ABSTRACT
Max van Manen is perhaps the most frequently cited methodological authority in the PQR literature. In a number of respects, he and Giorgi are very different writers. Stylistically, they vary enormously. Giorgi is clear but prosaic; van Manen’s writing is much flashier, but it is not always obvious what he means. From a philosophical point of view, Giorgi’s main point of reference is the descriptive phenomenology associated with Husserl; van Manen draws on both descriptive and interpretive traditions. Van Manen’s most cited book (1990) is less technical than Giorgi’s; but Giorgi tries harder (though unsuccessfully) to present a ‘method’. Indeed, van Manen rejects the idea of method, and substitutes something he calls a ‘methodos’. Each of these differences is worth considering more closely. On the one hand, van Manen’s style makes his work difficult to pin down. On the other, his attempt to meld together the descriptive and interpretive threads in the phenomenological tradition is responsible for a series of (what appear to be) anomalies in his account of meaning attribution.
