ABSTRACT
This chapter contends that while Schutz’s phenomenological thesis of intersubjective experience is generally laudable, the lack of a dimension of power in his conceptualization has constituted a moot question that seriously lowers its theoretical utility in examining everyday life in ethnographic inquiries. The author argues that Schutz has already laid down in this own work a possible route to address this moot question. Central to the discussion is to extend Schutz’s concept of relevance structures to Foucault’s theoretical nexus of power/knowledge, and eventually to governmentality, in order to unravel the political side intersubjective experience. The discussion suggests that the notion of impersonal domination is a pivotal link to empirically understand the exercise of power in experience from the actor’s point of view.
