The Ethnomethodology Program

"This paper aims at contributing to a reflection about the legacy of Harold Garfinkel and the relations between ethnomethodology (EM) and conversation analysis (CA), by focusing on a common concern for both programs: the study of action as methodic (the term is used here in line with the sense of ethnomethodology), i.e. ordered, accountable, recognizable, and reproducible. Both approaches seek to describe the members' (term favored in ethnomethodology) or coparticipants' (term favored in conversation analysis) production, recognition, and reproduction of actions understood as locally situated social achievements. Within this framework, the chapter discusses two key dimensions of methodically produced actions - their situatedness and orderliness - and attempts to show the importance of considering both of them together. This discussion is developed in relation to a more recent trend in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, based on the use of video materials documenting naturally occurring social interactions, permitting the fine-grained scrutinity of the multimodal details of action. Multimodal analysis generates new insights into both the situated and the ordered dimensions of the organization of social action"--

Since the 1967 publication of Studies in Ethnomethodology, Harold Garfinkel has indelibly influenced the social sciences and humanities worldwide. This new book, the long-awaited sequel to Studies, comprises Garfinkel's work over three decades to further elaborate the study of ethnomethodology. 'Working out Durkheim's Aphorism, ' the title used for this new book, emphasizes Garfinkel's insistence that his position focuses on fundamental sociological issues--and that interpretations of his position as indifferent to sociology have been misunderstandings. Durkheim's aphorism states that the concreteness of social facts is sociology's most fundamental phenomenon. Garfinkel argues that sociologists have, for a century or more, ignored this aphorism and treated social facts as theoretical, or conceptual, constructions. Garfinkel in this new book shows how and why sociology must restore Durkheim's aphorism, through an insistence on the concreteness of social facts that are produced by complex social practices enacted by participants in the social order. Garfinkel's new book, like Studies, will likely stand as another landmark in sociological theory, yet it is clearer and more concrete in revealing human social practices.

Since the 1967 publication of Studies in Ethnomethodology, Harold Garfinkel has indelibly influenced the social sciences and humanities worldwide. This new book, the long-awaited sequel to Studies, comprises Garfinkel's work over three decades to further elaborate the study of ethnomethodology. 'Working out Durkheim's Aphorism,' the title used for this new book, emphasizes Garfinkel's insistence that his position focuses on fundamental sociological issues—and that interpretations of his position as indifferent to sociology have been misunderstandings. Durkheim's aphorism states that the concreteness of social facts is sociology's most fundamental phenomenon. Garfinkel argues that sociologists have, for a century or more, ignored this aphorism and treated social facts as theoretical, or conceptual, constructions. Garfinkel in this new book shows how and why sociology must restore Durkheim's aphorism, through an insistence on the concreteness of social facts that are produced by complex social practices enacted by participants in the social order. Garfinkel's new book, like Studies, will likely stand as another landmark in sociological theory, yet it is clearer and more concrete in revealing human social practices.

Harold Garfinkel was one of the most important American sociologists. A student of Talcott Parsons who also worked with Alfred Schutz and Kenneth Burke, he sought to craft an empirical and theoretical approach that would combine Parsons’ focus on social systems of interaction with the focus on practices in their course of Burke and Schutz. This previously unpublished manuscript titled Parsons Primer in which Garfinkel explains Parsons’ position on systems of social interaction and how it relates to Garfinkel’s own position is an important missing piece of Garfinkel’s argument. The original manuscript from 1962/63 has been edited and a new introduction written for it by Anne W. Rawls and Jason Turowetz.

This book is a concise intellectual biography of Harold Garfinkel, a key figure in 20th-century social science, and a basic description of ethnomethodology, a research tradition that he created.

Originally published in 1986, this work examines how key figures such as Garfinkel, Sacks and Cicourel have revolutionised thinking about how sociology's presuppositions about 'being social' are grounded. Yet until the appearance of this book there were no clear and authoritative introductions to the main thinkers in the field or their work. In assessing the critical reception of Ethnomethodology, Sharrock and Anderson argue persuasively that much is wide of the mark - as they say, the real argument has yet to begin.

The Anthem Companion to Harold Garfinkel brings together leading scholars and upcoming researchers in contemporary ethnomethodology to bring out the experimental character of Garfinkel’s legacy in the social sciences and beyond. Therefore, the Companion takes its cue from Garfinkel’s noted “breaching experiments,” enabling the reflexive investigation of “trust conditions” in situ, and asks how this research interest has been productively pursued and distinctively rearticulated, both within and beyond Garfinkel’s oeuvre. Whilst Garfinkel’s experimental legacy is often acknowledged, no systematic introduction to its distinctive outlook, tension-riddled diversification, and heuristic interest(s) is available to date. The Anthem Companion to Harold Garfinkel both fills and reflects upon that “gap in the literature,” thereby articulating ethnomethodology’s experimental outlook, if not recasting its current research directions.