phenomenology and ethnomethodology

• phenomenology - HUSSERL

  • the world only makes sense because we impose meaning and order on it
  • we construct mental categories to classify and file information that we experience through our senses
  • therefore the world as we know it is a product of the individual mind
• phenomenology - SCHUTZ

  • developed HUSSERLS ideas and applied it to the social world
  • the categories and concepts we use to construct our mental categories are not unique to ourselves
  • but we share these with other people which is how we can live in community and social groups
• phenomenology - typifications

  • the shared categories that help us to organise the experiences and world around us
  • help to stabilise and clarify meanings by ensuring that we are all speaking the same language and agree on the meaning of things
• phenomenology - life world

  • the stock of shared typifications of what many consider common sense knowledge - it includes common assumptions about the way things are and what certain situations mean
• phenomenology - recipe knowledge

  • the ability to interpret a situation, action or motivation without really thinking about it
  • red light = stop - allows us to drive safely
• phenomenology - natural attitude

  • the belief that society is a real objective thing that exists outside of use
  • SCHUTZ - suggests that this is a false belief as it merely demonstrates how people have the shared meanings which allow us to cooperate and achieve mutual goals
• phenomenology AO3

  • BERGER AND LUCKMAN
  • agree that it is right to focus on the common sense knowledge
  • disagree with the idea that reality is an inter-subjective reality but instead that once the shared meanings have been creates, society becomes an external reality that reflects back on us
  • Religion - starts as set of ideas but becomes powerful structures of society which can constrain us
• ethnomethodology

  • GARFINKEL
  • interested in how social order is maintained
  • he is interested in how people construct the common sense knowledge and the rules and processes we use to produce the meanings in the first place
• ethnomethodology

  social order is created from

  • the members of society creating and applying common sense knowledge to their everyday lives
• ethnomethodology

  indexicality means

  nothing has a fixed meaning - everything is dependent on context
• ethnomethodology studies...


  the process of creating the meanings by which we make sense of the world and the rules and methods used to create the meanings
• ethnomethodology

  reflexicality means..

  the use of common sense knowledge to interpret everyday situations to construct a sense of meaning and order
• ethnomethodology Breaching experiments

  • GARFINKLE - got his students to either act as lodgers in their own home - overly polite, avoiding getting personal
  • or they haggled over the price of groceries at the checkout of a supermarket
• ethnomethodology Breaching experiments purpose

  • experiments which aim to disrupt peoples sense of order and challenge their reflectivity by undermining assumptions about a situation
• ethnomethodology - Breaching experiments conclusion

  • by challenging the taken for granted assumptions he was able to show that the orderliness of everyday situation is not fixed but an accomplishment of those who took part
  • social order is participant producesd
• ethnomethodology AO3

  CARIB

  • findings of the breaching experiments were trivial as ethnomethodologists spend a lot of time uncovering 'taken for granted ruls' which are no surprise to anyone
  • ethnomethodology denies the existence of wider society suggesting instead that it is a 'shared fiction'
  • Functionalist - norms and values are not fiction but a social fact
  • Marxist - that shared common sense knowledge - ruling class ideology and it servers the interests of capitalism