Social Reality as a Phenomenological Construct: Understanding Intersubjectivity through the Lens of Shared Meaning.

Phenomenological inquiry offers a rigorous framework to inquire how meaning arises, circulates, and solidifies in commonplace social interactions through the subjective experiences and systematized values. Nevertheless, these studies examine these dimensions in isolation, ignoring the dynamic interplay and how they conjointly constitute social reality. This present work explores how social reality emerges as a construction shared among people in their subjective experiences and intersubjective understandings, using the phenomenological method to uncover the sustenance of shared meaning in Chinese socio-cultural life. Data collection was through in-depth interviews, allowing for the capture of first-person accounts of social experiences in China. Central to this approach is the application of phenomenological reduction (epoch), which brackets preconceived notions to focus purely on lived experience. By employing Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and Thematic Analysis, the study uncovers how individuals interpret, negotiate, and co-construct meaning within everyday social contexts. The findings highlight how intersubjectivity in China is deeply shaped by Confucian relational norms, with mutual expectations stabilizing taken-for-granted social structures. The study further investigates the systems of relevance that ensure that people assign value to particular manifestations within their experience. Consequently, this delivers a detailed phenomenological account of how shared meanings create and sustain collective social life in present-day China, thereby providing prodigious understanding of the underlying mechanisms that constitute social reality.