On Social Emergence: A Non-Dichotomous Approach to Qualitative Data Analysis

Kamila Biały; Piotr F. Piasek

doi:10.18778/1733-8069.20.1.02

Authors

Kamila Biały University of Lodz, Poland https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4933-3570
Piotr F. Piasek Central China Normal University https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0707-4435

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8069.20.1.02

Keywords:

non-dichotomous epistemology, emergence, subjectivity, narrative interview, interview about the present

Abstract

As part of our research project titled The Shaping of Subjectivity and Biographies of Individuals in the Face of the Transformations of a Neo-modern Society, data was collected with a tool of narrative interviewing focusing on the present experience. In this article, we propose a nondichotomous way of analyzing this qualitative material. The inspiration for creating the presented analytics is the epistemological position of the Gestalt psychotherapy as well as phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty and Waldenfels). The narrative interviews were aimed at theorizing (about) subjectivity in the biographies of contemporary Poles, but the analysis focuses not so much on depicting subjectivity as ‘basic agency’ – i.e. that which provides the possibility of action, interaction, self-narrating – but, rather, on seeing subjectivity as a component that emerges only in the long process of narration and interaction.

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Author Biographies

Kamila Biały, University of Lodz, Poland

Sociologist (Department of Sociology of Art, University of Lodz), Gestalt therapist; her area of interest is epistemology, methodology, and ethics as pertaining to sociological problems inspired by contemporary phenomenology.

Piotr F. Piasek, Central China Normal University

Sociologist and philosopher (the Central China Normal University); his scientific interests include the ontological and epistemological problems of social sciences (phenomenology, systems theories).

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