Phenomenology and Ethnomethodology

• Phenomenology

  Things as they appear to our sense - we can never have definite knowledge
• Husserl's Philosophy

  INTENTIONALITY - the directedness of consciousness towards an object

  E.g., Table theory - a place to work? somewhere to store items? somewhere to eat or sit?
• Shared meanings

  Schutz = we have a shared 'life-world' - a stock of shared typifications that we all use to give an event meaning = 'Recipe knowledge'
• Schutz continued

  This is not knowledge about the world, it is the world

  The world = a product of mind

  Social world can only exist when we share the same meanings
• Natural attitude

  Society appears as a real objective thing

  E.g., ordering a book online - we assume that unknown + unseen individuals will get the book to us, when we get the book, we think that the social world is a solid thing - shows that all those involved share the same meanings
• Berger and Luckmann

  Schutz is right to focus on shared knowledge

  BUT

  Is wrong that society is just an inter-subjective

  Once reality has been constructed, it takes on a life of its own (religion)
• Ethnomethodolgy

  Garfinkel

  1960s

  Also rejects idea of an external reality 'out there'
• Garfinkel - Indexicality

  Meanings are always potentially unclear = threat to order, communication/relationships become difficult

  However, we do take meanings for granted and largely this works
• Language

  Vital in reflexivity

  In describing something, we are creating it - we give it life and properties.

  Gives us a sense of external reality, when all we have done is construct shared meanings
• Disrupting the social order

  Garfinkel told students to act like lodgers in their own homes

  Challenges reflexivity by undermining assumptions about the situation

  Orderliness is therefore not inevitable but an accomplishment of those who participate

  Social order is participant produced
• Suicide and reflexivity

  • Reflexivity = to make sense of the world as orderly
  • Think of how coroners make sense of deaths
  • Patterns are established which are really social constructs
  • Assumed patterns become self-reinforcing
  • Garfinkel is critical of positivists who accept coroners verdicts as social facts
• Criticisms of ethnomethodology

  Craib - findings are trivial and common-sense

  Denies the existence of wider society but by looking at how we apply rules to situations, it assumes a structure exists

  Ignores wider structural causes of inequality; ignores power