Phenomenology, by comparison: from ethnographic variation to experiential structure

Abstract Both phenomenology and anthropology study lived experience, but they have traditionally done so in different ways. Phenomenology aims to identify universal structures of experience via the epoché, reduction and eidetic variation. Anthropology, by contrast, foregrounds cultural diversity as documented through ethnography. Ethnographic accounts provide thousands of cases of lived experience, far more varied than any single mind could generate through phenomenological imagination alone. To bring ethnographic material into the search for invariant experiential structures without flattening meaningful differences, we combine Husserlian eidetic analysis with tools from Formal Concept Analysis. We demonstrate the approach through a comparative analysis of bodily emanations, drawing on materials from diverse cultural contexts. These cases illuminate forms of bodily extension that remain under-theorised in dominant accounts of embodiment. Overall, the analysis shows how phenomenological comparison can yield empirically grounded and formally articulated insights into the embodied experiences of others.