Day 11: Phenomenological Sociology

Didn't make much progress today. My illness confined me to bed most of the afternoon again. I must ask my doc in next visit if this is the result of my sleep apnea, allergy, hypoxia, hypothyroid, or all of the above. :-p It's not fun living with all those symptoms and more when you try to do a dissertation. It's worst when they all hit you at the same time when you think you just had it going for the first time in 3 long years!

Well, complaints aside, I had a good day because I managed to get another great tip from my friend! This time, in a form of clear explanation of the phenomenological approach that I could perhaps use in my dissertation! It got me excited for the first time! The light at the end of the tunnel seems to be bigger by the day!

However, like in Buddhism's teaching, my joy did not last long. After I checked my Encyclopedia of Sociology, I discovered that Phenomenology is a bad boy of Sociology! Would I ever get away from this curse? Just look at this excerpt:

Phenomenological sociology has not greatly influenced sociology as a whole and has also been subjected to extensive criticism. It has been argued that it deals with trivial topics, is purely descriptive, has had very little empirical application and neglects the notion of social structure. (Abercrombie, Hill & Turner, 2000, p. 262).

I still have to find out more about all this. But one thing that perhaps cheers me up a bit was the "See Also:" part at the bottom of the entry. Among others was the term "Verstehen," the German word for Insight or Understanding that was one of the first terms in sociology that actually thrilled me. Come to think of it, there has been almost no other sociological terms that has ever made an impression on me in a big way, although "Sociological Imagination" came pretty close.

Needless to say, I fell for the word Verstehen not because of its exotic and sexy accent, but because of its close meaning to the idea of Insight as in Insight Meditation in Buddhism which means Vipassana Meditation which is what I really want to talk about in my dissertation.

So we'll see. May be phenomenological sociology would be my answer after all, academically controversial and all that, if I get my advisor's blessings, of course.