Central and East European
Society for Phenomenology

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145719

Consociated contemporaries as an emergent realm of the lifeworld

extending Schutz's phenomenological analysis to cyberspace

Shanyang Zhao

pp. 91-105

Abstract

According to the differences in the spatial-temporal co-location of human individuals, Alfred Schutz divided the contemporaneous lifeworld into two major realms: the realm of consociates made up of individuals sharing a community of space and a community of time, and the realm of contemporaries made up of individuals sharing neither a community of space nor a community of time. Extending Schutz's phenomenological analysis to cyberspace, this paper delineates an emergent third realm – the realm of consociated contemporaries, in which individuals share a community of time without sharing a community of space. A central argument of this paper is that the emergence of this social domain in cyberspace reconfigures the structure of the lifeworld by creating a new spatial-temporal condition of human contact, which gives rise to a new mode of human interaction and a new form of human relationship. The revolution of electronic communication is therefore a revolution of the ways in which human individuals come to construct we-relationships with one another in shared meaning contexts.

Publication details

Published in:

(2004) Human Studies 27 (1).

Pages: 91-105

DOI: 10.1023/B:HUMA.0000012246.33089.68

Full citation:

Zhao Shanyang (2004) „Consociated contemporaries as an emergent realm of the lifeworld: extending Schutz's phenomenological analysis to cyberspace“. Human Studies 27 (1), 91–105.