The Multiple Realities of Action: A Phenomenological Answer to the Question of Unsettled Contexts

ABSTRACT How is action constituted when the taken‐for‐granted cultural resources and supports usually shaping it lose their taken‐for‐grantedness? This question is relevant to a range of culturally unsettled situations, including those stemming from crises, displacements and even extensive reflexivity. Existing answers nevertheless remain incomplete, lacking the theoretical tools necessary for understanding taken‐for‐grantedness and its loss as lived experiences. This paper addresses this limitation by joining a stream of theorists who are revisiting Alfred Schutz's social‐phenomenology, which offers such tools. Relying on, but also developing Schutz's theory of ‘multiple realities’, it argues that action involves at least one other, ancillary order of ‘reality’ besides the paramount reality of daily life. When the taken‐for‐granted is lacking, the usual experiential ordering of these realities is reversed and action is reconfigured. This account contributes to our understanding not only of unsettled contexts but also of ‘unsettling’ actions, such as creative innovation and radicalism, as well as related questions of current concern.