Hermeneutic Phenomenology: An Approach to Understanding Families

Abstract

Hermeneutic phenomenology is offered as an approach to study families that enables the study of phenomena that are difficult to address using a science based in rationalism or empiricism: shared family meanings and family concerns. Heideggerian concepts that serve as the foundation of a hermeneutic phenomenology offamilies are that humans are situated in their worlds, constituted by their worlds, engaged in everyday activity, and moved by their concerns in day-to-day life. Each concept is discussed in terms of how it affects the hermeneutic phenomenological study of thefamily and structures the relationship of the researcher to the project.