ethnomethodology

• ethnomethodology


  garfinkel - a theory stemming from phenomenology that similiarly rejects the idea that society is a real objective structure, and is interested in how social order is achieved

  • social order is an accomplishment that members of society actively construct using commonsense knowledge
  • interested in the methods used to produce meanings in the first place
• indexicality and reflexivity

  garfinkel - indexicality is the idea that nothing has a fixed meaning and everything depends on context, which is a threat to social order as it means communication and cooperation may become difficult or break down

  • this creates a paradox as we do in reality take things for granted, which can be explained by reflexivity
  • reflexivity - the use of commonsense knowledge in everyday interactions to create a sense of meaning and prevent indexicality, similar to schutz' idea of typifications
• language

  garfinkel - language is incredibly important in achieving reflexivity as when we describe something we simultaneously create it by providing reality and removing uncertainty

  • language is the epitome of a construction of shared meanings
• experiments in disrupting social order

  garfinkel - performed breaching experiments to demonstrate social order

  • eg. acted as lodgers in their own homes and haggled in supermarkets
  • parents became confused, anxious or angry
  • shows how orderliness isn't inevitable but accomplished by people who take part in everyday situations
• suicide and reflexivity

  garfinkel - humans constantly strive to impose order through determining patterns, which is what coroners do when ruling a death as suicide

  • when faced with future cases that mirror past suicides the coroner interprets them as examples of the assumed pattern eg. 'they were mentally ill so they died by suicide'
  • by cases being classified due to fitting the pattern the pattern seems to be reinforced
• evaluation

  draws attention to how order is constructed HOWEVER

  • craib - the findings are trivial and only uncover findings that are already widely known eg. in phone calls one person talks at a time
  • if theories identify patterns and allocates phenomena to them that must also be the case for ethnomethodology so there is no reason to take it seriously
  • denies the existence of wider society but analyses general norms
  • ignores how wider structures of power and inequality affect the construction of meanings