Ethnomethodology

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Ethnomethodology is an approach in the sociology introduced by the American sociologist Harold Garfinkel. It also find its origin in Talcott Parsons's functionalist sociology. Max Weber, Alfred Schütz, Émile Durkheim and Aron Gurwitsch were other important people which helped to develop ethnomethodolgy. The term 'ethnomethodology' was introduced by Garfinkel when he was preparing one of his journals (Hilbert, 1997).

Theory

Ethnomethodolgy is an effort to study the methods in and through which members collaboratively produce and assemble the features of everyday life in any actual, concrete setting. The idea of ethnomethodology is that there is a selfgenerating order in concrete activities, an order that is not something which depends on a scientific criterium. As Garfinkel said: ´members of society must have some shared methods that they use to mutually construct the meaningful orderliness of social situations (Rawls, 2002). Ethnomethodologists conducted their studies in many different ways but the main thing they investigate is to discover the that individuals do in particular situations and the methods they use in these situations to structure and order their everyday life (Douglas & Kardash). Ethnomethodolgy aims at characteristics and the defining features of everyday activities. It explores what the method, means and procedures of such activities. An example of such an activity is a jury deliberation (Arminen, 2008). Scientific enthomethodolgy provides only partially solutions to validity of analyses (Arminen, 2008). It’s sometimes said that it’s more a practice and that it lacks on real theory. Radical enthomethodolgy does try to find principled, generic, theoretical solutions to practical enthomethodolical problems. Although the approach does analyse social problems so it’s difficult to achieve absolute purity (Arminen, 2008). But as Weber (1981) already states, this is a problem seen throughout social studies.

Critique

As already mentioned the main point of critique on ethnomethodology is that is has not a clear and fundamental set of research methods or procedures. But radical enthomethodolgy does try to find theoretical solutions to the practical problems of enthomethodolgy.

Arminen I (2008)

Douglas M.W. & Kardash, T. (n.d.). Ethnomethodology. http://www.sociologyencyclopedia.com/fragr_image/media/ethnomethodology

Hilbert, R.A. (1992). The Classical Roots of Ethnomethodology. University of North Carolina Press.

Rawls, A.W. (2002). Ethnomethodology´s programme. Working out Durkheim´s Aphorism. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers inc.

--GijsJansen 20:22, 20 October 2011 (CEST)