ETHNOMETHODOLOGY

ETHNOMETHODOLOGY The term ethnomethodology is Greek terms, literally means the methods people use on a daily basis. The central concern of ethnomethodology “is to demonstrate how society is the ongoing practical accomplishment of rational individuals”. Ethnomethodology, can be traced back to Harold Garfinkel, otherwise we can say that ethnomethodology was “invented” by Harold Garfinkel in the 1940s. Since that time it has expanded enormously and moved in a number of different directions. This has led Don Zimmerman to conclude that there is no longer one ethnomethodology, but several. The heart of ethnomethodology lies in these specific studies and not in general theoretical or programmatic statements. To ethnomethodologists “research and theorizing are to be done in conjunction, such that the theorizing is tied to the materials generated by the research. Ethnomethodology is the study of “the body of commonsense knowledge and the range of procedures and considerations by means of which the ordinary members of society make sense of, find their way about in, and act on the circumstances in which they find themselves”. Until recently ethnomethodology had been an ‘invisible college’ wi8th quite distinct social features. Ethnomethodology is sometimes defined in terms of three specific traits related to its organisation as a scientific school, namely: [1] Emphasis on the central axiom, to the effect that all social science is derived from, or is secondary with respect to, everyday social knowledge; [2] A strong rejection reaction on the part if the parental discipline. [3] Intensive exchange of texts, almost exclusively within the group. Any critic who refused to yield to their arguments and stuck to his own opinions was likely to heat their familiar rebukes: ‘if you haven’t been trained to understand these ideas, you cannot expect to understand them’. The recognized founders and intellectual leaders of this trend in sociology are H. Garfinkel, A.V. Cicourel, and H. Sacks; the first two mentioned are also considered its organizational leaders. It is remarkable that the work by Garfinkel (1967). “Some Rules Of Correct Decision Making That Jurors Respect”(unpublished), admittedly one of the most successful pieces of writing in the field, had been for a long time circulated in mimeographed form only, to be finally published as chapter 4 of his “Studies in Ethnomethodology.” The emergence of this term, ‘ethnomethodology’ is interesting too. Garfinkel explains that he coined it as he was trying to find an adequate label for his studies in sociology of law. Garfinkel wanted ethnomethodology to include everyday, grass-root knowledge (ethno) and to use the methods which are different from the formal and petrified ones of the established social sciences (methodology). The term alluded to the fact that the basic concerns of ethnomethodology have been studies in practical activity, analyses of common-sense knowledge and considerations of the specific was of thought which emerge from practical organizational involvement. Ethnomethodology is one of those American trends, which are essentially rooted in European thought. Many of its ideas have been drawn from the works of the German sociologist and philosopher, Alfred Schutz. Garfinkel developed ethnomethodology only after his disappointment with the existing state of sociological theory. At one moment, Garfinkel and Sudnow played with an idea of substituting ‘neopraxiology’ for ‘ethnomethodology’. Praxiology deals mainly with scientific rules of all efficient action (without neglecting all sorts of everyday wisdom), ethnomethodology is occupied, although not exclusively, with similar problems, with more emphasis on the commonsensical sources of this kind of knowledge. Schultz’s basic idea is that there is an insurmountable barrier between the world of scientific knowledge and everyday experience. According to him, and expert in social science can practically never enter ‘here and now’ into the world of the common man. One reason is that the rational models of action and the actual models realized by people in their practical endeavours are incompatible. According to Schultz, a sociologist has no privileged access to what a common man is and what he does. A social expert can only speculate in his abstract analyses of his own conceptual constructs. (Schultz, 1963) The reasoning concept of the common man and his everyday activity has a significant consequence for the methodology of social research. Denzin had distinguished eight assumptions such as: 1. Human interactions are time-sequenced, and human events cannot be properly understood without taking the past and current occurrences into account. 2. Individuals’ talks on various matters in various situations, but many elements of those talks have their covert meanings, which are taken for granted and never mentioned expressly. 3. Ordinary events have obvious meanings and relevances, hardly set in doubt in individual contacts. 4. A situation with a defined meaning sustains such meaning among contacts or their sequences among the individuals involved. 5. Any object present in the situation is what it is presented as being. 6. A meaning given to an object in a human contact tends to be sustained, unless the situation gets changed. 7. Individuals interrelated by their activities give uniform terms, symbols and labels to definite objects. 8. Since individuals tend to define situations with reference to their own biographies and experiences, several discrepancies emerging in the course of their contacts and brought about by their different respective experience remain unresolved (‘suspended’). It is indicated that methodological innovations of ethnomethodologists do not aim at improving or correcting the recognized techniques and methods of social research, particularly those applying to questionnaires and interviews. In general ethnomethodologists claim that their analyses aim at the elaboration of independent principles and rules of social research. They also claim that the findings, which they produce, are essentially different from those, which are generated by traditional sociology. For the members in society a ‘real world’ is indubitably just there, without reference to its accomplished character. Ethnomethodologists emphasize that the collecting and processing of official data is only apparently based on objective and formally standardized techniques. Those data, Ethnomethodologists maintain, are also collected on more or less subjective criteria. # Apparently, Garfinkel’s “experiments” have never been widely employed as research methods. They were used rather as ‘illustrative examples’ designed to draw attention to various key points about the basis or orderliness in everyday life. In general, ethnomethodological empirical studies do not seem to bring much new knowledge. They deal, for example, with such topics as the ways in which conversations are ended, the counting of deaths in hospitals, the establishing of principles, the collecting of data not usually revealed in organisations of various types, etc. one study concerned the norms adhered to by drug-addicts in asylums. However, not all ethnomethodological studies are language oriented. For example, one of them is about how people normally move and walk. In the first place, that people have certain navigational abilities. Even when they are engaged in conversation or contemplation, they sensitively and deftly avoid clashes with others. In the second place, people walk differently alone and in company. When two people are walking together, there is a specific link between them reflected in their movements, even if they do not talk to each other. Ethnomethodology does not present any set of statements suggesting andy specific hypotheses. Still, ethnomethodology can be described as a new research trend, pointing attention, on the one hand, to some new problems and, on the other hand, being a reaction against too dogmatically understood or applied (and often too self oriented) methods and techniques of inquiry. Generally speaking, one may regard ethnomethodology as a quite useful additional subsidiary approach to analyse psychosocial behaviour in small groups, in closed institutions and in closed societies. The particular usefulness of ethnomethodology may be visible also in situations in which social or interpersonal pathology is under study. As in the case of the ‘Frankfurt School’, ethnomethodology, which emerged rather as an intellectual adventure, could, in consequence, transform itself into a pattern of vicarious scientific perspective with a potential to double-check possible traps of classical sociological methods, or could turn itself in to a specific trap: the self-adoration characteristic of scientific pretentiousness and of false self-awareness. Reserved by Rakhesh.C.K. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior permission of Rakhesh.C.K.