Wittgenstein, Durkheim, Garfinkel and Winch

Constitutive Orders of Sensemaking

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8975855
AutoresAnne Warfield Rawls (0000-0002-4044-4314, Bentley University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2011
Volumen41
Número4
Páginas396-418
Fecha de publicación2011-06-07
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal for the Theory of Social Behaviour (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0021-8308 • E-ISSN: 1468-5914
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1468-5914.2011.00471.x
OpenAlexW1500548082
IdiomaDE
Citas recibidas12
Referencias citadas24

This paper proposes an approach to the question of meaning and understanding based on the idea of constitutive rules and their relationship to the social objects they are used to create. This approach implicates mutual attention as an essential aspect of the social processes constitutive of social objects and mutual intelligibility. Social objects as such include the meaning, perception and coherence of things, identities and talk, etc. There is a relatively unexplored but important line of argument in sociology that has, from the beginning, explained the coherence and mutual intelligibility of social objects and associations in terms of constitutive practices and social facts. This line of argument begins with Emile Durkheim (1893) and carries through the work of Harold Garfinkel to current studies of work and interaction, human computer interaction and talk. The argument is that we use constitutive practices (Constitutive rules or constitutive background expectancies) to create social objects and make coherent and shared meanings. To act is in this sense for Garfinkel ([1948]2006) to “mean”. Explaining the consistency of social objects and orders in terms of constitutive orders, rules, or practices is an approach that meets the challenges posed to social science and philosophy by Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953), Peter Winch (1958) and Paul Grice (1989)

Argument (complex analysis · Epistemology · Meaning (existential · Perception · Sociology · Digital Communication and Language · Information Systems Theories and Implementation · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology