GRASPING THE DYNAMISM OF LIFEWORLD

Abstract

Recent attempts by geographers to explore the human experience of space have focused on overt behavior and its cognitive foundations. The language and style of our descriptions, however, often fail to speak in categories appropriate for the elucidation of lived experience, and we need to evaluate our modes of knowing in the light of modes of being in the everyday world. Phenomenologists provide some guidelines for this task. They point to the preconsciously given aspects of behavior and perception residing in the “lifeworld”—the culturally defined spatiotemporal setting or horizon of everyday life. Scientific procedures which separate “subjects'’and “objects,'’thought and action, people and environments are inadequate to investigate this lifeworld. The phenomenological approach ideally should allow lifeworld to reveal itself in its own terms. In practice, however, phenomenological descriptions remain opaque to the functional dynamism of spatial systems, just as geographical descriptions of space have neglected many facets of human experience. There are certain avenues for dialogue between these two disciplines in three major research areas: the sense of place, social space, and time-space rhythms. Such a dialogue could contribute to a more humanistic foundation for human geography.