Harold Garfinkel's breaching experiments asked students to behave like a boarder in their own family home — polite but formal, asking for clarification on basic social conventions. Family members responded with confusion, anger, and concern. What do these results demonstrate about the lifeworld?
AThat social norms are weak and easily disrupted by minor behavioral changes
BThat the taken-for-granted background of everyday life is powerful and normally invisible — only visible when violated
CThat family relationships are more rule-governed than other social settings
DThat social order depends on explicit negotiation of conventions that participants consciously hold
The power of breaching experiments is precisely that the disruptions were minor — no rules were broken, no laws violated. The intense reactions (confusion, anger, suspicion) reveal how much ordinary social life depends on a vast, normally invisible background of shared taken-for-granted assumptions. The lifeworld is so thoroughly naturalized that when even trivial background expectations are violated, it feels like something has gone seriously wrong. The experiments make the lifeworld visible by removing it — demonstrating that smooth social interaction is not the result of explicit rule-following but of shared pre-reflective assumptions about how the world works.
Question 2 Multiple Choice
In Berger and Luckmann's account of social construction, what is 'objectivation'?
AThe process by which scientific methods are applied to social phenomena to produce objective knowledge
BThe phase in which repeated habitual actions become externalized and experienced as an objective social reality existing independently of any individual
CThe internalization of social norms through primary socialization in childhood
DThe reduction of complex social phenomena to observable behavioral indicators for measurement
Objectivation is the second phase in Berger and Luckmann's three-step model: habitualization (actions become routines) → objectivation (routines become experienced as external, objective, 'thing-like' realities) → internalization (individuals absorb these objectivated realities through socialization). Marriage began as specific people making specific arrangements; through objectivation, it becomes an institution that exists 'out there,' with rules and expectations that feel natural and pre-given. This is the constructive process by which human activity produces social structures that then appear independent of and prior to human activity.
Question 3 True / False
In phenomenological sociology, social institutions like property rights and marriage are treated as naturally given features of human life that exist independently of how people experience and interpret them.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: False
This is precisely the view phenomenological sociology rejects. Social institutions are not naturally given — they are built up through processes of habitualization, objectivation, and internalization. What appears natural and inevitable is actually the sediment of past human activity: arrangements that were once specific choices become routinized, then experienced as external constraints, then transmitted to new generations as facts about the world. The phenomenological insight is that even the most solid-seeming social facts are constructed through intersubjective meaning-making, which means they are in principle contingent — they could have been otherwise and can in principle be changed.
Question 4 True / False
Typification allows social interaction to proceed smoothly because it means we categorize people using socially available types rather than reconstructing each person from scratch in every encounter.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: True
Typification is the mechanism by which the lifeworld enables efficient social interaction. We do not encounter a stranger as a completely unique individual requiring fresh interpretation from first principles — we encounter them as already typed: as a customer, a professor, a police officer, a salesperson. These types come pre-loaded with behavioral expectations that allow us to interact fluidly without negotiating every assumption. The cost is that typification also reproduces social categories and their associated assumptions about groups — the same mechanism that enables smooth interaction also carries and reproduces stereotypes and role expectations.
Question 5 Short Answer
Why does phenomenological sociology suggest that social order is simultaneously fragile and powerful — and how do these two properties relate?
Think about your answer, then reveal below.
Model answer: Social order is fragile because it depends on constant intersubjective maintenance: the taken-for-granted world must be continuously reproduced through everyday interpretive practices. Garfinkel's breaching experiments show how easily this background can be disrupted. It is powerful because once institutionalized, social constructions acquire the appearance of necessity — they are experienced as natural, inevitable, and external. The two properties are related: social order is powerful precisely because its constructed character is invisible. Its fragility is hidden by its apparent naturalness, which is why deliberate disruption (like breaching) feels so transgressive and why social change is so difficult even when the constructed basis of institutions is exposed.
This dual character has important implications. If social order required explicit consent and negotiation at every moment, it would be inherently unstable — too many moving parts. Instead, it works through taken-for-grantedness, which makes it durable but also relatively opaque to challenge. Phenomenological sociology thus explains why unequal or unjust social arrangements can persist even without overt coercion: they are reproduced in every act of everyday interpretation. It also explains why consciousness-raising and denaturalization — making the constructed character of institutions visible — is a prerequisite for social transformation.