Ethnomethodology and Phenomenology Outline What is ethnomethodology Harold

Ethnomethodology and Phenomenology

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

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

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)

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

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

Other Ideas • Breaching experiments – 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

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

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

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?

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

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

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)

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

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”