Sethnomethodology.pptxhshhdggdghhhhdhdjh

Teaching material

1. ethnomethodology Section two

2. Introduction Ethnomethodology is an alternative to the American sociological approach to data analysis born in the 1960s with its theoretical and epistemological importance being that it is a radical breach from traditional sociological modes of thinking . The term itself was originally coined by Harold Garfinkel in 1954, but the discipline itself has changed from Garfinkel's original programme to the point where it is no longer recognizable.

3. Harold Garfinkel (1917-2011) Was Born in Newark , New Jersey On October 29, 1917 at Was an American sociologist, ethnomethodologist and professor Emeritus at the university of California, Los Angeles. He is probably best known for his classic book, studies in ethnomethodology published in 1967

4. Central argument The meaningful , patterned, and orderly character of everyday life is something people must work constantly to achieve, One must also assume they have some methods for doing so . One way of understanding this method is using similar idea that make sense by speaking the same language , using the same meanings for words and the same grammatical forms . Ethnomethodology, then, is the study of the methods people use for producing recognizable social orders.

5. The Concept Ethnomethodology The term's ethnomethodology can be broken down into its three constituent parts: E thno– refers to a particular socio-cultural group [think a particular, localized community of surfers]; Method– refers to the methods and practices this particular group employs in its everyday activities Logy- ( from the Greek 'logos'), refers to the systematic description of these methods and practices.

6. Cont’d Therfore , ethnomethodology is the study of the methods or practices that people use to accomplish their everyday lives. The founder of this sociological approach, Harold Garfinkel , was particularly interested in how social actors provide accounts of situations . Ethnomethodologists devote a lot of attention to analyzing people’s accounts, as well as to the ways in which accounts are offered and accepted (or rejected) by others.

7. Cont’d This is one of the reasons that ethnomethodologists are preoccupied with analyzing conversations. For example , when a student explains to her professor why she failed to take an examination, she is offering an account. The student is trying to make sense out of an event for her professor. Ethnomethodologists are not so much concerned with the actual content of these accounts , but rather with the practice of accounting as a topic of analysis .

8. Cont’d For example, an ethnomethodologist might study how a telephone conversation is shaped by the actions of a caller and the responses of a receiver rather than by the subject matter of the conversation. Ethnomethodology is a descriptive discipline and does not engage in the explanation or evaluation of the particular social order undertaken as a topic of study. As a method, it is used in ethnographic studies to describe people's methods that they use in everyday situations .

9. Cont’d Ethnomethodologists are critical of traditional sociologists….. As they focuses on socially constructed world instead of the everyday practices of social actors . They also distort the social world by relying too much on statistical analysis and preconceived coding categories , which mask the sophisticated interactions people use to accomplish everyday life. Ethnomethodologists also criticize conventional sociologists for confusing topic and resource

10. Basic concepts Breaching experiment: It is a method for revealing, or exposing, the common work that is performed by members of particular social groups in maintaining a clearly recognizable and shared social order. E.g. driving the wrong way due to busy one-way street Sacks' gloss Source of information about an aspect of the social order that recommends, : If you want to understand how a particular social order is maintained, or a particular social activity is accomplished, go to the source: the actual people who do the actual work of maintaining and constructing those social structures.

11. Cont’d Accounts Accounts are the ways in which actors explain (describe, criticize, and idealize ) specific situations. Indexicality For ethnomethodology phenomenon is universalized to all forms of language and behavior, not considered to be both limited in scope and established only to provide scientific description and explanation of social behavior.

12. Cont’d Reflexivity to describe the a causal and non- mentalistic determination of meaningful action-in-context. Documentary method of interpretation documentary method of interpretation is tools of understanding utilized by everyone engaged in trying to make sense of their social world - persons in everyday life construct carefully documented accounts that gloss the details of social practices in order to warrant claims they make about the orderliness of social events.

13. Ethnomethodology's field of investigation According to George Psathas , five types of ethnomethodological study can be identified. The organization of practical actions and practical reasoning . The organization of talk-in-interaction . Talk-in-interaction within institutional or organizational settings . The study of work : It used here to refer to any social activityand how that work is accomplished within the setting in which it is performed. The haecceity of work: the essential property that makes an individual uniquely that individual e.g. what makes a test a test, a competition a competition, or a definition a definition?      

14. Cont’d Today, ethnomethodologists focus their studies on social interactions in two broad areas: conversation analysis and institutional settings. A. Conversation Analysis The goal of conversation analysis is to study the ways in which conversations are organized. The unit of analysis of this method is the relationship among utterances ( way of speaking) , not the relationship between speakers and hearers Conversation analysts have researched a variety of different types of speech, including telephone conversations, laughter, applause, booing, and even nonverbal communication .

15. Cont’d T elephone C onversations: It have been analyzed to discover the sequences social actors use to identify and recognize each other without the benefit of visual contact . The organization of utterances has also been analyzed in terms of how laugher is initiated. two-party conversation ( speaker generate laughter ) or multi-party conversation, someone other than the speaker usually initiates laughter.

16. Cont’d Political speeches: it have also been analyzed in terms of how politicians generate approval from their audiences . Politicians have been found to use seven different rhetorical devices to generate applause, the most common being contrasting the same point within a statement . Applause: agreement and acceptance from the audience Booing: disagreement or un-acceptance from the audience e.g., whispering or jeering )

17. Cont’d Story-telling: Story-telling is a collaborative process: Audiences are not passive recipients of stories , but can actively shape a story as it is being told . Shyness and self-confidence: usually thought of as psychological traits, are actually accomplished through speech acts, particularly " setting-talk( our immediate surroundings ) Shyness is accomplished by engaging in "setting-talk," while self-confidence is accomplished by addressing the actual topic at hand.

18. Cont’d B. Studies of Institutions: Analyzing conversations and social interactions that take place within institutional settings is another area of research for ethnomethodologists . Job interviews: strategies that used by interviewer to prevent interviewees to correct question that have been asked: business negotiations: detached and impersonal

19. Cont’d Telephone calls to emergency centers: confusion arises because of the lack of everyday openings, sequences, and recognition. Mediation hearings: conflict resolution lessens the chance of conversations escalating into arguments.

20. Differences Between Traditional Sociology And Ethnomethodology It constituting a radical break from prior sociologies, there has been little attempt to link ethnomethodology to these prior sociologies . In essence the distinctive difference between sociological approaches and ethnolomethodology is that the latter adopts a commonsense attitude towards knowledge.

21. Cont’d Two central differences between traditional sociology and ethnomethodology are: While traditional sociology usually offers an analysis of society which takes the facticity of the social order for granted, ethnomethodology is concerned with the procedures by which that social order is produced, and shared . While traditional sociology usually provides descriptions of social settings based on the meaning individual offered to this social setting , ethnomethodology seeks to describe the procedures these individuals use in their actual descriptions of those settings.

22. Stresses and Strains in Ethnomethodology Conventional sociologists view this sociological perspective with suspicion, because they feel it focuses on trivial matters . Others worry that ethnomethodology has become increasingly removed from its phenomenological roots is, neglecting internal motivations for action. Another concern raised by ethnomethodologists is that the perspective is beginning to lose sight of its original radical reflexivity, particularly the emphasis on how all social activity is accomplished .

23. Cont’d Although some ethnomethodologists worry about the capacity for this perspective to bridge the micro-macro divide, others feel that there are positive signs that ethnomethodology is well-suited for synthesizing and integrating micro-level interactions with macro-level structures . Ignore the existence of external constraint,: Critics argue that the study of local social orders is not sociological because it consists only of a description of what people do and ignores the real social (i.e. institutional) constraints within which those actions took place