Ethnomethodology (EM) emerged from the work of Harold Garfinkel in the 1960s as an approach interested in how social order is actively constructed by members in everyday life using commonsense knowledge and methods. Unlike functionalists who see social order as imposed from above, EM views it as achieved from below as members produce meanings and order through language and descriptions that make situations seem clear and organized. EM uses experiments like breaching interactions to disrupt taken-for-granted assumptions and demonstrate that order is accomplished, not inevitable. However, EM has been criticized for potentially trivial findings and for ignoring wider social structures that influence meaning construction.

1. Ethnomethodology

2. (EM for short) emerged in America in the
60’s, mainly from the work of Harold
Garfinkel (1967). Garfinkel’s ideas
stem from phenomenology. Like Schutz,
Garfinkel rejects the very idea of society
as a real objective structure ‘out there’.
Like functionalists such as Parsons,
Garfinkel is interested in how social order
is achieved. However, his answers differ
from Parsons.

3. Parsons argues that social
order is made possible by a
shared value system into
which we are socialised.
Parsons’ explanation in keeping with his
top-down, structural approach: shared
norms ensure that we perform our roles in
an orderly, predictable way that meets the
expectations of others.

4. Garfinkel takes the opposite
view- social order is created from
the bottom-up.
Order and meaning are not
achieved because people are
‘puppets’, as functionalists
believe.
Social order is an accomplishment- something that
members of society actively construct in everyday life
using their commonsense knowledge. EM attempts to
discover how we do this by studying the methods or
rules that we use to produce meanings.

5. This is also where EM differs from
INTERACTIONISM.
While interactionists are interested
in the effects of meanings (e.g. the
effects of labelling), EM is
interested in the methods or rules
that we use to produce meanings
in the first place.

6. Indexicality and reflexivity
Like Schutz, EM sees meanings as always
potentially unclear- a characteristic Garfinkel
calls indexicality. Nothing has a fixed meaning:
everything depends on the context, e.g. the
different meanings of raising an arm.
Now, indexicality is clearly a threat to social
order because if meanings are inherently
unclear, communication and cooperation
become difficult and social relationships begin
to break down.

7. However, there is a paradox. Indexicality
suggests that we cannot take any
meaning for granted as fixed or clear.
However, we do this in everyday life. For
Garfinkel, what enables us to behave as if
meanings are clear and obvious is
reflexivity. This refers to the fact that we
use commonsense knowledge in everyday
interactions to construct a sense of
meaning and order to stop indexicality
from occuring. This is similar to Schutz’s
idea of typifications.

8. Language- vital importance in achieving
reflexivity.
For EM, when we describe something, we
are creating it. Our description gives it
reality, removing uncertainty and making
that thing seem solid.
But although language gives us a sense of
reality existing ‘out there’, in fact all we
have done is construct a shared set of
meanings.

9. Experiments in disrupting social order
Garfinkel and his students wished to demonstrate the nature of
social order by a series of so-called ‘breaching experiments’.
Example
The acted as lodgers in their own families- acting polite, avoiding personal
interaction etc.
The aim was to disrupt people’s sense of order and challenge their reflexivity
by undermining their assumptions about a situation, e.g. parents of students
who behaved as lodgers became bewildered, embarrased, anxious or angry.
They accused the students of being nasty or assumed they were ill.
Garfinkel concludes that by challenging people’s taken-for-granted
assumptions, the orderliness of interaction is not inevitable but it is actually
an accomplishment of those who take part.
In this view, social order is ‘participant produced’ by members themselves.

10. Suicide and reflexivity
In the case of suicide, coroners make sense of death by selecting particular
features from the infinite number of possible ‘facts’ about the deceased- such
as their mental health, employment status etc. They then treat these factors
as a real pattern, e.g. they may use this information to conclude that ‘typical
suicides’ are mentally ill, unemployed, etc.
For Garfinkel, humans constantly strive to impose order by seeking patterns,
even though these patterns are just social constructs. E.g. the seeming
pattern that suicides are generally mentally ill cases becomes part of a
coroner’s taken-for-granted knowledge about what suicides are like.
Thus, when faced with future situations of mentally ill suicides, the coroner
interprets them as examples of the assumed pattern; ‘they were mentally ill,
so they probably committed suicide.’
Cases fitting the pattern will be classified as suicides and will seem to
conclude the pattern that the coroner originally constructed. The assumed
pattern becomes self-reinforcing, but it tells us nothing about external reality.

11. Garfinkel is critical of conventional sociology. He accuses
it of merely using the same methods as ordinary society
members to create order and meaning. If so, then
conventional sociology is little more than commonsense,
rather than true objective knowledge. E.g. positivists such
as Durkeim take it for granted that official suicide statistics
are social facts that tell us the real rate of suicide. In fact,
they are merely the decisions made my coroners, using
their commonsense knowledge.
Therefore, the supposed ‘laws’ positivists produce about
suicide are no more than an elaborate version of the
coroner’s commonsense understandings. Sociologists’
claims to know about suicide are thus no truer than those
of other members of society, such as coroners.

12. Evaluation of EM
EM draws attention to how we actively construct order and meaning, rather
than seeing us as simply puppets of the social system. However, it can be
criticised considerably.
• CRAIB argues that its findings are trivial (of little importance). EMs seem
to spend a lot of time ‘uncovering’ taken-for-granted rules that turn out to
be no surprise to anyone.
• EM argues that everyone creates order and meaning by identifying
patterns and producing explanations that are essentially fictions. If so, this
must apply to EM itself, so there’s no reason to accept its views.
• EM denies the existence of wider society, seeing it a merely shared
fiction. Yet, by analysing how members apply general rules or norms to
specific contexts, it assumes that the structure of norms really exists
beyond these contexts. From a functionalist perspective, such norms are
social facts, not fictions.
• EM ignores how wider society structures of power and inequality affect
the meanings that individuals construct. E.g. Marxists argue that
‘commonsense knowledge’ is really just ruling-class ideology, and the
order it creates serves to maintain capitalism.