[first draft of a reflective essay on the early history of the Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences

(SPHS), which celebrated its fortieth anniversary in 2021; to be published in a special issue of Schutzian Research,
2023]

Reflections on the Early SPHS

I came to learn of the Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences (SPHS) through
my dissertation advisor Anne Buttimer, then a Geography professor at Clark University in
Worcester, Massachusetts (Buttimer 1976). At the 1980 Ottawa meeting of the Society for
Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP), Buttimer had participated in a special
session on “place and space,” organized by Clark University Philosophy professor Steven
Skousgaard. After that 1980 event, Buttimer suggested I organize another session on the topic,
this time sponsored by SPHS, which she explained had recently been formed and would hold its
first annual meeting in 1981 in conjunction with SPEP. Entitled “phenomenologies of place,”
that SPHS session took place at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Illinois. As I remember,
session participants were Buttimer, psychologist Bernd Jager, and philosophers Joseph Grange
and Robert Mugerauer.

That 1981 meeting was a crucial event in my professional career because I met Mugerauer, then
an Associate Dean at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. At the time, he had become
interested in phenomenological and hermeneutic work as it might provide insights for
environmental and architectural concerns. I had written a thank you note to philosopher Richard
Zaner, explaining how valuable his book, The Problem of Embodiment (Zaner 1971), had been
for my dissertation work (Seamon 1979). I asked him if he knew any researchers using
phenomenology to examine environmental topics, and he mentioned an article by Mugerauer,
one of his former graduate students (Mugerauer 1981). I wrote to Mugerauer, and he agreed to
participate in the SPHS session on phenomenologies of place. I still fondly remember sitting in a
diner near the Northwestern campus, discussing phenomenological topics with Bob that I had
never been able to discuss with anyone else. That meeting allowed me to picture a professional
trajectory focusing on phenomenological research that would consider environmental,
architectural, and place concerns not readily accessible via the analytic, quantitative way of study
that, in the early 1980s, dominated Geography and other environmental disciplines and
professions.

Because of that 1981 SPHS session, Mugerauer and I became good friends and over the years
have been involved in many joint efforts, including co-editing a volume, Dwelling, Place and
Environment: Towards a Phenomenology of Person and World (Seamon and Mugerauer1985),
which has become a seminal text in environmental and architectural phenomenology. For several
years after the 1981 meeting, Mugerauer and I organized SPHS sessions relating to
environmental, architectural, and place-making themes. Dwelling, Place and Environment
incorporated many of those presentations, including entries by Buttimer, Grange, Jager,
Mugerauer, and me as well as entries by later SPHS presenters, including philosopher Michael
Zimmerman, urban planner Fran Violich, and architects Botond Bogner and David Saile. There
were other contributors to this edited volume (the text included seventeen chapters), but I
mention this book in relation to SPHS because Mugerauer and I would never have attempted it if
there had been no SPHS or the encouraging attention of SPHS supporters like sociologist Larry
Weider and, particularly, sociologist George Psathas.

For some years at the beginning of SPHS, I was the group’s secretary, and I want to highlight
those early days via the professional dedication of Weider and Psathas. I knew Weider directly
because, in the early 1980s, both of us were professors at the University of Oklahoma—Weider
in the Sociology Department and I in a joint position in Geography and Architecture. Weider had
studied with ethnomethodologist Harold Garfinkel and edited the SPHS newsletter. He and I
would sometimes meet to discuss newsletter contents, and I helped him with editing, printing,
and mailing. In those days, all text had to be typed, and copying and mailing were done by hand.

From my observations of SPHS in those early days, Psathas was the engine behind the group. In
1978, he had founded Human Studies, at the time one of the few academic journals accepting
phenomenological work (Psathas 2002). His background included studies of phenomenological
sociologist Alfred Schutz, but Psathas was open to other phenomenological possibilities,
including the work Mugerauer and I emphasized—phenomenological efforts relating to to
architectural, environmental, and place themes.

Psathas actualized an instinctive recognition that phenomenological work could offer a valuable
bridge to integrate the various social sciences and to present an understanding of human life that
was more accurate, inclusive, and comprehensive than the reductive portraits offered by analytic,
quantitative science. One of the best examples is the introduction he wrote for his ground-
breaking edited collection, Phenomenological Sociology: Issues and Applications (Psathas
1973), which included chapters by such key phenomenologists as Egon Bittner, Fred Dallmayr,
John O’Neil, Herbert Spiegelberg, Kurt Wolff, Helmut Wagner, and Richard Zaner. In the
volume’s introduction, Psathas wrote:

The lifeworld (Lebenswelt) is not only pre-structured, but the meanings of the elements
contained within it are also pregiven. The stock of knowledge provides the actor with
rules for interpreting interactions, social relationships, organizations, and institutions.
And when the unexpected happens or new situations occur and the taken-for-granted is
thrown into question, only then is he forced to consider alternative schemes of
interpretation. Thus, within the standpoint of the natural attitude, the individual is not
motivated to question the meaningful structures of his lifeworld. His interest is a practical
one and his task is to live in rather than to make a study of the lifeworld. It remains for the
social scientist to adopt the stance of a disinterested observer and to study the lifeworld of
others (Psathas 1973, p. 9).

One last item I want to mention in more detail is SPHS’s early newsletters, formally titled
Phenomenology and the Human Sciences: Journal of Reviews and Commentary. In the 1980s
into the 1990s, these newsletters were an important source of information and points of view
relating to phenomenology and the social sciences; much of this material was nowhere else
available at the time. I emphasize the interdisciplinary camaraderie of SPHS during these early
years by mentioning that the September 1990 newsletter issue, edited by sociologist Gisela
Hinkle (1990), focused on the theme of “phenomenology of place.” This issue included a lengthy
review by philosopher Jim Cheney (1990) of sociologist E. V. Walter’s Placeways (Walter 1989)
and Mugerauer and my Dwelling, Place and Environment (Seamon and Mugerauer 1985). These
SPHS newsletters provided unique information and worked as an invaluable complement to
SPHS’s annual meetings, providing a communal sense of common aims and interests. As is the
case with so many other academic and professional groups, these newsletters are no longer
produced. I would suggest that the potency and prestige of SPHS has suffered because of their
loss.

References
Buttimer, Anne, 1976. Grasping the Dynamism of Lifeworld. Annals of the Association of
American Geographers, 66 (2): 277-292.
Cheney, Jim, 1990. Review Essay, Phenomenology and the Human Sciences: Journal of Reviews
and Commentary, 15, 3 (September): 6-24 [special issue on “phenomenology of place”].
Hinkle, Gisela J., ed., 1990. Phenomenology and the Human Sciences: Journal of Reviews and
Commentary, 15, 3 (September) [special issue on “phenomenology of place”].
Mugerauer, Robert, 1981. Concerning Regional Geography as Hermeneutical Discipline,
Geographische Zeitschrift, 69 (1): 57-67.
Psathas, George, ed., 1973. Phenomenological Sociology: Issues and Applications. New York:
Wiley.
Psathas, George, 2002. The Path to Human Studies. Human Studies, 25 (4): 417-424 [special 25th
anniversary issue].
Seamon, David, 1979. A Geography of the Lifeworld. New York: St. Martin’s.
Seamon, David and Mugerauer, Robert, 1985. Dwelling, Place and Environment: Towards a
Phenomenology of Person and World. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff.
Walter, E. V., 1989. Placeways: A Theory of the Human Environment. Raleigh: University of
North Carolina Press.
Zaner, Richard M., 1971. The Problem of Embodiment: Some Contributions to a Phenomenology
of the Body. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

David Seamon is a Professor of Environment-Behavior and Place Studies in the Department of