At the foundation of this work lies an observation: the increasing use of phenomenological methods in the humanities. For several years now, there has been a growing concern, across the humanities, to break away from overarching approaches to the world, spaces, and subjects.

Today, phenomenology appears to be the most relevant perspective to meet this demand. Through the spectrum of their disciplines (sociology, anthropology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, geography, social theory), practitioners in this work explain how they claim a distinctly phenomenological viewpoint and approach in response to challenges that the usual methods of their respective disciplines fail to overcome.

To do so, they draw both on practice by providing concrete examples, specific "fields" and "cases," and on theory by presenting their theoretical reference frameworks and emphasizing certain phenomenological authors.