Introduction To Phenomenology

Christopher McCandless was a man that could not stand to abide by other people’s rules. In the novel, Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer documents his interview with McCandless’ sister, Carrie. She tells the audience that he always wanted to live by his own rules and despised restrictions. By saying this, he came to the conclusion that he had followed societies’ rules for long enough. He thought that the only way to escape their regulations was to begin a transcendental lifestyle. Transcendentalism is going above and beyond a belief system by experiencing life “outside” the normal range of experience. A tTranscendental lifestyle can be described as: detaching oneself from society, developing a spiritual connection to nature, and becoming self-reliant. Within five weeks, he was free from his parents and peers and a world that revolved around materialistic objects. Throughout his adventure, he read novels from other transcendentalists such as: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Chris McCandless can be seen as a good example to a transcendental life because he separated himself from modern society, was self-reliant, and immersed with nature.

Power point slide Qualitative research is a difficult term to define…. Nevertheless, it is important to be familiar with some definitions in the field. The definition provided by Creswell 2009 is enlightening because it incorporates ……….. most important part of definition for me were reports detailed views of informants and natural setting.

In The Natural by Bernard Malamud, Malamud displays the magnitude of how an individual’s decisions can influence their life. Malamud’s main protagonist, Roy Hobbs, is the leading example of this idea, as Hobbs continually faces both his internal struggles stemming from his desire for success, and external struggles attributed to his roller-coaster of a professional baseball career. Malamud uses Hobbs and the sport of baseball as a metaphor for typical American life by depicting Hobbs’ struggles as similar to any average American. Therefore, through the life of Roy Hobbs, Malamud alludes to the average American and explains how moral attitude can lead to a person’s success or downfall.

In the story, The Natural, certain characters and events are portrayed in a distinctive way that makes this story unique to other books and shows the typical writing style of the narrator. The author uses a repetitive writing technique that is impossible to overlook. The writer of this book is able to catch the reader’s eye with his concept of the importance of beautiful description. The Natural, by Bernard Malamud, uses great imagery that makes the story appealing.

Every story has its own taste: sweet, bitter, sour, hot, creamy, plain, etc. Some storytellers like to stick to one flavor throughout a whole story, while others might prefer to create their work by mixing some flavors together. In Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson creates a story that has the mixed feelings of darkness, desperation, compassion, and humor. This is a story about a man, refers to as Fuckhead, in his early twenties drowning in drugs, wondering from place to place with other junkie friends, making awful life choices, behaving like a naïve kid, but still seeking for redemption and meaning. This book consists several short stories about death, pain, and hope. Denis Johnson shows readers the great desperation through the damaged and

The book Paper Towns by John Green is a story about going past the imagination to actually know somebody. Quentin, who is convinced he is in love with the wild and adventurous Margo, goes on a journey to find her when she ran away. Through this journey, he finds a new Margo, the real Margo. Instead of imagining the Margo of his dreams, who is perfect and daring, he sees a different side, like looking through a fun house mirror. Using the theme of perceptions vs. reality, John Green shows readers through Quentin that you have to dig deeper in order to know and understand someone.

According to Schneider, Elliot, LoBiondo-Wood & Haber (2004), qualitative research methods, search for the meaning and understanding of human experiences in a naturalistic setting. A researcher obtains subjective facts in order to explore the experiences of each participant (Schneider, Elliot, LoBiondo-Wood & Haber 2004). As a result, qualitative research is a means in which a researcher gains an insight into the participant's point of view concerning their personal experiences; in order gain an understanding of the information given. Therefore this allows a researcher to collect subjective information to create a description of the phenomenon (Vishnevsky & Beanlands 2004).

Transcendentalism, as described and asserted by Emerson, has been a very controversial topic during the twenty-first-century. The country as it is now is more technologically advanced and educated than ever; seeking transcendentalism is now more difficult than ever. With commodities such as cell phones, computers, and the Internet, most would not think of seeking out the values in nature

In The Call to Personhood, Alistair McFadyen attempts to construct an image of the person as an individual but in social terms, as it were cutting a path between individualist and collectivist anthropologies to from a new framework. In the first two chapters, McFadyen sets a theological framework for understanding that the creation and redemption of man requires a relational understanding of man. In the first chapter, McFadyen does this by grounding the 'personhood ' of man in the Christian doctrine of Imago Dei and the trinity. While his framework for the trinity is the Latin Trinity he argues that each person of the trinity is only a Person through relation. The relationship is dialogical and each ‘person’ is a subject of communication. Created in the image of the Trinitarian God humans are thus in dialogue with God and in dialogue with each other, specifically as male and female. The fallen state of humanity marks the rejection of the offer of dialogue partnership with God and thus with each other. The second chapter builds on this by focusing on the recreation of the individual into the image and likeness of Christ through the call of discipleship. The individual is called out of their context and their repentance represents their re-orientation towards Jesus. Yet, the decision of the individual to forsake their present relatedness is not a self-centring as it is a response and an "incorporation into a different relation and relational context" (49).

Maxwell (2005) also notes that qualitative research can be used to address various issues and is not restricted to one ontological stance. The method also involves developing a relationship with the people one is studying, an aspect that is important in defining the authenticity of the data and determining the course of action.

They intend to investigate the lived experiences of men with prostate cancer indicating that they assume there is an essential structure that needs to be understood and can only be understood through analyzing first-hand experiences from the concerned individuals. Hence, the authors are justified to use the descriptive phenomenological research methodology that aims at investigating subjective phenomena. According to Polit and Beck (2014), the phenomenological research methodology allows researchers to ensure the essence of a phenomenon as experienced by the concerned subjects to facilitate investigation of subjective phenomena because important truths are grounded in people’s lived experiences. Moreover, the descriptive phenomenology is essential in portraying the ordinary experiences of people. Further, the researchers use the hermeneutic phenomenological study design, which seeks to incorporate the understanding of basic human existence and experiences. The articulation of study methodology and chosen research design indicates that the researchers depend on the design elements to strengthen the study’s findings. Besides, Kelly and Norma explain and justify their design decisions from the beginning, making it easy for the reader to point out the chosen research

Qualitative research is conducted in a natural setting and attempts to understand a human problem by developing a holistic narrative and reporting detailed views of informants about the culture of a problem. It forms a report with pictures and words. One of the most important distinctions that sets qualitative research apart from more traditional types of research is that qualitative research is holistic in that researchers study phenomena in their entirety rather than narrowing the focus to specific defined variables” (p. 93). Similarly, Cresswell (1984) indicated that qualitative research “is defined as an inquiry process of understanding a social or human problem, based on building a holistic picture, formed with words, reporting detailed views of informants, and conducted in a natural setting” (p. 2). Cresswell’s definition clearly delineates the major characteristics of qualitative research. Pg. 50 (Smith & Davis, 2010).

Humans are an interesting species because of the strong need humans have to fully understand what it truly means to be human. Many fields such as history, psychology, and sociology all offer a perspective in the study of humanity, but there are distinguishable from anthropology. Anthropology differs from other humanities fields due to its holistic nature, comparative research methods, and the strong emphasis on fieldwork and participant interaction. Anthropology is the study of people throughout the world, their evolutionary history, how they behave, adapt to different environments, communicate and socialize with one another. In order for anthropologists to examine the full scope of human life, they employ the four field approach that embodies the holistic nature of the field.

According to Kothari (2008) qualitative research is concerned with qualitative phenomena which are related to or involve quality or kind. Qualitative research engages the collection and analysis of non-numerical data obtained from experiments, interviews, observations, and other resources involving statements and arguments. Research is conducted into particular context and non-numerical interpretive approach is used to produce narrative description of research data. Unlike quantitative research, this type of research considers the underlying facts behind the establishment of particular behaviors and assumptions. It is commonly used in behavioural sciences where the aim of research is to discover underlying motives of human behaviour.

A Phenomenological paradigm is a method of inquiry, associated with the German philosophers Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. It attempts to capture the subjective experiences and interpretations as perceived by the participants or group of people in an unbiased manner. How they view and understand the world from their perspectives would be the focal point of the phenomenologists. Thus, the main goal of phenomenology is to understand the ‘life-world’ as viewed and experienced by the participants and requires the researchers to free themselves from any preconceptions and interferences. This method allows the researchers to understand the informants’ subjective world in their own terms and make them visible and true to the informants’