ALFRED SCHUTZ
Collected Papers
II
Studies in Social Theory
EDITED AND INTRODUCED BY
ARVID BRODERSEN
MARTINUS NIJHOFF / THE HAGUE
Photomechanical reprint 1976
CONTENTS
Editor's Note I
Part 1 / Pure Theory
THE SOCIAL WORLD AND THE THEORY OF SOCIAL ACTION 3
THE DIMENSIONS OF THE SOCIAL WORLD 20
1. Introduction 20
II. Social Reality within Reach of Direct Experience 23
I. The face-to-face situation and the "pure" we-relation 23
2. Social relations in the face-to-face situation 27
3. Direct observations 33
III. The World of Contemporaries as a Structure of Typifications
37
1. The transition from direct to indirect experience of
social reality 37
2. The contemporary as an ideal type and the theyrelation
41
3. The strata of anonymity in the world of contemporaries 48
4. Social relations between contemporaries 53
IV. The World of Predecessors and the Problem of History 56
V. Glossary 62
THE PROBLEM OF RATIONALITY IN THE SOCIAL WORLD 64
VI CONTENTS
Part II ! Applied Theory
THE STRANGER: AN ESSAY IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 9I
I06THE HOMECOMER
THE WELL-INFORMED CITIZEN: AN ESSAY ON THE SOCIAL
DISTRIBUTION OF KNOWLEDGE 120
DON QUIXOTE AND THE PROBLEM OF REALITY I35
MAKING MUSIC TOGETHER: A STUDY IN SOCIAL RELATIONSHIP I59
MOZART AND THE PHILOSOPHERS 179
SANTAYANA ON SOCIETY AND GOVERNMENT 20I
EQUALITY AND THE MEANING STRUCTURE OF THE SOCIAL
WORLD
I. Introduction
II. The Social World as Taken for Granted and Its
Structurization
226
226
229
III. The Concept of Equality and the Structure of Relevance 239
IV. The Various Interpretations of the World Taken for
Granted 243
I. The self-interpretation of the world taken for granted
by the in-group 244
2. The out-group's interpretation of the world taken for
granted by the in-group 245
3. Interpretation of the order of relevances by the social
scientist 248
4. Interpretation of the order of relevance from a philosophical,
mythical, or theological basic position 248
V. Subjective and Objective Interpretation 250
A. Subjective and objective meaning of the concept
"social group" 250
I. Subjective meaning of group membership 25I
2. Objective meaning of group membership 254
CONTENTS VII
B. Subjective and objective meaning of equality 257
I. Subjective and objective constitution of homogeneous
domains of relevance 258
2. Discrimination and minority rights, subjectively and
objectively interpreted 262
3. The order of domains of relevances, subjectively and
objectively interpreted 266
4. Equality aimed-at and equality to-be-granted 266
C. Subjective and objective meaning of equal opportunity 269
SOME EQUIVOCATIONS IN THE NOTION OF RESPONSIBILITY 274
TIRESIAS, OR OUR KNOWLEDGE OF FUTURE EVENTS 277
Index 295
THE STRANGER
AN ESSAY IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
The present paper intends to study in tenns of a general
theory of interpretation the typical situation in which a stranger
finds himself in his attempt to interpret the cultural pattern of a
social group which he approaches and to orient himself within it.
For our present purposes the tenn "stranger" shall mean an adult
individual of our times and civilization who tries to be pennanently
accepted or at least tolerated by the groupwhich he approaches.
The outstanding example for the social situation under scrutiny
is that of the immigrant, and the following analyses are, as a
matter of convenience, worked out with this instance in view.
But by no means is their validity restricted to this special case.
The applicant for membership in a closed club, the prospective
bridegroom who wants to be admitted to the girl's family, the
fanner's son who enters college, the city-dweller who settles in a
rural environment, the "selectee" who joins the Anny, the
family of the war worker who moves into a boom town - all are
strangers according to the definition just given, although in these
cases the typical "crisis" that the immigrant undergoes may
assume milder fonns or even be entirely absent. Intentionally
excluded, however, from the present investigation are certain
cases the inclusion of which would require some qualifications
in our statements: (a) the visitor or guest who intends to establish
a merely transitory contact with the group; (b) children or primitives;
and (c) relationships between individuals and groups of
different levels of civilization, as in the case of the Huron brought
to Europe - a pattern dear to some moralists of the eighteenth
century. Furthennore, it is not the puq>ose of this paper to deal
92 APPLIED THEORY
with the processes of social assimilation and social adjustment
which are treated in an abundant and, for the most part, excellent
literature 1 but rather with the situation of approaching which
precedes every possible social adjustment and which includes its
prerequisites.
As a convenient starting-point we shall investigate how the
cultural pattern of group life presents itself to the common sense
of a man who lives his everyday life within the group among his
fellow-men. Following the customary terminology, we use the
term "cultural pattern of group life" for designating all the
peculiar valuations, institutions, and systems of orientation and
guidance (such as the folkways, mores, laws, habits, customs,
etiquette, fashions) which, in the common opinion of sociologists
of our time, characterize - if not constitute - any social group at a
given moment in its history. This cultural pattern, like any phenomenon
of the social world, has a different aspect for the
sociologist and for the man who acts and thinks within it.2 The
sociologist (as sociologist, not as a man among fellow-men which
he remains in his priv.ate life) is the disinterested scientific onlooker
of the social world. He is disinterested in that he intentionally
refrains from participating in the network of plans, meansand-ends
relations, motives and chances, hopes and fears, which
the actor within the social world uses for interpreting his
experiences of it; as a scientist he tries to observe, describe, and
classify the social world as clearly as possible in well-ordered
terms in accordance with the scientific ideals of coherence, consistency,
and analytical consequence. The actor within the social
world, however, experiences it primarily as a field of his actual
and possible acts and only secondarily as an object of his thinking.
In so far as he is interested in knowledge of his social world, he
organizes this knowledge not in terms of a scientific system but
in terms of relevance to his actions. He groups the world around
1 Instead of mentioning individual outstanding contributions by American writers,
such as w. G. Sumner, w. 1. Thomas, F!crian Znaniecki, R. E. Park, H. A. Miller,
E. V. Stonequist, E. S. Bogardus, and Kimball Young, and by German authors,
especially Georg Simmel and Robert Michels, we refer to the valuable monograph by
Margaret Mary Wood, The Stranger: A Study in Social Relationship, New York, 1934,
and the bibliography quoted therein.
• This insight seems to be the most important contribution of Max Weber's
inethodological writings to the problems of social science. Cf. the present writer's
Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen WeU, Vienna, 1932, 2nd ed. 1960.
THE STRANGER 93
himself (as the center) as a field of domination and is therefore
especially interested in that segment which is within his actual
or potential reach. He singles out those of its elements which may
serve as means or ends for his "use and enjoyment," 3 for furthering
his purposes, and for overcoming obstacles. His interest in
these elements is of different degrees, and for this reason he does
not aspire to become acquainted with all of them with equal
thoroughness. What he wants is graduated knowledge of relevant
elements, the degree of desired knowledge being correlated with
their relevance. Otherwise stated, the world seems to him at any
given moment as stratified in different layers of relevance, each
of them requiring a different degree of knowledge. To illustrate
these strata of relevance we may - borrowing the term from
cartography - speak of "isohypses" or "hypsographical contour
lines of relevance," trying to suggest by this metaphor that we
could show the distribution of the interests of an individual at a
given moment with respect both to their intensity and to their
scope by connecting elements of equal relevance to his acts, just
as the cartographer connects points of equal height by contour
lines in order to reproduce adequately the shape of a mountain.
The graphical representation of these "contour lines of relevance"
would not show them as a single closed field but rather as numerous
areas scattered over the map, each of different size and shape.
Distinguishing with William James 4 two kinds of knowledge,
namely, "knowledge of acquaintance" and "knowledge about," we
may say that, within the field covered by the contour lines of
relevance, there are centers of explicit knowledge of what is aimed
at; they are surrounded by a halo knowledge about what seems
to be sufficient; next comes a region in which it will do merely
"to put one's trust"; the adjoining foothills are the home of unwarranted
hopes and assumptions; between these areas, however,
lie zones of complete ignorance.
We do not want to overcharge this image. Its chief purpose has
been to illustrate that the knowledge of the man who acts and
thinks within the world of his daily life is not homogeneous; it is
(I) incoherent, (2) only partially clear, and (3) not at all free from
contradictions.
3 John Dewey, Logic, the Theory of Inquiry, New York, 1938, Chap. iv.
4 For the distinction of these two kinds of knowledge ct. William James, Principles
of Psychology, New York, 1890, Vol. I, pp. 221-22.
94 APPLIED THEORY
1. It is incoherent because the individual's interests which
determine the relevance of the objects selected for furtheI inquiry
are themselves not integrated into a coherent system. They
are only partially organized under plans of any kind, such as
plans of life, plans of work and leisure, plans for every social role
assumed. But the hierarchy of these plans changes with the
situation and with the growth of the personality; interests are
shifted continually and entail an uninterrupted transformation
of the shape and density of the relevance lines. Not only the
selection of the objects of curiosity but also the degree of knowledge
a.imed at changes.
2. Man in his daily life is only partially - and we dare say
exceptionally - interested in the clarity of his knowledge, i.e., in
full insight into the relations between the elements of his world
and the general principles ruling those relations. He is satisfied
that a well-functioning telephone service is available to him and,
normally, does not ask how the apparatus functions in detail
and what laws of physics make this functioning possible. He buys
merchandise in the store, not knowing how it is produced, and
pays with money, although he has only a vague idea of what
money really is. He takes it for granted that his fellow-man will
understand his thought if expressed in plain language and will
answer accordingly, without wondering how this miraculous performance
may be explained. Furthermore, he does not search
for the truth and does not quest for certainty. All he wants is information
on likelihood and insight into the chances orrisks which
the situation at hand entails for the outcome of his actions. That
the subway will run tomorrow as usual is for him almost of the
same order of likelihood as that the sun will rise. If by reason
of a special interest he needs more explicit knowledge on a topic,
a benign modern civilization holds ready for him a chain of information
desks and reference libraries.
3. His knowledge, finally, is not consistent. At the same time
he may consider statements as equally valid which in fact are
incompatible with one another. As a father, a citizen, an employee,
and a member of his church he may have the most different
and the least congruent opinions on moral, political, or economic
matters. This inconsistency does not necessarily originate
in a logical fallacy. Men's thinking is distributed over subject
THE STRANGER 95
matters located within different and differently relevant levels,
and they are not aware of the modifications they would have to
make in passing from one level to another. This and similar problems
would have to be explored by a logic of everyday thinking,
postulated but not attained by all the great logicians from Leibniz
to Husserl and Dewey. Up to now the science of logic has
primarily dealt with the logic of science.
The system of knowledge thus acquired - incoherent, inconsistent,
and only partially clear, as it is - takes on for the members
of the in-group the appearance of a sufficient coherence, clarity,
and consistency to give anybody a reasonable chance of understanding
and of being understood. Any member born or reared
within the group accepts the ready-made standardized scheme of
the cultural pattern handed down to him by ancestors, teachers,
and authorities as an unquestioned and unquestionable guide in
all the situations which normally occur within the social world.
The knowledge correlated to the cultural pattern carries its
evidence in itself - or, rather, it is taken for granted in the absence
of evidence to the contrary. It is a knowledge of trustworthy
recipes for interpreting the social world and for handling things
and men in order to obtain the best results in every situation with
a minimum of effort by avoiding undesirable consequences. The
recipe works, on the one hand, as a precept for actions and thus
serves as a scheme of expression: whoever wants to obtain a
certain result has to proceed as indicated by the recipe provided
for this purpose. On the other hand, the recipe serves as a scheme
of interpretation: whoever proceeds as indicated by a specific recipe
is supposed to intend the correlated result. Thus it is the
function of the cultural pattern to eliminate troublesome inquiries
by offering ready-made directions for use, to replace truth
hard to attain by comfortable truisms, and to substitute the selfexplanatory
for the questionable.
This "thinking as usual," as we may call it, corresponds to
Max Scheler's idea of the "relatively natural conception of the
world" (relativ naturliche Weltanschauung); 5 it includes the "ofcourse"
assumptions relevant to a particular social group which
S Max Scheler, "Probleme einer Soziologie des Wissens," Die Wissensformen und
die Gesellschaft, Leipzig, I926, pp. 58ft.; cf. Howard Becker and Hellmuth Otto Dahlke,
"Max Scheler's Sociology of Knowledge," Philosophy and Phenomenological Resea,ch,
Vol. II, I942, pp. 310-22, esp. p. 315.
APPLIED THEORY
Robert S. Lynd describes in such a masterly way - together with
their inherent contradictions and ambivalence - as the "Middletown-spirit."
6 Thinking-as-usual may be maintained as long as
some basic assumptions hold true, namely: (I) that life and especia1lysociallifewillcontinue
to be the same as it has been so far;
that is to say, that the same problems requiring the same solutions
will recur and that, therefore, our former experiences will suffice
for mastering future situations; (2) that we may rely on the
knowledge handed down to us by parents, teachers, governments,
traditions, habits, etc., even if we do not understand its origin
and its real meaning; (3) that in the ordinary course of affairs it is
sufficient to know something about the general type or style of
events we may encounter in our life-world in order to manage or
control them; and (4) that neitherthe systems ofrecipes as schemes
of interpretation and expression nor the underlying basic
assumptions just mentioned are our private affair, but that they
are likewise accepted and applied by our fellow-men.
If only one of these assumptions ceases to stand the test,
thinking-as-usual becomes unworkable. Then a "crisis" arises
which, according to W. I. Thomas' famous definition, "interrupts
the flow of habit and gives rise to changed conditions of consciousness
and practice"; or, as we may say, it overthrows precipitously
the actual system of relevances. The cultural pattern no longer
functions as a system of tested recipes at hand; it reveals that
its·applicability is restricted to a specific historical situation.
Yet the stranger, by reason of his personal crisis, does not share
the above-mentioned basic assumptions. He becomes essentially
the man who has to place in question nearly everything that
seems to be unquestionable to the members of the approached
group.
To him the cultural pattern of the approached group does not
have the authority of a tested system of recipes, and this, if for
no other reason, because he does not partake in the vivid historical
tradition by which it has been formed. To be sure, from the
stranger's point of view, too, the culture of the approached group
has its peculiar history, and this history is even accessible to him.
But it has never become an integral part of his biography, as did
e Robert S. Lynd, Middletown in Transition, New York, 1937, Chap. xii, and
Knowledge for What?, Princeton, 1939, pp. 58-63.
THE STRANGER 97
the history of his home group. Only the ways in which his fathers
and grandfathers lived become for everyone elements of his own
way of life. Graves and reminiscences can neither be transferred
nor conquered. The stranger, therefore, approaches the other
group as a newcomer in the true meaning of th~ term. At best he
may be willing and able to share the present and the future with
the approached group in vivid and immediate experience; undet
all circumstances, however, he remains excluded from such experiences
of its past. Seen from the point of view of the approached
group, he is a man without a history.
To the stranger the cultural pattern of his home group continues
to be the outcome of an unbroken historical development
and an element of his personal biography, which for this very
reason has been and still is the unquestioned scheme of reference
for his "relatively natural conception of the world." As a matter
of course, therefore, the stranger starts to interpret his new social
environment in terms of his thinking as usual. Within the scheme
of reference brought from his home group, however, he finds a
ready-made idea of the pattern supposedly valid vdth~n the approached
group - an idea which necessarily will soon prove
inadequate.7
First, the idea of the cultural pattern of the approached group
which the stranger finds within the interpretive scheme of his
home group has originated in the attitude of a disinterested observer.
The approaching stranger, however, is about to transform
himself from an unconcerned onlooker into a would-be member
of the approached group. The cultural pattern of the approached
group, then, is no longer a subject matter of his thought but a
segment of the world which has to be dominated by actions.
Consequently, its position within the stranger's system of relevance
changes decisively, and this means, as we have seen, that another
type of knowledge is required for its interpretation.
Jumping from the stalls to the stage, so to speak, the former
onlooker becomes a member of the cast, enters as a partner into
7 As one account showing how the American cultural pattern depicts itself as an
"unquestionable" element within the scheme of interpretation of European in·
tellectuals we refer to Martin Gumpert's humorous deSCription in his book, First
Papers, New York, 1941, pp. 8-9. Cf. also books like Jules Romains, Visite chez les
Americains, Paris, 1930, and Jean Prevost Usonie, Esquisse de la civilisation americaine,
Paris, 1939, pp. 245-66.
98 APPLIED THEORY
social relations with his co-actors, and participates henceforth
in the action in progress.
Second, the new cultural pattern acquires an environmental
character. Its remoteness changes into proximity; its vacant
frames become occupied by vivid experiences; its anonymous
contents tum into definite social situations; its ready-made
typologies disintegrate. In other words, thelevelofenvironmental
experience of social objects is incongruous with the level of mere
beliefs about unapproached objects; by passing from the latter
to the former, any concept originating in the level of departure
becomes necessarily inadequate if applied to the new level without
having been restated in its terms.
Third, the ready-made picture of the foreign group subsisting
within the stranger's home-group proves its inadequacy for the
approaching stranger for the mere reason that it has not been
formed with the aim of provoking a response or a reaction·from
the members of the foreign group. The knowledge which it offers
serves merely as a handy scheme for interpreting the foreign
group and not as a guide for interaction between the two groups.
Its validity is primarily based on the consensus of those members
of the home group who do not intend to establish a direct social
relationship with members of the foreign group. (Those who
intend to do so are in a situation analogous to that of the approaching
stranger). Consequently, the scheme of interpretation
refers to the members of the foreign group merely as objects of
this interpretation, but not beyond it, as addressees of possible
acts emanating from the outcome of the interpretive procedure
and not as subjects of anticipated reactions toward those acts.
Hence, this kind of knowledge is, so to speak, insulated; it can
be neither verified nor falsified by responses of the members of
the foreign group. The latter, therefore, consider this knowledge
- by a kind of "looking-glass" effect 8 - as both irresponsive and
irresponsible and complain of its prejudices, bias, and misunderstandings.
The approaching stranger, however, becomes aware
of the fact that an important element of his "thinking as usual,"
namely, his ideas of the foreign group, its cultural pattern, and
8 In using this term, we allude to Cooley'S well-known theory of the reflected or
looking-glass self (Charles H. Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order [rev. cd.;
New York, 1922], p. 184).
THE STRANGER 99
its way of life, do not stand the test of vivid experience and social
interaction.
The discovery that things in his new surroundings look quite
different from what he expected them to be at home is frequently
the first shock to the stranger's confidence in the validity of his
habitual "thinking as usual." Not only the picture which the
stranger has brought along of the cultural pattern of the approached
group but the whole hitherto unquestioned scheme of
interpretation current within the home group becomes invalidated.
It cannot be used as a scheme of orientation within the
new social surroundings. For the members of the approached
group their cultural pattern fulfills the functions ofsuch a scheme.
But the approaching stranger can neither use it simply as it is
nor establish a general formula of transformation between both
cultural patterns permitting him, so to speak, to convert all the
co-ordinates within one scheme of orientation into those valid
within the other - and this for the following reasons.
First, any scheme of orientation presupposes that everyone
who uses it looks at the surrounding world as grouped around
himself who stands at its center. He who wants to use a map
successfully has first of all to know his standpoint in two respects:
its location on the ground and its representation on the map.
Applied to the social world this means that only members of the
in-group, having a definite status in its hierarchy and also being
aware of it, can use its cultural pattern as a natural and trustworthy
scheme of orientation. The stranger, however, has to face
the fact that he lacks any status as a member of the social group
he is about to join and is therefore unable to get a starting-point
to take his bearings. He finds himself a border case outside the
territory covered by the scheme of orientation current within the
group. He is, therefore, no lonser permitted to consider himself
as the center of his social environment, and this fact causes again
a dislocation of his contour lines of relevance.
Second, the cultural pattern and its recipes represent only for
the members of the in-group a unit of coinciding schemes of interpretation
as well as of expression. For the outsider, however, this
seeming unity falls to pieces. The approaching stranger has to
"translate" its terms into terms of the cultural pattern of his
home group, provided that, within the latter, interpretive equiv-
100 APPLIED THEORY
alents exist at all. If they exist, the translated terms may be
understood and remembered; they can be recognized by recurrence;
they are at hand but not in hand. Yet, even then, it is
obvious that the stranger cannot assume that his interpretation
of the new cultural pattern coincides with that current with the
members of the in-group. On the contrary, he has to reckon with
fundamental discrepancies in seeing things and handling situ-
ations.
Only after having thus collected a certain knowledge of the
interpretive function of the new cultural patternmaythe stranger
start to adopt it as the scheme of his own expression. The differ.
ence between the two stages of knowledge is familiar to any
student of a foreign language and has received the full attention
of psychologists dealing with the theory of learning. It is the
difference between the passive understanding of a language and
its active mastering as a means for realizing one's own acts
and thoughts. As a matter of convenience we want to keep to this
example in order to make clear some of the limits set to the
stranger's attempt at conquering the foreign pattern as a scheme
of e)Cpression, bearing in mind, however, that the following remarks
could easily be adapted with appropriate modifications to
other categories of the cultural pattern such as mores, laws,
folkways, fashions, etc.
Language as a scheme of interpretation and expression does
not merely consist of the linguistic symbols catalogued in the
dictionary and of the syntactical rules enumerated in an ideal
grammar. The former are translatable into other languages;
the latter are understandable by referring them to corresponding
or deviating rules of the unquestioned mother-tongue.9 However,
several other factors supervene.
1. Every word and every sentence is, to borrow again a term
of William James, surrounded by "fringes" connecting them, on
the one hand, with past and future elements of the universe of
discourse to which they pertain and surrounding them, on the
other hand, with a halo of emotional values and irrational implications
which themselves remain ineffable. The fringes are the
• Therefore, the learning of a foreign language reveals to the student frequently
for the first time the grammar rules of his mother-tongue which he has followed so
far as "the most natural thing in the world," namely, as recipes.
THE STRANGER 101
stuff poetry is made of; they are capable of being set to music
but they are not translatable.
2. There are in any language terms with several connotations.
They, too, are noted in the dictionary. But, besides these standardized
connotations, every element of speech acquires its special
secondary meaning derived from the context or the social
environment within which it is used and, in addition, gets a
special tinge from the actual occasion in which it is employed.
3. Idioms, technical terms, jargons, and dialects, whose use
remains restricted to specific social groups, exist in every language,
and their significance can be learned by an outsider too.
But, in addition, every social group, be it ever so small (if not
every individual), has its own private code, understandable only
by those who have participated in the common past experiences
in which it took rise or in the tradition connected with th..:m.
4. As Vossler has shown, the whole history of the linguistic
group is mirrored in its way of saying things.10 All the other elements
of group life enter into it - above all, its literature. The
erudite stranger, for example, approaching an English-speaking
country is heavily handicapped if he has not read the Bible and
Shakespeare in the English language, even if he grew up with
translations of those books in his mother-tongue.
All the above-mentioned features are accessible only to the
members of the in-group. They all pertain to the scheme of expression.
They are not teachable and cannot be learned in the
same way as, for example, the vocabulary. In order to command
a language freely as a scheme of expression, one must have
written love letters in it; one has to know how to pray and curse
in it and how to say things with every shade appropriate to the
addressee and to the situation. Only members of the in-group
have the scheme of expression as a genuine one in hand and
command it freely within their thinking as usual.
Applying the result to the totai of the cultural pattern of group
life, we may say that the member of the in-group looks in a single
glance through the normal social situations occurring to him and
that he catches immediately the ready-made recipe appropriate
to its solution. In those situations his acting shows all the marks
of habituality, automatism, and half-consciousness. This is
10 Karl Vossler, Geist una Kultur in tler Spraclie, Heidelberg, 1925, pp. 117ff.
102 APPLIED THEORY
possible because the cultural pattern provides by its recipes
typical solutions for typical problems available for typical actors.
In other words, the chance of obtaining the desired standardized
result by applying a standardized recipe is an objective one;
that is open to everyone who conducts himself like the anonymous
type required by the recipe. Therefore, the actor who follows
a recipe does not have to check whether this objective
chance coincides with a subjective chance, that is, a chance open
to him, the individual, by reason of his personal circumstances
and faculties which subsists independently of the question
whether other people in similar situations could or could not act
in the same way with the same likelihood. Even more, it can be
stated that the objective chances for the efficiency of a recipe are
the greater, the fewer deviations from the anonymous typified
behavior occur, and this holds especially for recipes designed for
social interaction. This kind of recipe, if it is to work, presupposes
that any partner expects the other to act or to react typically,
provided that the actor himself acts typically. He who
wants to travel by railroad has to behave in that typical way
which the type "railroad agent" may reasonably expect as the
typical conduct of the type "passenger," and vice versa. Neither
party examines the subjective chances involved. The scheme,
being designed for everyone's use, need not be tested for its fitness
for the peculiar individual who employs it.
For those who have grown up within the cultural pattern, not
only the recipes and their possible efficiency but also the typical
and anonymous attitudes required by them are an unquestioned
"matter of course" which gives them both security and assurance.
In other words, these attitudes by their very anonymity and
typicality are placed not within the actor's stratum of relevance
which requires explicit knowledge of but in the region of mere
acquaintance in which it will do to put one's trust. This interrelation
between objective chance, typicality, anonymity, and
relevance seems to be rather important.ll
11 It could be referred to a general principle of the theory of relevance, but this
would surpass the frame of the present paper. The only point for which there is space
to contend is that all the obstacles which the stranger meets in his attempt at interpreting
the approached group arise from the incongruence of the contour lines of the
mutual relevance systems and, consequently, from the distortion the stranger',
system undergoes within the new surrounding. But any social relationship, and
THE STRANGER 103
For the approaching stranger, however, the pattern of the
approached group does not guarantee an objective chance for
success but rather a pure subjective likelihood which has to be
checked step by step, that is, he has to make sure that the
solutions suggested by the new scheme will also produce the
desired effect for him in his special position as outsider and newcomer
who has not brought within his grasp the whole system
of the cultural pattern but who is rather puzzled by its inconsistency,
incoherence, and lack of clarity. He has, first of all, to
use the term of W. I. Thomas, to define the situation. Therefore,
he cannot stop at an approximate acquaintance with the new
pattern, trusting in his vague knowledge about its general style
and structure but needs an explicit knowledge of its elements,
inquiring not only into theirthat but into their why. Consequently,
the shape of his contour lines of relevance by necessity differs
radically from those of a member of the in-group as to situations,
recipes, means, ends, social partners, etc. Keeping in mind the
above-mentioned interrelationship between relevance, on the
one hand, and typicality and anonymity, on the other, it follows
that he uses another yardstick for anonymity and typicality of
social acts than the members of the in-group. For to the stranger
the observed actors within the approached group are not - as for
their co-actors - of a certain presupposed anonymity, namely,
mere performers of typical functions, but individuals. 00 the
other hand, he is inclined to take mere individual traits as typical
ones. Thus he constructs a social world of pseudo-anonymity,
pseudo-intimacy, and pseudo-typicality. Therefore, he cannot
integrate the personal types constructed by him into a coherent
picture of the approached group and cannot rely on his expectation
of their response. And even less can the stranger himself
adopt those typical and anonymous attitudes which a member of
the in-group is entitled to expect from a partner in a typical
situation. Hence the stranger's lack of feeling for distance, his
oscillating between remoteness and intimacy, his hesitation and
uncertainty, and his distrust in every matter which seems to be
so simple and uncomplicated to those who rely on the efficiency
!'specially any establishment of new social contacts, even between individuals, involves
analogous phenomena, although they do not necessarily lead to a crisis.
104 APPLIED THEORY
of unquestioned recipes which have just to be followed but not
understood.
In other words, the cultural pattern of the approached group
is to the stranger not a shelter but a field of adventure, not a
matter of course but a questionable topic of investigation, not an
instrument for disentangling problematic situations but a problematic
situation itself and one hard to master.
These facts explain two basic traits of the stranger's attitude
toward the group to which nearly all sociological writers dealing
with this topic have rendered special attention, namely, (1) the
stranger's objectivity and (2) his doubtful loyalty.
1. The stranger's objectivity cannot be sufficiently explained
by his critical attitude. To be sure, he is not bound to worship the
"idols of the tribe" and has a vivid feeling for the incoherence and
inconsistency of the approached cultural pattern. But this attitude
originates far less in his propensity to judge the newly approached
group by the standards brought from home than in his
need to acquire full knowledge of the elements of the approached
cultural pattern and to examine for this purpose with care and
precision what seems self-explanatory to the in-group. The deeper
reason for his objectivity, however, lies in his own bitter experience
of the limits of the "thinking as usual," which has taught
him that a man may loose his status, his rules of guidance, and
even his history and that the normal way of life is always far less
guaranteed than it seems. Therefore, the stranger discerns,
frequently with a grievous clear-sightedness, the rising of a crisis
which may menace the whole foundation of the "relatively
natural conception of the world," while all those symptoms pass
unnoticed by the members of the in-group, who rely on the
continuance of their customary way of life.
2. The doubtful loyalty of the stranger is unfortunately very
frequently more than a prejudice on the part of the approached
group. This is especially true in cases in which the stranger proves
unwilling or unable to substitute the new cultural pattern
entirely for that of the home group. Then the stranger remains
what Park and Stonequist have aptly called a "marginal man,"
a cultural hybrid on the verge of two different patterns of group
life, not knowing to which of them he belongs. Butveryfrequently
the reproach of doubtful loyalty originates in the astonishment of
THE STRANGER 105
the members of the in-group that the stranger does not accept the
total of its cultural pattern as the natural and appropriate way
of life and as the best of all possible solutions of any problem.
The stranger is called ungrateful, since he refuses to acknowledge
that the cultural pattern offered to him grants him shelter and
protection. But these people do not understand that the stranger
in the state of transition does not consider this pattern as a
protecting shelter at all but as a labyrinth in which he has lost
all sense of his bearings.
As stated before, we have intentionally restricted our topic
to the specific attitude of the approaching stranger which precedes
any social adjustment and refrained from investigating the
process of social assimilation itself. A single remark concerning
the latter may be permitted. Strangeness and familiarity are not
limited to the social field but are general categories of our interpretation
of the world. If we encounter in our experience something
previously unknown and which therefore stands out of the
ordinary order of our knowledge, we begin a process of inquiry.
We first define the new fact; we try to catch its meaning; we then
transform step by step our general scheme of interpretation of
the world in such a way that the strange fact and its meaning become
compatible and consistent with all the other facts of our
experience and their meanings. If we succeed in this endeavor,
then that which formerly was a strange fact and a puzzling problem
to our mind is transformed into an additional element of
our warranted knowledge. We have- enlarged and adjusted our
stock of experiences.
What is commonly called the process of social adjustment
which the newcomer has to undergo is but a special case of this
general principle. The adaptation of the newcomer to the ingroup
which at first seemed to be strange and unfamiliar to him
is a continuous process of inquiry into the cultural pattern of the
approached group. If this process of inquiry succeeds, then this
pattern and its elements will become to the newcomer a matter
of course, an unquestionable way of life, a shelter, and a protection.
But then the stranger is no stranger any more, and his
specific problems have been solved.