1. Ethnomethodology and Phenomenology

2. Outline What is ethnomethodology? Harold Garfinkel and Accounting
Analysis of Institutional Settings
Conversational Analysis
Phenomenology
Alfred Schutz
Berger and Luckmann

3. What is ethnomethodology?
“the study of everyday methods that people use to live their daily lives”
ethno = relevant to your culture
method = how you use this knowledge

4. Harold Garfinkel (1917 - ) U.S. sociologist Ph.D. Harvard 1952
Taught at U.C.L.A. – has become main training centre for ethnomethodologists
“Studies in Ethnomethodology” (1967)
Main intellectual influences:
Emile Durkheim (social facts)
Alfred Schutz (phenomenology)
Talcott Parsons (idea of social trust)

5. Garfinkel’s Ideas Studied jurors and common sense knowledge
Placed primary importance on meanings that people give to everyday situations and how define their own situations
Developed ethnomethodology

6. Accounting
“Accounts” = stories that people tell to explain how they make sense of a situation and figure out what to do
“Accounting practices” = entire process
Ethnomethodologists analyze accounts and how accounts received by others
Accounts define individual reality
Emerge from individual’s meanings

7. Other Ideas Breaching experiments Accomplishing gender
People act according to “commonsense” assumptions
When norms re: interactionare breached, a reaction occurs
Accomplishing gender
Gender more than just biology
You act according to what you believe is normal for your gender

8. Other Types of Ethnomethodology: Studies of Institutional Settings
Studies of institutional settings – police departments, courtrooms, hospitals
Go beyond tradtional sociological study of structures, roles, rules, and norms
How do individuals in a formal setting make sense of what they do and perform their jobs?
focus on interpretation and practical activity

9. Conversation Analysis
Includes:
Gathering of detailed conversational data
Verbal and non-verbal
Documenting actor’s “method”
Study of properties of an interaction
Look at framework of conversation
Management of the interaction

10. Importance of Ethomethodology
A social psychological approach concerned with individuals rather than roles and structures
Unlike symbolic interactionism, does not accept meaning “as is”
focus on how meaning is created
how do individuals use meanings to their direct action?

11. Phenomenology
The study of how social actors interpret social phenomena
How is our knowledge of the social world created?
A form of “social constructionism”
Our social reality is a socially constructed system of ideas which has accumulated over time and is taken for granted by individuals

12. Alfred Schutz (1899-1959) German social philosopher
Left Nazi Germany for U.S.
Taught at New School for Social research in NY 1952 – 1959
Developed phenomenology by integrating social philosophy with Weber’s vershehen
Focus on the “life-world” and intersubjectivity
We bothcreate our life-world and are constrained by it
A dialectical process

13. Berger and Luckmann: The Social Construction of Reality (1966)
Written by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann
Berger studied under Schutz
One of most important phenomenological works
“processes by which any body of ‘knowledge’ comes to be socially accepted as ‘reality’ (Berger and Luckmann 1966)

14. The Social Construction of Reality (cont.)
Everyday reality is a socially constructed system
People give order to everyday phenomena
Reality both subjective (personally meaningful) and objective (the social order)
Alienation = loss of meaning (disintegration of socially constructed knowledge system)
Goffman – actors learn and read “scripts”
Berger and Luckmann – actors improvise and create own scripts

15. The Social Construction of Reality (cont.)
Dialectical process:
Externalization (individuals create social reality) i.e. creating a new friendship
Objectivation (perception of an ordered, prearranged reality) i.e. friendship becomes a social reality to actors and others
Internalization (constructed reality is internalized (institutionalized) and constrains individuals) i.e. the “friendship” places “demands” on each individual
Alienation occurs when individuals reify their social constructions (both roles and institutions) and become only “acted upon”