Personal Memories and Constellations with Regard to Human Studies
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Personal Memories and Constellations with Regard to Human Studies Martin Endreß1 Published online: 21 September 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The article honors aspects of George Psathas’ life achievement. In particular, it describes his commitment to “Human Studies” and places his social phenomeno‑ logical research work in dialogue with Alfred Schütz and Harold Garfinkel. Keywords George Psathas · Human Studies · Alfred Schutz · Harold Garfinkel · Trust With the death of George Psathas, the academic community has lost a dedicated colleague, a friend, and a brilliant scholar. It was George, who drew the attention of American social scientists to the theoretical profile and the methodological implica‑ tions of what became known as “Phenomenological Sociology” (Psathas, ed., 2003): the encounter of the European tradition of Phenomenology with the empirical endeavors of the American Ethnomethodology. In my opinion, the two intellectual stages that were decisive in this respect were his adjustments to the ethnomethodo‑ logical research program in conversation with Alfred Schütz and Harold Garfinkel and his editorial commitment to Human Studies. But before I address these topics in detail, I would like to share some personal memories of George.
Personal Memories There are especially three constellations or circumstances that I associate in a spe‑ cial way with George. These have to do with Alfred Schütz, Kurt H. Wolff, and Human Studies. I first met George by the end of April 1995 at a conference on “Alfred Schutz’s ‘Sociological Aspects of Literature’” organized by Lester Embree at the New School for Social Research in New York. For me, as a young scholar, it was a great honor * Martin Endreß endress@uni‑trier.de 1
University of Trier, Trier, Germany
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to have the opportunity to spent time together with one of the greatest personalities of the phenomenologically inspired sociology and to discuss my own contribution to the conference with him. I immediately came to know George as a very charm‑ ing person, warmly welcoming the young man I was back then. George spoke—dis‑ cussing Schütz’s concept of multiple realities—about the movie “The Purple Rose of Cairo”—and he turned out to be just one himself. This conference about Schütz was followed by further conferences, especially the three anniversary conferences in 1999, which George and I documented together with Hisashi Nasu some years later in the volume “Explorations of the Life-World” (Endreß et al. 2005). A second path connects George and me with Kurt H. Wolff. Since 1998 I have been to Boston—to be more precise, in Newton—for several times to review Kurt’s papers and prepare them for transfer to the Social Science Archive at the Univer‑ sity of Konstanz (and after the bequest, it was possible to bring Kurt’s estate to this archive in winter 2003/2004). George, for his part, visited Kurt in 2002 and 2003, and in this context, he invited Kurt to give the Alfred Schutz Memorial Lec‑ ture at the SPHS Congress in Bost
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