Ethnomethodology

it describes ethnomethodology as a method as well as a theory. This very concise and precise presentation helps one to understand the real meaning of ethnomethodology.

1. Presented by,
Sameena M.S
UGC Junior Research Fellow,
Dept. of Sociology
Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit,
Kalady, Kerala, India

2. Ethnomethodology is an ethnographic approach to
social inquiry introduced by Harold Garfinkel.
Aims at studying the everyday methods people use for
the production of social order.
Subject matter of Ethnomethodology -methods and
practices through which people make sense of their
world

3. Anne Rawls provides a terminological breakdown for
Ethnomethodology;
Ethno-Members of a social or cultural group
Method-Methods and practices followed by that group
Logos-Science/ study.
There fore “Ethnomethodology refers to the methods
and practices followed by a particular group of people
in order to understand their social life and also assign
meanings to it”.

4. Founder- Harold Garfinkel (1917-2011), American
Sociologist.
Drawing the analogy with ethnobotany, ethnopsychology,
ethnomusicology; he propounded Ethnomethodology.
Coined the term in 1954 while preparing researches on juries.
While analysing the Tape of jury deliberation, he became
interested in “how the jurors knew what they were doing in
doing the work of jurors”

5. Investigating the commonsense methods through which
members of jury produce themselves in a jury room as
jurors (methods for establishing the matters of fact;
developing evidence chains; establishing the hierarchy
of speakers in the jury room etc).
Other theoretical concerns and influences: Parsonian
“problem of order”, traditional sociological theory and
methods mainly Parsons, Durkheim and Weber;
Gurwitsch’s gestalt psychology, phenomenology etc.

6. As a theory, it focuses on a completely different set of problems
from the traditional sociological inquiry.
Sees the objective reality of social facts as an ongoing
accomplishment of the concerned activities of everyday life.
In everyday situations individuals recognize social facts, such as
taken for granted norms and values that interpret the meaning of
the situation for them.
They try to analyse the process by which human beings interact
and prove to each other that they are following norms and values.

7. The process by which people make sense out of their social
world by analysing, criticizing and idealizing specific situation.
Involves both language and meaning; people constantly give
linguistic or verbal accounts as they explain their actions.
Indexical expressions- terms that require mutual understanding
and that are not explicated verbally; much of the accounting that
people make to each other about their bahaviour is done in an
abbreviated form, because commonplace conversation assumes a
“common understanding” of many things that are “left out” of
the conversation

8. Etcetera principle – in day today life there’ll be
something left unsaid which could be understood by
other.
Accounts and meaning in any situation are dependent
on the nature of the situation (meaning of 2 people
attach to any interaction are linked to its location and
time, the persons present, the intention of the actor and
their knowledge of each other’s intentions

9. 1. Reality as reflexive- to describe the causal and non-
mentalistic determination of meaningful action-in-
context.
2. Reality as a coherent body of knowledge-
theoretically, the object of Ethnomethodology research
is social order taken as a group members’ concern. The
reality is categorized by the actor so that it becomes
coherent to the actor.

10. 3. Reality as an interactional activity- Social reality
depends on the reciprocal interaction between the
actors in the society.
4. Flexibility of Realities- Realities can be broken; he
explained it with breaching experiments.
5. Permeability of realities- Denoting the
interconnectedness of reality.

11. Includes; open ended or depth interviews, participant
observation, videotaping, the documentary method of
interpretation and ethnomethodological experiments
often called breaching experiments.
Open ended or depth interviews, participant
observation etc can highlight the problematic areas of
an individual’s everyday life, areas that might
otherwise have never been brought to light.

12. Documentary method of interpretation: something
people constantly using as they continually interpret
and reinterpret each other’s behaviour and look for
underlying patterns.
Breaching Experiments: he called it as breaching
demonstrations; Breaching- violation; here the
researcher disrupts ordinary activity. Everyday
activities can be breached intentionally for us to know
that we are creating the social reality.

13. Lacks both a formally stated theory and a formal
methodology
It is misdirected because based on a false
understanding of the nature and rationale of the
enterprise
According to Lynch and Bogen (1994),
Ethnomethodological studies do not display the
compressive accumulation of knowledge.
It has all the drawbacks of a qualitative method; cannot
be studied scientifically

14. “Ethnomethodology is involved in the studies of
activities not theories about activities. It is like learning
a lot from reading books about swimming, the only
way to become a swimmer is to do it, to get in the
water and swim. To know Ethnomethodology, you
must do Ethnomethodology”.
-George Psathas

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