ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a description of the place of the concept of ‘finite province of meaning’ in the context of Alfred Schutz’s writings and his theoretical interests. The concept is showed to enjoy a paradoxical place in the texts that deal with the problem: it is a concept that serves as an articulation device to Schutz’s system of thought and has been developed over a seven-year period, while its roots can be identified in Alfred Schutz’s childhood literary interests. This chapter also provides a reflexive-sociological analysis of the birth of the idea of multiple realities in Schutz’s own life-story and reaches the conclusion that there is a meaningful overlapping of Schutz’s emigration period from Austria to the US and the period in which his best paper on ‘finite provinces of meanings’ (On Multiple Realities) was written. Particularly, the Schutzian theory of the multiple realities appears as the fruit of a seven-year meditation during the major liminal time of his life.
