ABSTRACT
Even in the widely recognised current state of flux in sociological theory, variously conceived of as a crisis or as preceding a ‘paradigm shift’, the recent growth of interest in the application of phenomenology to sociology has been remarkable. Phenomenology essentially starts from paying attention to things only as they appear to us, as phenomena. This leads, in sociological applications of phenomenology, to a stress on the actor’s subjective understanding of the social world. Similarly, activities which classroom observers characterize as ‘play’ may have none of the same meaning for the observed children which ‘play’ has for adults. If the adult performed the activity he calls play when he observes the child performing it, then indeed he may widely be recognized by adult observers as ‘playing’. The definition of the situation leads to a greater concentration on the nature of the situation the actor is involved in than does a strictly phenomenological perspective.
