HAROLD GARFINKEL:

ETHNOMETHODOLOG
Y

Presented by:
Emma Kehrli and Grant Robinson

Harold Garfinkel

Born in Newark, New Jersey in 1917; died last year

Studied economics at the University of Newark
Sociology at the University of North Carolina
After WWII, attended Harvard to study with Parsons
Taught at Princeton and Ohio State University
Joined a project researching juries in Wichita, KS
Coined the term ethnomethodology to describe
what fascinated him about the jury deliberations
and social life in general

Harold Garfinkel

Professor at UCLA
1995 Cooley Mead Award for lifetime
contributions to the intellectual and
scientific advancement of sociology and
social psychology
Well respected, but known for being a hard
grader and giving out perplexing
assignments
Often created his own vocabulary found
the given language too constraining

Influences

EM is influenced by phenomenology,
linguistics, anthropology, symbolic
interactionism, etc
Influenced by Parsons, Alfred Schutz, Aron
Gurwitsch, and Edmond Husserl
Gave high recognition to Parsons, but did not
agree on many things
Parsons stressed abstract categories and
generalizations
Garfinkel interested in detailed descriptions

Influences
Parsons all social sciences deal with
systems of social action with unit acts:
1) An actor: The agent of the act
2) An end: A future state of affairs which the
actor seeks to bring about by the act
3) Action: A current situation within which
the actor acts and which he or she seeks to
transform by his or her behavior
4) Means: A mode of orientation
According to Parsons, successful social action
begins with the internalization of norms and
continues when actors engage in behavior
with complementary role expectations

Influences

Parsons objective, scientific study of

human behavior to gain understanding;
mundane social actions are irrelevant;
disregard for the common sense world

Garfinkel denied that the social

scientific formulation of objectively
rational courses of action could be
feasible or useful in the study of human
action

Influences Phenomenology

Parsons introduced Garfinkel to the theories of

Alfred Schutz and Edmond Husserl.
Schutzs phenomenological ideas involving the
common sense world, methodology, and
concepts were crucial in the development of EM
Schutz everyone carries with them a stock of
knowledge at hand that are common sense and
of social origin when interacting with others
Phenomenology turning meaningless sense
experience into stocks of knowledge which are
shared with an intersubjective understanding
between interacting individuals

What is it?

Ethno = people; Method = method; ology =

study
The study of ordinary members of society in
the everyday situations in which they find
themselves and the ways in which they use
commonsense knowledge, procedures, and
considerations to gain an understanding of,
navigate in, and act on those situations
Ethnomethodologys interest is in how
ordinary people make sense of their social
world.

Accounts

The study of ordinary society reveals how

individuals work hard to maintain
consistency, order, and meaning in their
lives.
Garfinkel sought to understand the methods
people use to make sense of their world
emphasized language (verbal description)
as the tool in which this is done
In this way, people use their accounts to
construct a sense of reality
The accounts of people reflect how social
order is possible

Accounts

Accounts ways in which actors explain specific

situations and placed emphasis on indexicality
that is, members accounts are tied to particular
contexts and situations
Accounts are social creations and constructs built
from past interactions
Ethnomethodologists devote a lot of attention to
analyzing peoples accounts, as well as to the
ways in which accounts are offered and accepted
(or rejected) by others
Garfinkel believed that the goal of the sociologist
is to reveal the unknown background features of
everyday activities and to treat as problematic
what is taken for granted in order to understand

The Commonsense
World

Defining an event as an occurrence in the

commonsense world includes:
Viewing events as objective facts
Viewing the meaning of events as products of
a socially standardized processes of naming,
reification, and idealization of a persons
stream of experience (products of language)
Applying past determinants of events to
similar present and future events
Viewing alterations of descriptions of events
as remaining in control of the participating
actors

The Commonsense
World

Sociologists distinguish the product from the

process meanings of a common
understanding
PRODUCT a common understanding consisting
of shared agreement on substantive matters
PROCESS various methods whereby something
that a person says or does is recognized to
accord with a rule
Scientific sociology is a fact, and not merely
based on common sense. It can be a science if
it follows certain policies of scientific
procedures.

Policies of Scientific EM
Study
1) If researchers use a search policy that any
occasion whatsoever has an opportunity to
be chosen, objectivity is more likely
2) Sociology must go beyond empirical data
collection and examine the mundane and
taken-for-granted phenomena
3) All aspects of behavior are to be examined
not relying on a standard approach or
preconceived rule of research procedure

Policies of Scientific EM
Study
4) Every social setting is to be viewed as
self-organizing as either representations
of or evidence of a social order
5) The rational properties of indexical
expressions and indexical actions is an
ongoing achievement of the organized
activities of everyday life

Applying
Ethnomethodology

Ethnomethodologists are interested in

disturbing the normal situations of interaction
to uncover taken-for-granted rules
Takes place in casual, non-institutionalized
settings such as the home
Usually include open-ended or in-depth
interviews, participant observation,
videotaping, documentary, and
ethnomethodological experiments, often
called breaching experiments

Breaching
Experiments

Breaching experiments involve violating the

everyday rules as a technique for discovering
social order through its disruption introduced
by Garfinkel in the 1960s
Social reality is violated to shed light on the
methods by which people construct social reality
People seek balance and normality in their social
world
The researcher enters a social setting, violates or
breaches the rules that govern it, and studies
how the interactants deal with the breach

Breaching
Experiments

Example breaching the rules of tic-tac-toe

Example students acting like boarders in
their homes
Reported accounts of astonishment,
bewilderment, shock, anxiety,
embarrassment, anger, etc;family members
demanded to know why the students were
acting in that way
Attempt to put meaning to the breaching
behavior reflects their attempt to readjust
the social situation to normality

Breaching
Experiments

By showing how people can give meaning to

a meaningless situation, Garfinkel provided
insight into the creation and maintenance of
reality in everyday life
Even confusing interactions make sense to
us in further examination
Experiences provide the meaning of
language and facilitate communication
He does not believe that language holds a
shared, or a consistent, meaning for
everyone.
Language is not the basis of communication
previous and present interactions are the
cornerstone of communication

Conversation
Analysis

Examines how conversation is organized

A large part of communication is not what is
said, but what is not said
Nonverbal communication is of extreme
importance
When is it appropriate to laugh? Boo? Applaud?
Everyone uses anticipatory knowledge gained
from previous interactions during verbal
discourse
Honest communication cannot exist until the
undertones of discourse are fully exposed

Phenomena of
Order

Garfinkel stressed the importance of

ethnomethodologists conducting more studies on
social order.

Durkheim said that the objective reality of social

facts is sociologys fundamental principle.

Garfinkel argued that social order is an on going

process subject to constant change and even
misinterpretation by the members of the society.

Garfinkel wanted ethnomethological researchers to

focus on the production and accountability of order,
and especially on the methods that individuals utilize
to maintain order and normality.

Intersexuality

Garfinkel shows how people in societies maintain

order and normality with intersexuality and the
case of Agnes.

Garfinkel says that every society exerts close

controls over the transfers of persons from one
status to another. Where transfers of sexual
statuses are concerned, these controls are
particularly restrictive and rigorously enforced.

In most cases sexual statuses are black and white

you fit into one of two classes either male or female
and peoples lives are made easier by this reality.

Intersexuality
continued

But sexual statuses are not always so black and white,

1 in 2,000 births is characterized by a distinguishable
degree of intersexuality that is they are hard to classify
as male or female because they have both male and
female characteristics. Such is the case of Agnes who
was born a male but passes in society as a female.

Agnes had to develop passing devices and techniques

in order to be accepted as a woman in society and
Garfinkel was very interested in these passing
techniques. What Garfinkel was trying to show in
studying Agness passing techniques was that we are
not simply born men and women - we also learn and
use practices that allow us to pass as men or women.

The Degradation
Ceremony

Degradation ceremonies are public attempts to inflict

identity alteration

Identity Degradation involves destroying the offenders

( person being degraded) identity and transforming it into a
lower social type.

Garfinkel Published a article about this called Conditions of

Successful Degradation Ceremonies
Garfinkel described a Degradation ceremony as an
attempt to transform an individuals total identity into an
identity lower in the groups scheme of social types.
Garfinkel said that individuals who are being degraded
must be placed outside the everyday moral order and
defined as a threat to that order.

Some degradation of status inflicted on the accused by one

social group may actually lead to rewards by another group.

Degradation Ceremony
Continued

Garfinkel identified eight conditions for a successful

denunciation of ones social type.
1. Both event and perpetrator must be removed from the
realm of their everyday character and be made to stand as
out of the ordinary.
2. Both event and perpetrator must be placed within a scheme
that shows that no preferences where given. The the
condemner has a personal agenda against the accused,
objectivity is lost. Witnesses must not be swayed by such
biases.
3. The denouncer must so identify himself to all the witnesses
that during denunciation they regard him not as a privately
but as a publically known person in an attempt to show
objectivity. Without bias. The denouncer must be presenting
facts to the witnesses.
4. The denouncer must make the dignity of the suprapersonal
values of the tribe salient and accessible to view, and the
denunciation must be delivered in their name. This
reinforces the values of the group in the name of greater
society.

Degradation Ceremony
Continued
5. The denouncer must arrange to be invested
with the right to speak in the name of these
ultimate values (i.e. the denouncer represents
society.)
6. The denouncer must be recognized as this
representation of society and its moral code.
7. The denouncer must maintain proper social
distance from the accused and the witnesses.
8. Finally, the denounced person must be
ritually seperated from a place in the
legitimate order. She or he must be placed
outside and made to feel strange.

Relevancy

The greatest contribution of ethnomethodology is

conversation analysis - the description and
explanation of everyday talk. It reveals the many
rules participants use and rely on while interacting
with others.

Garfinkels Agnes study illustrates how gender

identities are socially produced and not biological.

All societies use degradation techniques to control

behavior. It is also true that nearly all social groups
and organizations have such disciplinary reviews in
place to punish those stray from the excepted
norm.

Criticisms

Many contemporary sociologists believe

that the scope of analysis used in
ethnomethodology is too narrow.

Aaron V. Cicourel questioned Garfinkels

assertion that interaction and verbal
accounts are the same process, he believes
that humans see, sense, and feel much
that they cannot communicate in words.