Durkheim—for thinking about objects (in terms of experiential fields, with potentialities and intentionality) that is opposed to the flat ontologies of actants in actor network theory.

In the case of Surak’s phenomenology of national experiences, it is possible to find similar operations. Surak employs phenomenology to case her empirical material in a way that cuts across how the scholarship of banal nationalism and everyday nationhood think about the role and status of nations in everyday life. She moves beyond performance-based and doxic-centered approaches by showing, with the help of phenomenology, that “the banal is not merely taken-for-granted; it is achieved.” But the nation is achieved in the Japanese tea ceremony in a particular way that cannot be understood in terms of “categories or frames [as] [. . .] used in interaction” but demand that we “focus on how embodied actions themselves become resources for shifting awareness and interpretation” (Surak, 2017: 314).

The phenomenology of embodied perception offers a way of thinking about the tea ceremony through the concepts of bodily configurations, rhythm and cadence. This conceptual apparatus makes evident that the nation is not achieved as the outcome of an action or performance (as when actors are consuming, talking, choosing, or enacting the nation), but through multisensorial heightened experiences that, due to their very aesthetic form, are coded by actors in national terms. The nation is not explicitly acted or talked into being, nor part of the background furniture implicitly configuring our ways of seeing and thinking, but suddenly felt. Surak is hence able to cut across the conceptual alternatives in the sociology of everyday nationhood and nationalisms (see Bonikowski, 2016; Knott, 2015) and elucidate a new array of empirical questions that become evident through her concept of “stylistics of action” (Surak, 2017: 238). The focus on style connects Surak’s work with new developments and findings across the scholarship in everyday nationalism that tend to focus less on the “we-they” distinction of groups and more in inner-group membership specification (Miller-Idriss, 2019; Miller-Idriss and Gräfe-Geusch, 2023). More generally, the study of the “aesthetics of action” in fact suggests a range of crucial theoretical considerations for the sociological study of culture (see, e.g. de la Fuente, 2000, 2008; Martin and Merriman, 2015; Staubmann, 2022). As we see, the initial phenomenological conceptualization evolves into further theoretical problems and developments not only locally in the sociology of nations, but even transversally in general questions about culture in sociological theory.

The strategy of theorizing with phenomenology allows the researcher to remain close to case studies and empirical data or problems, and further integrate concepts locally to a particular field of study and transversally in the more foundational issues of the discipline. We want to argue that these are not isolated cases. In fact, similar uses can be seen in the phenomenological approaches to religious experiences (its bodily and sensual aspects as well experiential trajectories) in the sociology and anthropology of religion and the sacred (Csordas, 1997; Pagis and Winchester, 2021; Tavory and Winchester, 2012; Winchester and Pagis, 2022), or bodily motility, intersubjectivity and expressivity in the sociology and anthropology of emotions (Katz, 1999; Throop, 2014), as well as embryonic examples of how the notion of embodiment enhances our understanding of economies of enrichment (Dorschel and Hermans, 2025).

Before closing this article, we want to make explicit how our proposal differs from and in fact offers a plausible alternative to Merton’s middle-range theory (and derivatives). A crucial overlap is that we do think that theorizing with phenomenology should be oriented to “guide empirical inquiry” and “involve abstractions” while nonetheless “remain[ing] close enough to observed data [or cases].” However, we do not think that it should necessarily be in order for theory “to be incorporated in propositions that permit empirical testing” (Merton, 1968: 39). Recently, scholars have acknowledged that there is an inconsistency in how Merton presents the “developing nature of middle-range theories and their multiple functions in sociological research” and his “static and single-function definition” that conceives of middle-range theorizing in terms of “empirical testability” (see Kaidesoja, 2019: 1470). And, in fact, many of the other functions of middle-range theory that he acknowledges bear resemblances with what we call theorizing with phenomenology (as opposed to phenomenological grand theory). In particular, we also think that phenomenological theorizations should be “sufficiently abstract” (68) to deal with different aspects of social action, social structures or cultural dynamics, while still dealing with “delimited aspects of social phenomena” (40); and that these “do not remain separate but are consolidated into wider networks of theory” and thus “generate an array of theoretical problems” (68) able “to shape the development of theory” (157).

However, regardless of multifunctional or dynamic definitions, Merton’s notion of middle-range theory is inspired by and oriented to explanatory purposes that oscillate between functional or mechanism-based explanations (see Pawson, 2000; Tilly, 2010). It is a project wedded to the quest of an explanatory social science. At this juncture, the disanalogies with what we call theorizing with phenomenology become evident. We do not believe that phenomenological theorizing should be oriented or restricted to causal or functional accounts, let alone to mechanism-based explanations (cf. Kaidesoja, 2019). In fact, what is interesting about theorizing with phenomenology is that it allows us to generate new concepts to make sense of a limited set of empirical phenomena, which may or may not offer a causal explanation, but that remain capable of transforming fields of research and informing larger theoretical debates. In other words, while Merton’s middle-range theory comes with naturalistic and mechanistic baggage, the logic of theorizing with phenomenology displays an empirically anchored modality of theorization that is productive of new concepts or conceptual distinctions, that engages debates that transcend the empirical material or the case at hand, and that generate as much as solve specific theoretical problems in different areas of social-scientific research, while remaining uncommitted to any model of scientific explanation.

Finally, we believe that our inquiry into the theoretical uses of phenomenology in the social sciences could provide a blueprint for future analyses of the interactions between the social sciences and different philosophical schools. After all, sociology, anthropology and other social sciences have drawn upon pragmatism or post-structuralism as much as upon phenomenology, and will continue to find inspiration in different philosophical schools. We suggest that in there we might also find forms of “paradigmatic importation” and “refracted integration,” and that in principle the latter is more productive. But also we could argue that we have traced a particular trajectory of how concepts travel across disciplines, from paradigmatic importations to refracted integrations via mere applications. All in all, we suggest that we might have been able to find a schema to study how concepts travel and to establish fruitful interdisciplinary exchanges with philosophy, one that allows social scientists to make empirically anchored conceptual innovations. But proving this lies beyond the scope of this article.