ethnomethodology - History and Influence, Varieties of ethnomethodology, Some leading policies and methods

The sociological theory developed out of the work of the US sociologist Harold Garfinkel (1917– ) and others in the 1960s. It studies the methods people use to accomplish successful social interaction, and is derived from earlier phenomenological and symbolic interactionist theories.

Ethnomethodology (literally, 'the study of people's (folk) methods') is a sociological discipline which focuses on the ways in which people make sense of their world, display this understanding to others, and produce the mutually shared social order in which they live.

Ethnomethodology is distinct from traditional sociology, and does not seek to compete with it, or provide remedies for any of its practices.

Two central differences between traditional sociology and ethnomethodology are:

(1) While traditional sociology usually offers an analysis of society which takes the facticity of the social order for granted, ethnomethodology is concerned with the "how" (the methods) by which that social order is produced, and shared.

(2) While traditional sociology usually provides descriptions of social settings which compete with the actual descriptions offered by the individuals who are party to those settings, ethnomethodology seeks to describe the practices (the methods) these individuals use in their actual descriptions of those settings.

History and Influence

The approach was developed by Harold Garfinkel, based on his artful analysis of traditional sociological theory (primarily: Durkheim, Weber, and Parsons), traditional sociological concerns (the "problem of order"), and the phenomenologies of Aron Gurwitsch, Alfred Schutz, and Edmund Husserl.

Ethnomethodology has had a significant impact on social scientific inquiry.

For instance, ethnomethodology has always focused on the ways in which words are dependent for their meaning on the context in which they are used [they are 'indexical'].

Ethnomethodological studies of work have played a significant role in the field of human-computer interaction, improving design by providing engineers with descriptions of the practices of users.

Ethnomethodology has also influenced the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge by providing a research approach that describes the social practices("methods")of its research subjects without the commonly accepted practice of evaluating the validity of those practices from an imposed normative standpoint. This has proved to be useful to researchers studying social order in laboratory settings who wished to understand how scientists actually conducted their experiments without either endorsing or criticising their activities utilizing traditional scientific criteria.

Varieties of ethnomethodology

According to George Psathas, five types of ethnomethodological study can be identified.

Some leading policies and methods

Ethnomethodological Indifference This is the policy of deliberate agnosticism, or indifference, towards the dictates, prejudices, methods and practices of sociological analysis as traditionally conceived (examples: theories of "deviance", analysis of behavior as rule governed, role theory, institutional (de)formations, theories of social stratification, etc.). Dictates and prejudices which serve to pre-structure traditional social scientific investigations independently of the subject matter taken as a topic of study, or the investigatory setting being subjected to scrutiny.

The policy of Ethnomethodological Indifference is specifically not to be conceived as indifference to the problem of social order taken as a member's concern. Breaching Experiment A method for revealing, or exposing, the common work that is performed by members in maintaining a clearly recognizable and shared social order. Example: driving the wrong way down a busy one-way street can reveal myriads of useful insights into the patterned social practices, and moral order, of car drivers... Sacks' Gloss A question about an aspect of the social order that recommends, as a method of answering it, that the researcher should seek out members of society who, in their daily lives, are responsible for the maintenance of that aspect of the social order. This is usually taken to mean that we should assume the objectivity of social facts as a principal of study (thus providing the basis of sociology as a science). Garfinkel's alternative reading of Durkheim is that we should treat the objectivity of social facts as an achievement of society's members, and make the achievement process itself the focus of study.