The origins and informed uses of the terms phenomenography and phenomenology
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-10-2021-0219 |
| Published date | 29 September 2022 |
| Date | 29 September 2022 |
| Pages | 641-669 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
| Author | Sylvain K. Cibangu |
The origins and informed uses
of the terms phenomenography
and phenomenology
Sylvain K. Cibangu
Research Forum for the Unserved, Seattle, Washington, USA
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this short reflection is to allow for an informed use of both phenomenography and
phenomenology in information studies and cognate fields.
Design/methodology/approach –The paper apprises uses of phenomenography found particularly in
accounts of information literacy commonly describing phenomenography as distinct from phenomenology.
Findings –Both phenomenography and phenomenology continue to hold much credence in methods applied
across scores of academic fields, with information studies being among those in the vanguard. Claims
displaying differences of phenomenography from phenomenology are misleading and incomplete descriptions
of phenomenology.
Originality/value –The paper presents newer materials on the origins of phenomenography and
phenomenology to advocate for tighter relationships between and clearer applications of these methods in
information studies and beyond.
Keywords Phenomenography, Phenomenology, Epochal reduction, First-person experience,
Different conceptions, Biases
Paper type Conceptual paper
Introduction
Phenomenology and phenomenography are approaches to be available in the toolkits of
information studies and beyond, thereby their particularities, just like any tool, need to be well
furnished or understood in furtherance of research method. The goal is not to impose a cookie-
cutter method, but rather to raise awareness among interested researchers. A tool cannot be
imposed, but polished/mended for those interested in it. The reason that a tool is being
refurbished is because it has been used and misused for some time. Calls for reflections on the
theoretical status of information studies were stridently made by Hjørland (2005c) when
summarizing a purposely specialized issue of the Journalof Documentation that same year. Since
its inception, the Journal of Documentation role in this type of calls is manifestly established,
although undervalued. For example, in the same Journa l of Documentation issue, Budd (2005)
called for information studies work in phenomenology. A few years earlier, Bruce (1999)
proposed phenomenographic work as a new line of research in information studies. These and
similar calls aretypical for much of Hjørland work (details below) spanningover four decades,
along with CoLis [Conceptions of Library and Information Science] conferences organized
every three years,the first proceedings of which were held in 1991 from August 26 to 28 by the
then department of information studies, University of Tampere, in Tampere, Finland. The
CoLis recent session, the 11th conference, took place from May 29 to June 1, 2022 in Oslo,
Sweden, at Oslo Metropolitan University in the department of archivistics, library, and
information science. The calls made above to researchers in information arena and beyond
have relatively screamingly goneunheeded. One reason for this oversight might be a lack of
systematic follow-up in refining existing work and reenforcing prior recommendations.
Perhaps one more particularly compelling reason might reside, as Cole (2013) put it, “in
adopting new technologies that focus on technical and managerial issues of the adaptation,
thus allowing information-as-a-commodity to take precedenceover information-as-liberation”
Phenomenology
and research
method
641
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 29 October 2021
Revised 18 February 2022
20 August 2022
Accepted 23 August 2022
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 79 No. 3, 2023
pp. 641-669
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-10-2021-0219
(para 8). One other reason might be thatefforts to keep up the good work remain fragmented
and/or limited to specialtiesof information studies and beyond. Still, another reason might be
that despite their required status in higher-education curriculums, research methods lack a
follow-up inquiryacross disciplines. Thus, applied research methods tend tobe left entirely at
the discretion of journal readers.
Two cases in point here are on the one hand the work of Wilson (2016) done on the theories
of information behavior and that of social phenomenology (Wilson and Savolainen, 2013),
both of which were sitting in information behavior, and on the other hand the work of Budd
et al. (2010) on phenomenology in librarianship along with the work of Cibangu and Hepworth
(2016). In this regard, works have been undertaken in information literacy, with the goal to
implement phenomenography. Thus, phenomenography was used to look into the different
conceptions of users to leverage information literacy (Bruce, 1994,1997,1999;F
azik and
Steinerov
a, 2020). For better or worse, the version of phenomenology encountered with most
if not all exponents of phenomenography is one displaying a few concepts taken from and
limited to Husserl phenomenology but, by the same token, unrepresentative of Husserl work
and the work of other phenomenologists. The present short reflection is a modest
contribution toward such long due and gravely needed efforts.
To preempt confusion, however, needless to say that the proper of a short reflection is
neither a field’s primer or textbook, nor a review of it, but rather a spotlight put on the
conversations called and unfinished to enhance awareness within a field and beyond. The
reason is, as Budd (2012) reminded information and otherscholarly researchers, no research
method can be imposed on or prescribedfor a researcher because a choice of research method
is dependent on a combination of factors unique and different from one research to another.
The least intrusiveand best suggestion of a reflection such as the one being offered here might
be to raise researchers’awarenessin hopes of broadening existing toolkits. The pointwas also
powerfully made by renown methodologists Denzin andLincoln (2018c), when they wrote,
A critical social science will no longer accept the notion that one group of people can “know”and
define (or even represent) “others”...We endorse a radical, participatory ethic ...an ethic that calls
for trusting, collaborative nonoppressive relationships between researchers and those studied, an
ethic that makes the world a more just place. (p. 33)
Research method is one called to be critical of a researcher’s taken-for-granted conceptions
about and attitudes toward the researched and the world thereof.
To illustrate,just to get the pulse of theissue being discussed, a quickcasual Google search
for the word phenomenography in the Journal of Documentation undertaken March 03, 2022
reveals27 hits and for the termphenomenology108 hits from Volume 1,Issue 1 to Volume 77 up
until Issue6 of the year 2021. The ScandinavianJournal of Educational Researchshows only 40
hits for the term phenomenography and 31 hits for the term phenomenology; both searches
were done the same day on March 03, 2022. It is obvious that phenomenology is leading the
records by a far largemargin several times more than 100%in the Journal of Documentation
whereas phenomenography in the Journal of Documentation stands almost on a par with
phenomenology and with phenomenography in the Scandinavian Journal of Educational
Research. It is not clear why phenomenology in the Journal of Documentation,aUK-based
venue, enjoyssuch an enormously higher readership than in Sweden/Europe, comparedto the
relatively low rate of readership for both phenomenology and phenomenography in the
Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research. Yet, Husserl, the leader of articulate
phenomenology, and Marton, the leader of phenomenography (details below), eac h
are Northern Europeans whose home country sits next to one another. The Scandinavian
Journalof EducationalResearch was chosen becauseit is home to phenomenographytradition.
As observed in the Google search, information studies is one of the leading consumers of
phenomenography, particularly in the arena of information literacy which quite closely
JD
79,3
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