Main description:

Max van Manen offers an extensively updated edition of Phenomenology of Practice: Meaning-Giving Methods in Phenomenological Research and Writing to provide an eloquent, accessible, and detailed approach to practicing phenomenology.

Phenomenology of practice refers to the meaning of doing phenomenology on experiences that are of significance to those in professional practice such as psychology, health care, education, and in contexts of ordinary living. A special feature of this update is the role of examples, anecdotes, stories, and vignettes, and the singularity of fictionalized empirical fragments in making the unknowable knowable. Accordingly, the various chapters are enriched with many intelligible examples of phenomenological essays and excursions on ordinary and extraordinary topics. These examples show that a phenomenological method can be engaged to explore virtually any lived experience or event. Max van Manen provides penetrating portrayals of depthful insights by brilliant phenomenologists. He identifies and distinguishes a variety of phenomenological orientations that are alive and current today.

This book is relevant to scholars, students, and motivated readers interested in the originary meanings and methods of phenomenological human science enquiry. Max van Manen's comprehensive work is of significance to all concerned with the interrelation between being and acting, thoughtfulness and tact, in human sciences research and the phenomenology of everyday life.

Contents:

SECTION ONE: WAYS OF UNDERSTANDING PHENOMENOLOGY 1. Doing Phenomenology 2. Samples of Phenomenological Texts 3. The Meaning of Meaning 4. Phenomenology is the Name of a Methody 5. The Role of Stories, Anecdotes, and Vignettes 6. Voking Language and Experience; SECTION TWO: PROTAGONISTS AND PRACTICES: A TRADITION OF TRADITIONS 7. On the Way to Phenomenology: Precursors 8. Forming Traditions: Foundational Thinkers 9. Phenomenological Orientations: Protagonists 10. Phenomenology and the Professions: Practitioners; SECTION THREE: METHODS, RESEARCH, WRITING 11. Philosophical Methods: Epoche and Reduction 12. Human Science Methods: Empirical and Reflective Research Activities 13. Methodological Issues 14. The Desire to Write