Alfred Schutz on Social Institutions

CARLOS BELVEDERE

Pittsburgh

Conferencia; SPHS 2019 Annual Conference; 2019

Society fo Phenomenology and the Human Sciences (SPHS)

Institutions are a kind of knowledge at hand determined by the system of motivational relevances prevailing in any situation which makes it possbile for a person to achieve his purposes at hand, obtaining the intended results through pre-established procedures. They are also a part of the social world naively accepted in the natural attitud of the in-group; i.e., they belong to the relative natural concept of the world taken-for-granted by its members. More specifically, institutons are composed of typified patterns of social interactions which are distinctive of group life. They are an organized pattern of routines that allow people to master the problems of daily life without the need of redefining situations that have occurred many times before or of looking for new solutions to old problems that have already been handled satisfactorily. Finally, institutions are cultural patterns of group life consisting of typifications and relevances that define objective meanings such as social roles and role expectations, among others.