Harold Garfinkel (October 29, 1917 – April 21, 2011) was an American sociologist, ethnomethodologist, and a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is known for establishing and developing ethnomethodology as a field of inquiry in sociology.
When was ethnomethodology invented?
In the mid-1950s , Garfinkel invented the term ethnomethodology; however, it only became known in the mid-1960s (Lynch 1993). Between 1940s and 1960s, Garfinkel was drawn to social theory, the basic problems of social order, social action, intersubjectivity, and knowledge (Her- itage 1987).
What is the theory of ethnomethodology?
The Theory. Ethnomethodology is a perspective within sociology which focuses on the way people make sense of their everyday life. ... The theory argues that human society is entirely dependent on these methods of achieving and displaying understanding.
What did Harold Garfinkel believe?
Breaching Experiments. Sociologist Harold Garfinkel (1917–2011) studied people’s customs in order to find out how societal rules and norms not only influenced behavior but also shaped social order. He believed that members of society together create a social order (Weber 2011).
Who is the father of ethnomethodology?
With the death of Harold Garfinkel another of the masters of the last century has left us. Garfinkel was the founding father of ethnomethodology, and nobody today concerned with the meaning of social action can gainsay the deeply innovative, indeed revolutionary, work carried forward by Garfinkel for at least 60 years.
What do breaching experiments teach us?
Breaching experiments reveal the resilience of social reality , since the subjects respond immediately to normalize the breach. They do so by rendering the situation understandable in familiar terms. It is assumed that the way people handle these breaches reveals much about how they handle their everyday lives.
What is the goal of ethnomethodology?
Ethnomethodology is an ethnographic approach to sociological inquiry introduced by the American sociologist Harold Garfinkel. Ethnomethodology’s goal is to document the methods and practices through which society’s members make sense of their worlds .
Which is very important in ethnomethodology?
Ethnomethodology is the study of how social order is produced in and through processes of social interaction . It generally seeks to provide an alternative to mainstream sociological approaches. In its most radical form, it poses a challenge to the social sciences as a whole.
Why is ethnomethodology useful?
Ethnomethodology is concened with taken for granted aspects of the social world . It concentrates on how people make sense of the everyday aspects of their world and how they make their social environment accountable to themselves.
Shake hands when you meet someone . Make direct eye contact with the person you are speaking with. Unless the movie theater is crowded, do not sit right next to someone. Do not stand close enough to a stranger to touch arms or hips.
What are the features of ethnomethodology?
Ethnomethodology seeks to understand the common-sense knowledge and procedures used by members in their everyday encounters to make sense of their cultural group so that they can act appropriately and in accordance with the circumstances that they are in.
What is an example of ethnomethodology?
One of the most famous examples of ethnomethodology is Garfinkel’s study of jurors’ work (Garfinkel, 1967). Garfinkel demonstrated how jurors are engaged in a number of decisions: deciding between what is fact and fiction, what is credible and what is calculated, what is personal opinion and what is publicly agreed.
What is the difference between phenomenology and ethnomethodology?
Phenomenology studies various experience as experienced from the subjective or the first person point of view . ... Ethnomethodology integrates the Parsonian concern for social order into phenomenology and examines the means by which action make ordinary life possible.
What is indexicality in ethnomethodology?
As in linguistics, indexicality in ethnomethodology describes how language and, by extension, other forms of communication are context dependent. This means that all language is dependent upon when it is used and by whom it is used.
What is the difference between ethnography and ethnomethodology?
Ethnography is an observational approach that examines work as it is practised in a naturalistic setting and ethnomethodology is an approach to analysis that gives precedence to the actors their ways of structuring work rather than attempting to analyse this using some theoretical framework.
What is breaching behavior?
Cetacean surfacing behaviour or breaching is a group of behaviours demonstrated by the Cetacea infraorder when they come to the water’s surface to breathe . ... In addition to respiration, cetaceans have developed and used surface behaviours for many other functions such as display, feeding and communication.
