ABSTRACT
Phenomenology is often mistakenly understood as an effort to understand the subjective perspectives of social actors-to see the social world through the eyes of others. As a result, environmental sociologists have rarely attempted to apply phenomenological insights to objective, real-world environmental problems such as global warning, species extinction, and energy depletion. Here it is argued phenomenology can provide substantial insights into the way in which environmental problems are collectively understood and the way they might be solved. In what follows, I demonstrate sociologists concerned with environmental problems can profit from phenomenological insights, in particular those of the Austrian-born philosopher Alfred Schutz. The principal contention raised here is that environmental sociology must begin with a prescientific analysis of what Schutz called the everyday life-world. He states, “the life-world is that province of reality which the wide-awake and normal adult simply takes for granted in the attitude of commonsense” (Schutz and Luckmann, 1973: 3-4). The life-world is, then, the day-to-day reality from which we experience the wider world and its “problems.” Let us consider a real-world problem as an example.
