Ethnomethodology

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Latest revision as of 20:53, 30 December 2012

Ethnomethodology is an approach in the sociology introduced by the American sociologist Harold Garfinkel[1]. 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). This selfgenerating order is partly constructed due to a consensus which is made by the people in society. This concensus is also partly what keeps society together and constructs the social norms of behaviour which people live by. People in society live by these norms, but what is so important in ethnomethodology is breaking these norms down. Because if these norms are broken down scientists could learn a lot more about how people react to broken normal social behaviour(Crossman 2012). That is so interesting because ethnomethodologists believe that people are not fully aware of their own norms. Ethnomethodologists are interested in revealing those norms and the behaviour of people. responsible for the 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 already states, this is a problem seen throughout social studies (Campbell, 1981).

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). Scientific and "Radical" Ethnomethodolgy: From Incompatible Paradigsm to ethnomethodolgical Sociology. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 42 (2)

Campbell,. I, (1981). Seven Theories of Human Societies. Clerendon Press: Oxford

Crossman, Ashely, 2012, Social Phenomenology an overview, URL= http://sociology.about.com/od/Research/a/Ethnomethodology.htm

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.

Contributions

--GijsJansen 20:22, 20 October 2011 (CEST), edited by Mathijs Lammers and Maik van de Veen

Link added by Kasper van de Langenberg 30/12/12