A Way of Seeing People and Place

Abstract

In simplest terms, phenomenology is the interpretive study of human experience. The aim is to examine and clarify human situations, events, meanings, and experiences “as they spontaneously occur in the course of daily life” (von Eckartsberg, 1998a, p. 3). The goal is “a rigorous description of human life as it is lived and reflected upon in all of its first-person concreteness, urgency, and ambiguity” (Pollio, Henley, & Thompson, 1996, p. 5).