What Is Ethnomethodology?

• Published in: Harold Garfinkel pp. 79 - 88
• Main Author: vom Lehn, Dirk
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: United Kingdom Routledge 2013; Taylor & Francis Group
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: Anthropology; ASA Conference; Richard Hill; David Sudnow; USA; Lebenswelt Pair; Philip Selznick; PARC; Ethnomethodological Program; Individual Documentary Evidences; Lewis Coser; Interaction Process Analysis; Double Entry; Columbia College; Eir; Interaction Process Analysis Categories; Jury Project; Durkheim's Aphorism; Elevator Question; Outpatient Clinic; Jury Deliberations; Everyday Practices; Double Entry Bookkeeping; Rule Book
• ISBN: 9781611329803; 9781611329797; 1611329795; 1611329809
• DOI: 10.4324/9781315427652-7

By adopting a focus on everyday practices and the ongoing production of social reality, ethnomethodology positions itself in contrast to theory and research in "traditional" or "conventional" sociology (Garfinkel 2002). When the Studies were published and ethnomethodology became almost fashionable, contemporary sociologists were surprised, if not stunned. They considered Garfinkel's project to be irrelevant and without contribution to the important questions society was grappling with in the 1960s and 1970s; it was the time of the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King, the assassination of JFK, the Vietnam War, and the student revolt, among others. In his opening speech to the 1974 ASA Conference, Lewis Coser (1975) described ethnomethodologists as a splinter group and compares them to a sect without interest in and relevance for sociological debates. He likened Garfinkel to a leader of a sect with the ethnomethodologists as his following. His remarks were also reflected in the British-Czech philosopher and anthropologist Ernest Gellner's (1975) response to ethnomethodology, calling it the "Californian Way of Subjectivity"'