ethnomethodology....pdf

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Explain the term ethnomethodology and discuss its

usefulness for the understanding of the everyday

functioning of society

Anne David

In this essay I intend to explore the aims and methods of ethnomethodology and what the

new micro approach has brought to the understanding of society. I will look at how the

approach differs from other more traditional theories and how it claims to overcome some

of the limitations that these established grand narratives encompass. Then, in turn, I will also

be looking at how the ethnomethodological approach can be criticised, and explore its own

limitations. Firstly, I will begin with a short explanation of the approach and how it emerged.

The literal meaning of the word ethnomethodology is peoples methods, and this is exactly

the focus of the approach. Coining the term in 1954, Harold Garfinkel (1967) founded the

approach that originated out of criticism of mainstream sociology, which he argued imposed

sociological categories on the ordinary person. The aim of the ethnomethodological

approach is to investigate how members of society construct and manage their sense of

social structure by examining taken for granted realities. The approach is critical of social

structures highlighted by other sociological theorists because it is believed that they are an

invention, to the extent that they depart from peoples own sense of structure. A key word

associated with the approach is indexicality, which is howpeople make sense of actions,

signs and remarks by reference to the context in which they occur; the approach aims to

explore this issue and how orderliness is reproduced reflexively by people in everyday life.

Much of the groundwork of ethnomethodology lies in phenomenology, a strand of

philosophy that attributes a sustained attempt to describe experiences without metaphysical

or theoretical speculations. Garfinkel was heavily influenced by the work of the

phenomenologists Husserl and Schutz, which can be seen in Garfinkels work as it bears

many resemblances to the interests and focus of their approaches, explaining why

ethnomethodology is commonly referred to as a phenomenological sociology.

Due to the logics of the ethnomethodological approach, the methods involved in studying

individuals and society are different from ones used by many other social scientists. The

approach never relies on questionnaires or surveys, or in fact any other method previously

taken on board because it is believed that everyday phenomena become warped when


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viewed through a framework of scientific description. The ethnomethodological approach

actually bred its own methods of investigation in order to treat lived social realities, because

as is argued, everyday discourse consists of concepts that depart from formal logic. The

breaching experiment was one such method devised by Garfinkel. To conduct a breaching

experiment Garfinkel stressed that you must enter a social situation imagining you are seeing

things for the first time, therefore not bringing any background ideas or presumptions, and

to monitor what happens. Garfinkel argued that you would find there is chaos and confusion

in most instances. One such case that Garfinkel describes:

The victim waved his hand cheerily

(S) How are you?

(E) How am I in regard to what? My health, my finances, my school work, my peace

of mind, my ?

(S) (Red in the face and suddenly out of control.) Look! I was just trying to be polite.

Frankly I dont give a damn how you are.(Garfinkel, 1967: 44)

Garfinkel makes the case that breaching a social situation highlights howunderstanding is

based on unspoken rules and shows how much background knowledge people use in daily

interactions. Television personalities Borat and Dom Jolly from trigger happy TV are two

contemporary examples of characters that breach social situations. Additionally,

conversation analysis is another strand of research that has grown out of the

ethnomethodological approach; it is the direct analysis of natural discourse in conversation.

Conversation analysis is not so much interested in the content of conversation but to

record and examine patterns in order to uncover the rules that allow communication to

proceed in a meaningful and orderly fashion.

One of the main defining aspects of the ethnomethodological approach is that it diverges

from conventional sociology; the approach is often referred to as an alternative sociology,

that ethnomethodology is not a sociology as sociologists know it (Garfinkel, cited in Button1993: 7). Garfinkel was very sceptical of empirical mainstream sociology for many reasons;

one of them being that traditional sociology brings about the loss of the person in social

scientific research, which has implications for the way in which the practical person views

knowledge sources, resulting out of long-term rationality and the top down prominence of

bureaucratic knowledge; the crisis of legitimacy (Rogers 1983) is a concept that has

hovered in the minds of many. This was an issue highlighted most notably by phenomenology

and foreseen by people such as Husserl, but also amongst many others within sociology. It isargued that a crisis of reason and commonsense would emerge to the extent that bearers of


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formal authority symbolize reason in western societies (Rogers, 1983: 6). This was noted as

a problem because bureaucratic rationality ultimately moulds bureaucratic knowledge.

However, as Garfinkel tries to argue, the lives of practical people contradict bureaucratic

knowledge since social sciences artificially abstract from everyday life (Garfinkel, 1967: 40).

For that reason, bringing scepticism about truthfulness and validity of such knowledge, the

gulf people experience between knowledge and action concerns the divide between scientific

knowledge and everyday action (Rogers, 1983: 6). Garfinkel would then argue that

ethnomethodology and its concerns are able to bridge the gap and ease tensions of this

crisis of legitimacy issue, as the approach claims to be closer to reality and the everyday

actions of the real person. Therefore, as is argued, the ethnomethodological approach is

useful for the understanding of the everyday functioning of society as it is a step closer to

understanding, for the reason that it is an interpretation of everyday life by the same meansas the people that it claims to study.

The ethnomethodological approach criticises how commonsense knowledge goes

unrecognised, and is undeserving of the significantly inferior status it holds next to scientific

knowledge. Garfinkel argued that, inescapably, other sociologists themselves use

commonsense understanding to attempt to explore and study the social world.

Furthermore, these understandings are used to recognize peoples actions and intentions.

However, these sociologists are still not mindful of this reliance on mundane commonsense

knowledge. Durkheims study of suicide (1897) is an example that is able to illustrate this

point. Durkheim (cited in Macionis and Plummer, 2005) argued that there were four types of

suicide which related to the extent to which people are integrated and morally regulated.

Altruistic suicide is one type of suicide that Durkheim identified, which occurs when an

individual is too integrated and commits suicide on behalf of a wider community. It could be

maintained that Durkheim would have had to use hiscommonsense knowledge to decipher

the intentions of suicide. Ultimately, he could have never known whether someone

committed suicide for their wider community or, in fact, any other reason for someone

committing suicide. But as Garfinkel would have argued, Durkheim was neglectful of how he

came to interpret the intentions of such people. Garfinkel is disapproving of how, in this

sense, mundane and everyday knowledge is used to create grand theories which then

become manipulated and distorted, creating an abstracted empiricism that is unable to

advance a truly credible theory. The summary of Garfinkels concerns can be summed up in

a quote by the phenomenologist Mehan: smoke is not the phenomenon of interest; fire is

(cited in Rogers, 1983: 87). Ethnomethodology claims to explore the credible realities of the


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social world because the foundations of structure, order and interpretation stem from

mundane, commonsense practices. Therefore, the ethnomethodological approach is useful

for the understanding of the everyday functioning of society because, as it claims, it is more

in touch with real knowledge of the practical person.

As neglectful as ethnomethodology argues mainstream sociology to be, it could also be

argued that ethnomethodology is in turn neglectful of the importance of studying society on

a wider scale. It could be seen that ethnomethodology neglects the way in which mundane

activities of people are constrained by social factors that cannot be appreciated through such

small-scale analysis. Critical theorists would challenge Garfinkels use of only studying small-

scale phenomena. Feminists would argue that patriarchy must also be examined on a larger

scale, not just looking at specific interactions in order to really uncover the oppression ofwomen in society. Similarly, Marxists would argue the same in the case of the proletariat and

bourgeoisie. Both of these critical theories believe that research should not be value-free

and should be used to highlight inequality in the social world. On this issue, the

ethnomethodological approach could be criticized for not promoting equality changes to the

existing social world, especially constrained by its methodology, and therefore from this

perspective is limited in its usefulness of studying the everyday functioning of society. The

work of C Wright Mills (1959) and the sociological imagination can also be related to this

strand of thought. Wright Mills stressed the importance of the sociological imagination in

peoples everyday lives, which he argues is our most needed quality of mind (1959: 2). To

obtain this way of thinking, Wright Mills argues that there must be an understanding of the

differences between personal troubles and public issues, and how they interact. Wright

Mills notes how many are seldom aware of the intricate connection between the patterns of

their own lives and the course of world history (1959: 1). This example of the sociological

imagination illustrates how it is still important to acknowledge aspects of human activity that

do not fall into the category of everyday mundane activity.

Even though ethnomethodology has undeniably brought a new wave of thinking about

experience and knowledge, it cannot stand on its own. It would appear that the approachs

foundation lies in setting itself up against other mainstream approaches, pointing the finger at

where other approaches have gone wrong. In this instance, ethnomethodology seems to

have become, in part, a sociology of sociology. However, critical of the way others conduct

social research, ethnomethodology still doesnt provide much of an answer on how it should

be conducted. The ethnomethodological approach does not provide rules as to what to


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focus on and what might be of particular interest. Ethnomethodologists offer no handbook

and few recipes for doing ethnomethodology (Rogers, 1983: 104). Also, the issue of

evidence to many of Garfinkels suggestions is another issue that has been challenged.

Garfinkel has been criticized for taking an I take-what-I-can-get posture towards evidence

(Rogers, 1983: 103). Sudnow and Sack (cited in Rogers, 1983) also look at the outcomes of

ethnomethodological research. Garfinkels work generates rules that virtually give him back

his data ... his position implies that evidence derives from description so faithful to lived

reality that they effectively regenerate their data in the telling (Sudnow and Sack cited in

Rogers, 1983: 104). These ideas suggest that in fact the ethnomethodological approach is not

easy to conduct and fails to muster up much at all apart from description, so in this instance

social scientific explanation merely appears to elucidate what commonsense cannot disclose

(Rogers, 1983: 103). Therefore, in this case, the usefulness for understanding the everydayfunctioning of society appears to be diminutive.

As well as not providing many points of reference methodologically, the methods that have

been provided by Garfinkel have been challenged for harbouring many negative features. The

breaching experiment was coined and so well defined by Garfinkel that its distinct nature

comes up against a lot of criticism, especially from an ethical point of view. The wholly

covert nature of the breaching experiment brings about many ethical considerations, one of

these being that it does not provide participants the opportunity for informed consent,

which of course entails deception and the potential for causing harm to participants. As

illustrated before, in the Hi how are you? case, people can become very aggravated; this is a

similar story to many of Garfinkels breaching experiments. If taken for granted assumptions

and mundane practices are as important as is argued then it is a possibility that even a slight

breaking of common practices can have a significant impact. It will always be unknown as to

what offence may be caused to participants in breaching experiments not only harm to

participants but also harm to the researcher if a participant were to become infuriated.

These ethical considerations will always be present when conducting a breaching experiment

because obviously it cannot be carried out overtly or any other way because it would

undermine its own aims and processes.

Not only is ethics something to take into consideration, but also the practical element of

conducting a breaching experiment. Ditton (cited in Bryman, 2004) looked at the problem of

taking notes in covert research, the difficulties and in some circumstances impossibility of

taking notes at all: notes are very important ... it is too risky to rely exclusively on your


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memory (Bryman, 2004: 296). In the case of the breaching experiment, it might not always

be possible for a researcher to remember every specific detail in relation to the reactions of

un-knowing participants. The conversation analysis sphere of ethnomethodology also has its

own limitations; making it possible to gain access to real, normal conversation has many

implications to do with the invasion of privacy. To truly examine a conversation it cannot

only be heard once; therefore, to carry out an examination fully the conversation must be

recorded the problems with this are obvious. It would appear the approachs own

methodological concerns can inhibit practicality and accessibility for understanding the one

thing it seeks to explore. Therefore, it could be argued that the usefulness of the approach

in understanding the everyday functioning of society is then hindered.

In conclusion, it would seem that there are both negative and positive implications inadopting the ethnomethodological approach to understanding the everyday functioning of

society. However, most significantly, it would appear that the approach is restricted by its

own thoughts, especially when it comes to methodological concerns. Although it claims to

create an understanding of everyday society that is closer to reality, the practicality of

carrying out such research is perhaps not viable. The ethical considerations of the breaching

experiment and conversation analysis illustrate how sometimes naturally occurring research

sites are inaccessible, which is the explicit focus of the approach. Thus, any usefulness is

stunted by its own distinctive logic of inquiry. The ethnomethodological approach appears to

be more descriptive and exploratory rather than explanatory and therefore is perhaps not

always so useful.


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Bibliography

Bryman, R. (2004), Social Research Methods(second edition), Oxford, Oxford University

Press

Button, G. (1993), Ethnomethodology and the human science,Cambridge, Cambridge UniversityPress

Garfinkel, H. (1967), Studies in Ethnomethodology, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall

Macionis, J. and Plummer, K. (2005), Sociology: A Global Introduction(third edition), Harlow,

Pearson Education Limited

Rogers, M. (1983), Sociology, ethnomethodology, and experience, Cambridge, Cambridge

University Press

Wright Mills, C. (1959), The Sociological Imagination, Chapter 1 - The Promise, Oxford,Oxford University Press

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