The Subjective Experience of Inequality in Everyday Life: Contributions of Alfred Schutz’s Phenomenological Sociology

Abstract

The analysis of social inequalities has frequently been presented in sociological research in terms of the distribution of assets and of social, cultural, or political opportunities, i.e., in terms of the objective possibilities of acquisition of strategic resources. However, little has been said about the subjective manifestation of the phenomenon. And in the works that have studied that aspect the assumption underlying sustains that the subjective experience of inequalities only involves comparisons with Others. Starting from a critical review of these perspectives the article recovers, from a theoretical viewpoint, the actor´s subjective meaning for the approach of social inequality taking as a reference Alfred Schutz´s phenomenologically oriented sociology. It is maintained that Schutzian sociology provides conceptual tools to investigate subjective experience of inequality in everyday life, as well as guidelines for the empirical approach of that experience in different cultural and historical contexts.