Ethnomethodology and the new Methodenstreit

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2301992
AutoresStephen Mennell (0000-0003-0207-5172, University of Exeter, autor correspondente)
Ano1975
Volume18
Fascículo4
Páginas287-302
Data de publicação1975-10-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoActa Sociologica (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0001-6993 • E-ISSN: 1502-3869
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/000169937501800402
OpenAlexW1986117222
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas5
Referências citadas43

Ethnomethodology should not be mistaken for just one more variety of microsociology. It is much more: it represents a comprehensive challenge to some of sociology's most general assumptions. In the past, the superficial similarity of the ethnomethodologists' interest in small scale interaction has led to comparisons with the work of Goffman and the symbolic interactionists (Gouldner 1971, Denzin 1971, Gidlow 1972), but ethnomethodologists have vehemently rejected such parallels (Douglas 1971:21, Zimmerman and Wieder, 1971). The emergence of ethnomethodology, as both Bauman (1973b:31) and Goldthorpe (1973) recognize, represents a renewal of the Methodenstreit which flared in German sociology around the turn of the century. The ethnomethodologists reject deductive explanation of the covering law kind in social science, emphasize the necessity of grasping the meanings which social interaction has for those participating in it, and are preoccupied with the uniqueness of every social situation.' Though recast in subtle forms, the old arguments for a rigid distinction between the natural and social sciences are easily recognizable. The philosophical roots of ethnomethodology are two-fold. Ethnomethodologists themselves most prominently claim intellectual ancestry from the social phenomenology of Alfred Schutz.2 Yet Schutz has other sociological followers most notably Berger and Luckmann (1967) whose work represents a much less drastic break with the interests of conventional sociology, and from whom ethnomethodologists are at pains to emphasize their differences. What is really more distinctive of ethnomethodology is its debt to Wittgensteinian ordinary language philosophy. The nature of these twin debts will be examined below. Of ethnomethodology as a school of thought within sociology, Harold Garfinkel is usually acknowledged to be the founder. Although ethnomethodology did not attract very wide attention among sociologists generally until a spate of publications by Garfinkel and his fol

Ethnomethodology · Social science · Sociology · Cognitive and psychological constructs research · Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education