Ethnomethodology's Program Author(s): Harold Garfinkel Source: Social Psychology Quarterly, Vol. 59, No. 1 (Mar., 1996), pp. 5-21 Published by: American Sociological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2787116 Accessed: 23-02-2017 02:45 UTC
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This content downloaded from 143.107.252.105 on Thu, 23 Feb 2017 02:45:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Social Psychology Quarterly 1996, Vol. 59 No. 1, 5-21
Ethnomethodology's Program*
HAROLD GARFINKEL University of California, Los Angeles
ETHNOMETHODOLOGY'S PROGRAM unanimously for the armies of social analysts, in endless analytic arts and sciences of 1.1 What Is Ethnomethodology? practical action, formal analytic procedures
Ethnomethodology gets reintroduced to me assure good work and are accorded the status in a recurrent episode at the annual meetings of good work. FA's achievements are well of the American Sociological Association. known and pointless to dispute. FA technol- I'm waiting for the elevator. The doors open. ogy exercises universal jurisdiction in target- "Oh, Hi Hal!" "Hi." I walk in. THE ing phenomena for analysis. Phenomena of QUESTION is asked: "Hey, Hal, what IS order are made instructably observable in ethnomethodology?" The elevator doors formal analytic details of concertedly recur- close. We're on our way to the ninth floor. rent achievements of practical action. These I'm only able to say, "Ethnomethodology is range from the conduct of war to the transient working out some very preposterous prob- pause before an invitation is refused. Phe- lems." The elevator doors open. nomena made instructably observable in On the way to my room it occurs to me that formal analytic details of concertedly recur- I should have said that ethnomethodology is rent achievements of practical actions are so respecifying Durkheim's lived immortal, or- provided for by FA that a phenomenon, dinary society, evidently, doing so by work- whatever the phenomenon and whatever its ing out a schedule of preposterous problems. scale, is made instructably observable as the The problems have their sources in the work of a population that staffs its produc- worldwide social science movement. They tion. Populations are usually treated as are motivated by that movement's ubiquitous straightforward counts of bodies. The pro- commitments to the policies and methods of posal here is instead that it is the workings of formal analysis and general representational the phenomenon that exhibit among its other theorizing and by its unquestionable achieve- details the population that staffs it. 1 This ments. population is exhibited in surveyable particu- Formal Analytic (FA) technology and its lars of body counts and dimensionalized results are understood worldwide. Almost demographics. These are elucidated with variable analysis, quantified arguments, and causal structures. Such analytic descriptions * Acknowledgements: There are many people whose are available in all administered societies, contribution to this work need to be acknowledged, not contemporary and historical. least those many students and colleagues whose eth- nomethodological studies have provided the catalogue of That these achievements are unquestion- investigations, discussed here, without which the original able is assured by being subordinated to FA's promise of "Studies" would have remained unfulfilled. premier achievement, the corpus status of its Ethnomethodology is after all, and necessarily, an bibliographies. By corpus I mean (1) its unrelievedly empirical enterprise. I thank also Doug Maynard and Lucy Suchman for their steadfast friendship investigations, always accompanied by tex- and for their generosity with their time and their hard tual accounts that describe, specify, make won knowledge in shoptalk. I am deeply in debt to Anne instructably observable, satisfy, and are Rawls. Years ago she was briefly my student. Now she is exhibits of adequate grounds of further my teacher, esteemed colleague, and rare friend. She sustained our discussions through the writing and took the time to carefully edit this manuscript for publication. ' It is the workings of the traffic that make its staff Because of many people who have taken up an interest available as "typical" drivers, "bad" drivers, "close in" in ethnomethodology it is impossible that one description drivers and anything else the demographers need to have will encompass the vast array of studies going by that to administer a causal account of the driving. Endoge- name. However, I hope that there is room in this nous populations are a topic of recurring ethnomethod- discussion for those studies which take the importance of ological interest. You don't start with bodies. The witnessable recurrent phenomenal fields of detail seri- Conversational Analysis of talk provides another exam- ously and as a primary issue, in whatever other respects ple. It starts with conversation which exhibits its speakers we may differ. as typical recurring, doing it again in the same way, staff.
5
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inference and action. (2) These are adequa- specify practitioners' work and make it cies of an investigation's origins and problem instructably observable. specification, and of the problem's essential "What More" has centrally (and perhaps history, descriptive coverage, facticity, rele- entirely) to do with procedures. I have given vance, and, as contingencies in an actual procedural EM's emphasis on work. By occasion of inquiry may have required, any of procedural, EM does not mean process. the rest. (3) The adequacies are instructably Procedural means labor. That emphasis is reproducible. (4) The foregoing are satisfied exemplified in the probative descriptions by in actual worksite achievements. (5) Investi- David Sudnow. At the worksite-playing gations at all levels of findings in these hearably improvised jazz at the piano key- respects can be taken on these grounds board; typing watchably thoughtful words at seriously to define a current situation of the typewriter keyboard; enactedly solving the inquiry. problem, at the computer console, of getting a Ethnomethodology (EM) is proposing and high score in "Breakout," the video game- working out "What More" there is to the progressively and developingly coming upon unquestionable corpus status of formal ana- the phenomenon via the work in and as of the lytic investigations than formal analysis does, unmediated details of producing it (Sudnow, did, ever did, or can provide. EM does not 1978, 1979, 1983, 1996). dispute those achievements. Without disput- The central obsession in ethnomethodolog- ing those achievements as unquestionably ical studies is to provide for what the alternate demonstrable achievements2 EM asks "What procedural descriptions of achieved and More" is there that users of formal analysis achievable phenomena of order-methodolo- gies-could be without sacrificing issues of know and demand the existence of, that FA structure. That means without sacrificing the depends upon the existence of for FA's great achievements-of describable recogniz- worksite-specific achievements in carefully able recurrencies, of generality, and of instructed procedures, that FA uses and comparability of these productions of ordi- recognizes everywhere in and as its lived nary activities -activities that carry with them worksite-specific practices. the recognizable achievements of populations There are practices that FA practitioners that staff their production, along with the just in any actual case know and recognize are interchangeability and surveyability of those unavoidable, without remedy or alternatives. populations. This is not an indifference to The practices are indispensable to practition- structure. This is a concern with structure as ers. Just as in any actual case the practices an achieved phenomenon of order. EM is concerned with "What More," in the
2 If this claim is read as irony, it will be read world of familiar, ordinary activities, does incorrectly. To read it without irony, recall the scene in immortal, ordinary society consist of as the lonesco's Rhinoceros. The last man and his girlfriend, locus and the setting of every topic of order, Daisy, are looking out into the street below filled with every topic of logic, of meaning, of method rhinoceroses. Daisy exclaims, "Oh look, they're danc- respecified and respecifiable as the most ing." The last man: "You call that dancing!" Daisy: "That's the way they dance." ordinary Durkheimian things in the world. Similarly, no disrespect is involved for FA's demand Ethnomethodology's fundamental phenom- that its investigations be worldly work of finding out and enon and its standing technical preoccupation specifying real order, evidently; real order, not cocka- in its studies is to find, collect, specify, and mamie real order. Real order is FA's achievement, without question. EM is not claiming to know better. But make instructably observable the local endog- neither is EM proposing to institute and carry out EM enous production and natural accountability investigations of ordinary society while being in the of immortal familiar society's most ordinary midst of organizational things and therein knowing organizational things in the world, and to nothing. Rather, we'll proceed without having to decide provide for them both and simultaneously as or even to know how to proceed while knowing nothing. Instead, by [beginning], by [carrying on], by [finding our objects and procedurally, as alternate meth- bearings again], by [completing an investigation] we'll odologies. land ourselves in the midst of things. Procedurally we The identity of objects and methodologies know something. We're not agnostic. EM's commit- is key. These methodologies are incarnate in ments are the same as those of FA in worldwide analytic familiar society. Therein they are uniquely studies of practical action and practical reason: In the midst of its endless things we'll study the work as of adequate to the phenomena whose production which immortal ordinary society consists. We'll see. they describe substantively, in material de-
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tails. The competence of their production plenty, the plenilunium. To get a remedy, the staffs consists of the unique adequacy of social sciences have worked out policies and methods. The competence of their production methods of formal analysis. These respecify staffs is, it exists as, it is identical with, the the concrete details of ordinary activities as unique adequacy of methods.3 details of the analyzing devices and of the EM addresses these provisions as empiri- methods that warrant the use of these devices. cally adequate descriptions. It carries them They respecify the sheer circumstantiality of out by eschewing the methods of formal ordinary activities so that order can be analysis. This is done without loss or sacrifice exhibited analytically. It is essentially an of issues of structure, and without bowdleriz- empirical demonstration. The details found in ing or ignoring issues of structure or changing the model reveal the essential recurring the subject. invariant features which are FA's phenomena. Without sacrificing issues of structure or A Catalog of Ethnomethodological Investi- changing the subject? That means without gations4 consists of evidence to the contrary. sacrificing the ubiquitous achievements, in Indeed, there is order in the most ordinary everyday life, of recognizable and account- activities of everyday life in their full able, observable recurrencies of practical concreteness, and that means in their ongo- actions and practical reasoning in achievedly ingly procedurally enacted coherence of coherent, ordered, uniquely adequate details substantive, ordered phenomenal details with- of generality, of comparability, of classifica- out loss of generality.5 It has to do with the tion, of typicality, of uniformity, of standard- unexplicated specifics of details in structures, ization. These are recurrencies in productions in recurrencies, in typicality, not the details of the phenomena of ordinary activities- gotten by administering a generic description. traffic jams, service lines, summoning These details are unmediatedly experienced phones, blackboard notes, jazz piano in a and experienced evidently. cocktail lounge, talking chemistry in lecture Just-in-any-actual-case immortal ordinary format-phenomena that exhibit, along with society is a wonderful beast. Evidently and their other endogenously accountable details, just in any actual case, God knows how it is the endogenously accountable populations put together. The principal formal analytic that staff their production. devices currently in hand, of paying careful What in the world do these achievements attention to the use, the design, and adminis- consist of? Where in the world are they tration of generic representational theoriz- found? How in the world are they found? ing-models, for example, get a job done that What in the world of commonplace, local, with the same technical skills in administering endogenous haecceities of daily life does them lose the very phenomenon that they immortal, ordinary society consist of as the profess. locus and the setting of every topic of order, of logic, of meaning, of method, reason, 4 A Catalog of EM Investigations with Which to rationality, science, truth, respecified and Respecify Topics of Logic, Order, Meaning, Method, respecifiable as the most ordinary concerted Reason, Structure, Science, and the Rest, In, About, and As the Workings of Immortal, Ordinary Society Just in lived organizationally enacted phenomena in Any Actual Case. What Did We Do? What Did We the world? Learn? In A Catalog Statement, briefly annotated themes and topics, in various documents, are arranged in several 1.2 There Is Order in the Plenum collections of ethnomethodological investigations. For- matted as a directed review and understood as steps of an According to the worldwide social science argument, these investigations, in several volumes, make movement and the corpus status of its up the EM Catalog. bibliographies, there is no order in the 5 I use generality as synecdoche for various features of lived phenomena that formal analysis collects and concreteness of things (Garfinkel, 1988). The describes as structures. Structures are extensively dis- research enterprises of the social scientific cussed in Seven Cases With Which to Specify How movement are defeated by the apparently Phenomenal Fields of Ordinary Activities Are Lost With hopelessly circumstantial overwhelming de- Engineering Details of Recording Machinery: Rhythmic tails of everyday activities-the plenum, the Clapping, Summoning Phones, Counting Turns at Talk, Scrubbing the Sink and Other Trivial, Unavoidably Sight-Specific Ordinary Jobs Around the House, Traffic 3 The unique - adequacy requirement of methods is Flow, Service Lines, and Computer Supported Real Time explained briefly in Garfinkel and Wieder, 1992. Occupations.
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Enacted specifically ordinary organiza- analytic enterprises, these being the careful tional phenomena in ordered phenomenal enterprises of description that will permit the details of structures evidently are strange. demonstration of the corpus status of ordinary Immortal, ordinary society is strange. actions; in order to do that, analysts become Strange? In particulars, what's so strange? interpreters of signs. Following through What is strange is already well known and consistently with this procedure, it is then available. argued that interpretation is unavoidable. That Consider that immortal ordinary society designing and interpreting "marks, indica- evidently, just in any actual case, is easily tors, signs, and symbols" is inevitably what done and easily recognized with uniquely sociologists and social scientists must do in adequate competence, vulgar competence, by order to carry out the corpus status of their one and all-and, for all that, by one and all it studies of ordinary activities. is intractably hard to describe procedurally. EM is not in the business of interpreting Procedurally described, just in any actual signs. It is not an interpretive enterprise. case, it is elusive. Further, it is only Enacted local practices are not texts which discoverable. It is not imaginable. It cannot symbolize "meanings" or events. They are in be imagined but is only actually found out, detail identical with themselves, and not and just in any actual case.6 The way it is representative of something else. The wit- done is everything it can consist of and nessably recurrent details of ordinary every- imagined descriptions cannot capture this day practices constitute their own reality. detail. Just in any actual case it is both They are studied in their unmediated details vulgarly done and intractable when it comes and not as signed enterprises. to making it instructable. Absent that, and Is it then that ethnomethodology in its God knows how it is put together. More to the concerns with "What More" is critical of point of strange: In God's silence, formal formal analytic investigations? Is it that analysts, by exercising the privileges of the ethnomethodology is one more in a familiar transcendental analyst and the universal line of academic sociology's in-house critics, observer, do not know; yet still somehow they stirring the waters the better to fish therein? know they need not hesitate to say. There have been authors of ethnomethodolog- More on "strange." How immortal, ordi- ical studies whose reputations were promoted nary society is put together includes the by offering to the members of the worldwide incarnate work by formal analysts of paying social science movement ways of upgrading careful attention to the design and administra- their craft. "Your science is cockeyed. We tion of generic representational theorizing. It need to sit down and diagnose for you just is no news that that work is an enacted detail where you're going wrong." Ethnomethodol- of the immortal society it learns about and ogy has yet to deliver promised repairs to teaches. In the social science movement the formal analytic social scientific enterprises jobs of descriptive analysis get done with without losing its own phenomena. generic theorizing. The skills with which Ethnomethodology is not critical of formal these jobs are done are everywhere accompa- analytic investigations. But neither is it the nied by curious incongruities. These are well case that EM, and that means A Catalog of known, and even freely acknowledged, they EM Investigations, has no concern with a include that with the same procedural skills of remedial expertise and has nothing to promise carrying out these jobs the phenomena they so or deliver. Ethnomethodology is applied carefully describe are lost. ethnomethodology. However, its remedial Further, the procedure of generic represen- transactions are distinctive to EM expertise. tational theorizing puts in place of the enacted That expertise is offered for phenomena witnessable detail of immortal ordinary soci- whose local, endogenous production is trou- ety a collection of signs. The FA procedure bled in ordered phenomenal details of struc- ignores the enacted, unmediated, directly and tures. EM does not offer a remedial expertise immediately witnessable details of immortal that is transcendental to these phenomena. In ordinary society. Then, analysts have only these the generality of EM's remedial exper- one option, in order to carry through their tise is indifferent to (independent of) the use of policies of generic representational theoriz- 6 For a deep explication of that claim see Schegloff, ing and methods of constructive analysis to 1987. specify the generality of remedial expertise.
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Having been found out, EM's findings are observable, a territory of new organizational described with the questions "What did we phenomena. These consist of the paired do? What did we learn? More to the point, achievements: 1) topical literatures of formal what did we learn, but only in and as lived analytic investigations and theorizing, accom- doings, that we can teach? And how can we panied by 2) their ethnomethodological alter- teach it?" EM's findings are tutorial prob- nates. The collection's empirical specifics are lems. They are not different than pedagogies. the work of an international company of They were learned in settings in which authors of books, articles, dissertations, teaching and learning being done in concert master's essays, seminar papers, and occa- with others were locally and endogenously sional notes. witnessable by and "relevant to the parties." In the pairs that compose the collection, In these respects they were essentially un- EM alternates to FA literatures are alternates, avoidable and without remedy. not alternatives. Case by case they are That EM's findings are pedagogies has an specific alternates. Members of a pair make obvious focus in ethnomethodological studies demonstrably disjunct provisions for the of work and occupations. Its findings are corpus status of the ordinary activities that a found there in the phenomena of two pair describes. The EM alternates are incom- constituents of the Shop Floor Problem: (1) mensurable, asymmetrically alternate phe- shop floor achievements and their accompa- nomena of order. nying careful*7 descriptions, and (2) shop The achievements of formal analytic theo- floor theorizing. They are found there also, rizing and investigations are always accompa- and everywhere else, in careful* descriptions; nied by ethnomethodological alternates, and in the praxeological validity of instructed they are accompanied everywhere. Wherever actions;8 and in one of EM's distinctive in an actual investigation one is found, the results and its central phenomenon: The other is also found. Wherever the ground is praxeological validity of instructed action is analytically trampled, its specific eth- (i.e., "exists as," "is identical with," "is the nomethodological alternate is findable. The same as") the phenomenon. These results are more heavily the ground has been trampled, collected in EM studies of work in the and wherever it has been trampled for the professions and sciences. longest time, the more certainly will its EM Flatly, none of EM's questions are con- alternate be findable. When it is found, the cerned with who is ahead in a contest between more curious is its prior absence in main- rival claims to adequate science in the social stream literatures, for its absence is a positive sciences. Instead, and just as flatly, the two phenomenon and an accomplishment of disciplines, FA and EM, are both and immortal ordinary society not less than are simultaneously incommensurably different those described by FA investigations.9 and unavoidably related. What do the two In order to describe FA literatures and their technologies have to do with each other? This EM alternates I have appropriated the term is EM's prevailing question. This question is coeval:10 where one arises, the other arises the center of EM's bibliographies. alongside and with it. Coeval brings to center stage and underlines ethnomethodology's premier questions: What do FA literatures and 1.3 Formal Analytic Literatures and Their their EM alternates consist of in any actual EM Alternates case? Just in any actual case? What do they consist of at the worksite, as the worksite, A collection of EM investigations estab- first time through? lishes and specifies, by making instructably FA investigations and EM studies are both and simultaneously incommensurably differ- 7 Careful, spelled with an asterisk refers to descrip- ent and specifically related. EM knows this to tions that are available at the worksite to misreading as the first segment of an instructed action. This is explained be so, empirically and demonstrably, via the further in 3.1 the Praxeological Validity of Instructed Action. 9 In an aspect of their curious absence, EM alternates 8 The following is an explicating phrase for the are buried by the work of mainstreaming them. Like any "praxeological validity of instructed action": at and as other procedurally specified phenomena of order the the worksite misreading a description as instructably the work of mainstreaming is done in details of structures. work of following which exhibits the phenomenon that 10 Maynard and Clayman (1991) first used this term to the text describes. describe the alternates.
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Catalog of EM Investigations. EM knows this alternate; they are asymmetrically alternate, in instructable ways that FA does not have and that they are asymmetrically related is empirical access to and that it CAN not get itself a social fact. access to. EM has the unavoidable task of In the contemporary worldwide social explaining these claims and demonstrating science movement, "The objective reality of them. Do FA literatures and EM alternates social facts is sociology's fundamental princi- arise together? Are they related? Then how do ple" is understood procedurally, although not they arise together? How are they related? as procedurally is understood in eth- Just what do they have to do with each nomethodology. In the countless analytic arts other? But not as thought-full theory writing and sciences of practical action of the with which a theory writer, not being required worldwide social science movement, the to know at first hand or to be constrained by aphorism in substantially explicated details just what in its procedurally" ordered consists of and is demonstrated in the corpus phenomenal details he is talking about status of investigations carried out with the empirically, can have it in the way he can policies, methods, and results of formal imagine and however it is needed to do his analytic technology. Therein, too, the apho- FA theorizing; doing with an imagined state rism is variously understood according to of affairs whatever is needed to carry off an need and occasion as FA's aim, tasks, work, argument that is available in a Borgesian procedural demands, achievement, and fun- library12 of theories to choose whatever adds damental phenomenon. to a literature of topical controversies. EM also accords the aphorism heavy Durkheim's aphorism is taught to graduate procedural emphasis, but distinctively so. students from the first day of graduate work: Ethnomethodologically the aphorism is un- "The objective reality of social facts is derstood like this. From the outset of its sociology's fundamental principle." The aph- investigations, EM addressed various settings orism is taken very seriously in both programs of immortal14 ordinary society whose particu- of investigations and by both technologies of analysis, FA and EM. Their takes are 14 Immortal is borrowed from Durkheim as a metaphor different; they are incommensurably differ- for any witnessable local setting whose parties are doing ent. Nevertheless they are inextricably re- some human job that can range in scale from a hallway greeting to a freeway traffic jam where there is this to lated. For one thing-one organizational emphasize about them: Their production is staffed by thing, and a social fact in its own right-they parties to a standing crap game. Of course the jobs are are asymmetrically alternate.13 not games, let alone a crap game. Think of freeway That means that you can use ethnomethod- traffic flow in Los Angeles. For the cohort of drivers ology to recover in phenomenal ordered there, just this gang of them, driving, making traffic together, are somehow, smoothly and unremarkably, details-in a phenomenal field of ordered concerting the driving to be at the lived production of the details the work that makes up, at the flow's just thisness: familiar, ordinary, uninterestingly, worksite, the design, administration, and observably in and as observances doable and done again, carrying off of investigations with the use of and always, only, entirely in detail for everything that detail could be. In and as of the just thisness (the formal analytic practices. You can't do it the haecceities) of driving's details, just this staff are doing other way around. That is to say, you can't again just what in concert with vulgar competence they use the methods of formal analysis to recover can do, for each another next first time; and it is this of the work and the findings that ethnomethod- what they are doing, that makes up the details of just that ology is coming up with. So their takes on traffic flow: That although it is of their doing, and as of the flow they are "witnessably oriented by" and "seeably Durkheim's aphorism indeed are not only directed to the production of it," they treat the organizational thing as of their doing, as of their own " By way of a reminder, in ethnomethodology doing, but not of their very own, singular, distinctive procedural means labor of a certain incarnate methodo- authorship. And further, for just this cohort, it will be logical sort: at the worksite progressively and develop- that after they exit the freeway others will come after ingly coming upon the phenomenon via the work in and them to do again the same familiar things that they-just as of the unmediated, immediately and directly observed they-just these of us as drivings doings are in concert phenomenal-field details of producing it. doing. t2 Jorge Louis Borges talks about a "The Library of Immortal is used to speak of human jobs as of which Babel." We learned in graduate school that it is a free local members, being in the midst of organizational democracy of theories. You pick up whatever you need. things, know, of just these organizational things they are 13 The EM Catalog describes this and other relations in in the midst of, that it preceded them and will be there a collection of "rendering theorems." See Garfinkel and after they leave. It is a metaphor for the great Weider (1992). recurrencies of ordinary society, staffed, provided for,
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lar staffs so concerted their activities as to EM took it'8 that the workings of immortal, exhibit topics of order* as their activities' ordinary society are the origins, sources, achieved phenomena of order* in and as real destinations, locus, and settings of achieved world settings, in real time,15 and therein as phenomena of order*. Provisions for achieve- the most ordinary achieved organizational ments of order, whether these provisions are things in the world. Any and all topics of vernacular or technical, lay or professional, order* 16 were taken to be eligible for begin, have their course, and finish in the ethnomethodological respecification as midst of these ordinary workings. achieved phenomena of order*, commonplace EM takes it that immortal ordinary society achievements, seen but unnoticed, specifi- exists as, consists of, is identical with cally uninteresting, and specifically unre- achieved phenomena of logic, meaning, markable "work of the streets." method, reason, rational action, truth, evi- It is ethnomethodological about EM studies dence, science, Kant's basic categories, or that they show for immortal ordinary soci- Hume's, or the primordials of anyone else, ety's substantive events in material contents any of which is a lot of territory inasmuch as just and only in any actual case, that and just General Ideas of the Universal Observer are how vulgarly competent members concert commonly used in the social sciences and their activities to produce and display, to humanities to topicalize and justify valid demonstrate, to make observably the case, knowledge of every possible thing in any locally, naturally accountable phenomena of possible world. 19 logic and order, of cause, classification, Durkheim's aphorism "The objective real- temporality, coherence, consistency, and ity of social facts is sociology's fundamental analysis, of details, of details in structures, of principle" is specified in the investigations of meaning, mistakes, errors, accidents, coinci- the EM catalog. In the Catalog's investiga- dence, facticity, reason, truth, and methods in tions, the objective reality of the social facts and as of the unremarkable embodiedly is made instructably observable and instructa- ordered details of their ordinary lives to- bly reproducible in and as the most ordinary gether. and familiar organizational things in the From time to time, in one publication or world. another, their relevance for sociology would The different takes on Durkheim's apho- be summarized with a restatement of Durkhe- rism by the formal analytic arts and sciences im's aphorism. For its investigations, eth- of the worldwide social science movement nomethodology took this to mean the objec- tive reality of social facts, in that and just how every society's locally, endogenously pro- and seminars at UCLA since 1954 and in conferences at various universities. It is the explicit subject of various duced, naturally organized, naturally account- publications (e.g., Garfinkel, 1988; Garfinkel and able, ongoing, practical achievement, being Weider 1992, Chapter 10). It is explicitly thematic in everywhere, always, only, exactly and en- dissertations for which I was chair at UCLA and UC tirely members' work, with no time out, and Irvine, or on which I served there or elsewhere. It is with no possibility of evasion, hiding out, specified in themes and topics throughout the EM Catalog of Investigations. passing, postponement, or buyouts, is thereby t8 Took it, that is, beyond hermeneutics, beyond sociology's fundamental phenomenon.17 interpretive sociology, certainly beyond Husserl's Leb- enswelt or the matters debated by Schutz and Gurwitsch, beyond writers of theory such as Parsons, Coleman, produced, observed and observable, locally and account- Foucault, or Merleau-Ponty. Possibly and most promis- ably in and as of an "assemblage of haeccieities." EM ingly more than any of these, took it beyond Durkheim's places heavy emphasis on "immortal." It is a recurrent socio-empirical epistemology that has been elucidated theme in the EM catalog and a source of its topics. recently by Anne Rawls (1996). '5 Various tutorial problems in the EM Catalog 19 My allusion has its source in Anne Rawls's (1995) empirically respecify several meanings of standard time startling article "Durkheim's Epistemology: The Ne- and various established literary meanings. In its concerns glected Argument." Rawls shows Durkheim to have been with time, Sudnow's work is particularly rich. the original author of that understanding and of its 16 Order* spelled with an asterisk is a proxy for any research program. She shows in the detailed texts of The and all topics of logic, meaning, reason, method . . . Elementarwy Forms of the Religious Life, as the book's t7 I understand this restatement of Durkheim's apho- principal project, that this was Durkheim's program; that rism to be EM's center. I understand this restatement and the book's argument continues the program of his corpus; teach it as EM's distinctive and central statement of its that he named sociology as the program's disciplinary aims, tasks, program, policies, methods, results, and source; and that project and legacy have been neglected teachings. It has been a recurrent theme in my courses by almost 80 years of Durkheimian scholarship.
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and ethnomethodology are incommensurably wouldn't want only to stipulate or imagine it. different but nevertheless they are inextrica- New directions would have already been bly related. Just in case the members of a pair taken, so why would one want to? And so on, are compared procedurally, they present to and so forth. EM a preposterous problem: The phenome- Various EM authors have described work- non of interest to EM is not that the FA site-specific, discipline-specific, procedural literatures and their EM alternates make up a enactments of the "etcetera" clause, the collection and its properties. The phenome- documentary method of interpretation, index- non of interest is this: The phenomenon of ical expressions and their essential ubiquity, interest is the preposterous problem: namely, reflexive body/world relations, details in case by case, for each pair, the literature and structures, tacit knowledge, the essential its alternate: The phenomenon of interest is mundaneity of reason and calculative ration- the disjunct corpus status of its respective ality, and oracular reasoning and its endless bibliographies. This is an initial preposterous cognates. These subjects had their start in problem. Further preposterous problems flow 1952 after I learned about the work of Calvin from that. Case by case, the LITALT20 pairs Mooers. Graduate studies with the use of are preposterous problems. Mooers' "Zatocoding" and "Catalog" began at UCLA in 1954. They were developed in PhD dissertations at UCLA, and later by 2.1 A Collection of FA Literatures and Their faculty and students at other universities: UC EM Alternates2 Santa Barbara, Irvine, San Diego, York, EM alternates are specific alternates to the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, FA literatures with which they are paired. Manchester, Boston, and elsewhere. They They are demonstrably21 alternate provisions remain standing subjects for EM authors. for the corpus status of the ordinary activities Another subject is familiar and prevalent in that an FA literature describes. This claim is formal analytic literatures: the accomplished critical to the collection. A literature is transparency and specifically unremarkable ordinarily read for familiarly probative studies smoothness of concerted skills of "equipmen- of its subjects. When its studies are read for tally affiliated" shopwork and shoptalk. that, the reading is apt to be looking in studies These are respecified ethnomethodologically at hand to a well-known past (the reader's with "Heideggerian uses" of handicaps, included), reviewing, collecting, and deepen- illnesses, disability, and their affiliated equip- ing established studies, promoting a tradition, mental "aids to independent living," as well renewing it by singling out a line of studies to as with inverting lenses and other bodily, find what next in line might look like, and characterological, organizational, and proce- perhaps so attaching a next study to the line as dural "troublemakers." With these "trouble- to continue the structure that was used to find makers," work's incarnate social organiza- what "next" could be and should be. tional details are revealed by overcoming The EM reading is incommensurably dif- their transparency in their topically ordinary ferent in material details in that instead of concerted recurrencies of ongoingly develop- renewing a tradition, it deliberately searches a ing phenomenal fields of ordered details of literature for news to carry further EM's generality, uniformity, interchangeable popu- previously uncovered and established markers lations, and the rest-i.e., in ordered details of strangely new organizational phenomena in of structures. what nevertheless remains FA's familiar Studies of many and various subjects territory. The EM search is for "What More" concerned with the workings of organiza- the territory offers up in language to describe tional things, with or without their availability it as a literature's very own subject; offers up, in FA literatures, were done while eschewing not in the ineffable seeing of something, but the policies and methods of formal analysis. with a language that is itself part of the Each investigation, for its empirical ade- territory, but that in its matters can't be quacy, described practices that are recognized imagined but is only discoverable. The EM by practitioners as doable, done, true, "rele- reader, having caught on to something, vant to the parties,"22 and even versimilitudi-
20 LITALT = FA literatures and their EM alternates. 21 By demonstrable I mean instructably observable. 22 Credit is long overdue for Florian Znaniecki's
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nous .23 EM studies deliberately abstained program of medical research, pedagogy, and from the use of mental mechanisms, psychol- evaluation in the Pediatrics Department of ogized actions, clinical psychological biogra- Michigan State University from 1973-1984. phies, signed objects, and hermeneutics. Their program was notable for working out They are concerned with practices that are and demonstrating the condition of EM chiasmically chained embodiedly to the envi- adequacy: that the analyst's ethnomethod- ronment of ongoingly ordered phenomenal ological findings be taken seriously in the FA details. Descriptively provided for, these are discipline that was studied. By being "taken above all commonplace, notably unremark- seriously" I mean that at the worksite, able, in specifics that are uninteresting but practitioners will demand of EM findings just indispensable, and somehow -and this is as they demand of FA findings that they critically of interest-they are specifically satisfy the worksite-specific, discipline- unmentioned in established descriptions. specific corpus status of FA investigations, A very strong collection of studies was and that EM findings be incorporated in FA done with deliberate, clear, and targeted work at hand or reasons be given for not emphasis on ethnomethodological discipline- doing so. specific "hybrid" results. By "hybrid" I mean studies of work in which the analyst is 2.2 A Collection of Pairs uniquely and adequately competent to pro- duce the phenomenon, the coherent uniquely The following is a list of FA/EM pairs that adequate details of which his descriptions can consist of topical literatures of formal analytic be misread instructionally, as and at a studies of work and their specific EM worksite, to exhibit.24 Among EM hybrids, alternates. An enumerated list of briefly David Sudnow's studies, particularly of annotated subjects of formal analytic litera- improvisation in jazz piano playing and piano tures
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orderliness of how actual pedagogic inter- system for the storage and retrieval of change unfolds in real time, in real space small libraries of valuable documents. He and in the first place in the law school described, with marvelous delicacy of classroom. They are unable to specify what experiential specifics gathered from his connection, if any, there may be between jobs of selling and installing his system and the observable detail and contingent order- helping members of client firms to make it ing of pedagogic tasks in the law classroom work, that and just how context, practical and the skills identifying of professionally action, categorizing phrases, reasons, competent legal practice. . . . Hence the search prescriptions, relevance, identity, lived and local orderliness identifying of definitions, glosses, and glossaries were pedagogy in the law school classroom renegade topics. remains predominantly unexplored ana- Mooers' clients were engineers. "Con- lytic territory. What is reported in the text" was an omnipresent renegade topic in social scientific, educational, and jurispru- their in-house discussions about the Zatoc- dential literature leaves largely unad- oding system and in, about, and as their dressed many matters of central practical actual in-course work of naming docu- concern, relevance, and consequentiality to ments, describing, filing, searching for law professors and their students . relevant texts but not being able or not (Burns, 1995). To conclude her point, wanting to prespecify what it would have to Burns adds "As Heritage describes it," this look like before it was found; or finding gap "consists of all the missing descriptions just what they needed and discarding it as of what occupational activities consist of garbage; or so naming, filing, searching, and all the missing analyses of how and recovering documents that their com- practitioners manage the tasks which, for pany library in any of these ways of them, are matters of serious and pressing operating in it and with it would, to their significance . . . " (Heritage, 1984:299). work satisfaction, have incorporated their <2> Practical action and practical reason developing and changing interests. are vastly worked subjects. They range in A user of the dictionary would select an technicality from the alchemically arcane to itemized string of descriptors as a search the commonplaces of pop technologies. prescription. Upon the completion of a Subjects are centered academically in canoni- search, the documents that dropped had to cal investigations of Wittgenstein, Dewey, be examined to learn what grammatic Simon, Schutz, and Evans-Prichard, and, readings the items could be found to have. most interestingly, in the ethnodisciplines in The examinable coherence of a first collec- anthropology (e.g., ethnoastronomy, ethno- tion was often deliberately temporary, botany). In these literatures, recurrencies of undertaken just to see where it would lead. practical action and practical reason are made Was the document relevantly a document instructably observable and exhibited just in that the prescription had been directed to any actual case in the coherence of generi- find? These and densely affiliated other cally theorized, formal analytic details of "relevancies" could not be prespecified. structures. Elaborate but separate topical Context as a locally occasioned, instructa- literatures of practical action are identifying bly achieved, repeatedly and collabora- mainstays of the separate university depart- tively achieved, and achievable local phe- ments of psychology and sociology. nomenon by and for a firm's particular [2] Calvin Mooers' "Zatocoding" and gang was indispensable to assure the "Catalogs" respecify descriptions, rules, locally occasioned, locally achieved efficacy definitions, glossaries, schemas, instruc- as instructably reproducible recurrencies tions, instructed actions, actions as a rule, of worksite practices in details of storage, purposive actions, ends-means schemata, numbers of documents, the "Catalog," all procedural accounts, operational defini- together with the "Zatocoding" proce- tions, context, science, oracular reason, dure-as an in vivo worksite achievement, divination . . . just in any actual case. In 1952 Calvin Mooers, at the time a From 1952 until 1976 the Mooersian recent graduate of MIT, had designed and catalog was used to add and procedurally needed to sell and service to engineering specify rules, rule-governed activities, in- firms his "Catalog" and "Zatocoding" dexical expressions, objective expressions,
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rational decision making in commonsense meaning, factual adequacy, followability, situations of choice, glossing as a way to completeness of instructions, sufficiency of talk plain English, methods, schemes of instructions, notational clarity, analyzable details, propertied classes of objects, and format, methodic procedure, and the rest structure-structure in the way its use are embedded in the territorially and collects, and seeks to exhibit about practi- equipmentally historicized practices of the cal action, details in patterns, generality, traveling. Being so embedded they are comparability, typicality, standardization, salient,27 problematic, topical, unavoid- uniformity, coherence in accordance with able, and [identifying]28 of traveling's the logic of inductive inference, and the practices in relentlessly chiasmically em- existence copula "is" in the senses "there bodied details of those practices. The exists" and "is identical with." map's properties of order* are exhibited in <3> A third topic of formal analysis and as territorial organizational things. includes occasion maps26 and their cognates: These are the map's very own territorial repair manuals, models, mock-ups, tour organizational things. As territorial objects guides, assembly instructions, freeway sign- in a phenomenal field, the map's proper- ing, contractors' path descriptions, medical ties of order* are chiasmically chained to decision trees, directions, rules, norms, the traveling body's way-finding practices; games-with-rules, blueprints, musical scores, they are made available to those practices, analytical cartography . . . FA is embarrassed as those practices. by occasion maps and by the occasioned use The map library at UCLA has a list of of maps. Formal analysts don't know what to sketch maps that the Department of do with them. The occasioned uses of maps Defense publishes, called landing maps, are treated as mentalisms and turned into approach maps, horizon maps, etc. From features of the perceiver, perceived features the point of view of embodied traveling, of a territory. For FA the "real" map is made they must put in the hands of the troops useless, rendered merely perceived, by being ways of recognizing an actual shoreline so made subjective. that they minimize their casualties. The [3] Occasion maps are low-cost, high- maps have this occasioned character not production gold mines. Whole libraries of because they are faulted, but because they analytic cartographical maps and their are used. cognates offer in specific EM alternates the Occasion maps are analytic cartogra- locally occasioned, endogenously achieved phy's stepchildren. Formal analytic studies properties of logic, order, meaning, of occasion maps have missed these phe- method, reason, rationality, effective pro- nomena entirely. With the same careful cedure, followability, completeness, suffi- technical policies and methods with which ciency, and the rest of occasion maps. formal analytic studies have described These are the endlessly analyzed topics of occasion maps, these phenomena are lost. intellectual history. <4> A fourth topic of formal analysis It is not possible to read from the map includes scientific demonstrations such as the work of following the map in a Galileo's inclined plane demonstration of the way-finding journey. The traveler's work of consulting the map is an unavoidable detail in the lived, ongoingly, in-its-course, 27 "Salience" is used in an EM respecification of Gurwitsch's (1964) result; that is, the "coherence of a first-time-through, traveling body's way- group of data." He obtained this finding in his filnding journey that the map is consulted transcendental phenomenological criticism of the gestalt to get done. Under that worksite condition, theory of form. the map's consulted, inspectable, relevant- 28 "Identifying" is misleading. I'm using it as a to-the-user properties of logic, order, collector for other members of its family that are also misleading for EM studies-e.g., definitional, essential, genetically essential, paradigmatic, criterial, primitive, 26 In order to specify the literatures, Groups Iprimordial, and 3 of primary, schema, ideal, ideal type, Uhr-this- the eight sections of text in Cartogralpical Innovations and-that, etc. "Identifying" is a temporary place holder (Wallis and Robinson, 1982) is a splendid source and for the work it describes when it is respecified guide. In addition, Norman Thrower's classic on maps ethnomethodologically. For the time being I am using it (recently revised to be published by University of as a natural language descriptor. It alludes to the work it Chicago Press) is indispensable, as is the canonical is used in vivo to describe. No one needs to be inevitably textbook by Arthur Robinson. misled.
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real motion of free-falling bodies in the moved around a space also occupied by a literatures of science studies. It also includes stationary rectangle. They asked subjects to models and analogies in the natural sciences, view the film and answer questions such as such as Rasmussen's use of maps to describe "What kind of person is the big triangle (little the development of methods in electron triangle, circle)?" and they asked subjects to microscopy (Rasmussen, 1994) and studies of tell the story of the movie in a few sentences. work in the natural sciences. In their analysis of subject's answers, Heider [4] In the phenomenal-field properties of and Simmel proposed that subjects saw the Galileo's inclined-plane demonstration of figures in the movie in terms of distal stimuli the [real motion]29 of free-falling bodies, that were mediated according to more proxi- the achieved coherence of objects has very mal features of the field in which those much to do with naturally accountable stimuli were embedded. In his own book work.30 So do Louis Narens' "right hand" Heider argues that these mediating features and "left hand" paths from instructions to were stages in intervening variables of the demonstrated [real motion] of free- various sorts. There are comparable examples falling bodies, described as S/T2 = K. and elaborations in various subjects and "There's a gap in the literature" in demonstrations-for example, in studies of science libraries. I made inquiries first to gestalt illusions, in figural alternates (alter- several librarians in the physics library at ations). UCLA, and, when they couldn't help, to [5] Visual horizons are perspicuous the library director. Were there descriptive settings with which EM topics of figura- materials available whose adequate peda- tions of detail, phenomenal fields, chiasmic gogic relevance consists in that and in the relations of body/world pairs, rendering way that they specify the first and second theorems, transcendental data, and the segments of Lebenswelt pairs?3' These rest are made instructably observable as would be materials that are pedagogically achieved phenomena, just in any actual relevant to teaching's worksites in physics. case. By pointing out the social gestaltists, Were any materials available? Could any Heider and Lewin, Maynard lets a jinni be found for any of physics teaching's out of the bottle. "With their film Heider worksites, from introductory labs for and Simmel 'come so, so close' and lose the undergraduates to arcane settings of col- phenomenon" (Douglas W. Matnard, per- laborating professional faculty? After he sonal communciation). His study is a showed me several volumes and described propaedeutic case for a collection of FA several others, and after he listened to my investigations that come "so, so close" and reasons why they were not what I was lose the phenomenon. Maynard suggests looking for, the director replied, "There's that "within Heider's account are indica- a gap in the literature." tions of how subjects actually perceive, not <5> Gestalt phenomena: Themes, topics, according to relatively inert and extrasen- subjects, demonstrations, in gestalt psychol- suous stages and variables that accord ogy conatitute an important FA literature: stimuli some transcendental meaning, but, gestalt illusions, figural alternates in experi- perception occurs according to in situ, mental perception (e.g., "ambiguities"), sensuously-produced, functional significa- CAD models and modeling. A classic FA tions formed between the geometric fig- study was that of Heider and Simmel (1944), ures, their parts, and additional constitu- who, in order to study the psychology of ents whose presentation unfolds in time as person perception, developed a moving- time itself is produced through the proce- picture film of 2 1/2 minutes' duration with dures of actors. Subjects see one thing various geometric figures (including a large preceding another and the other succeed- triangle, a small triangle, and a circle) that ing the one, thereby assembling a chronol- ogy out of an inextricably inner or 29 Square brackets in bold, [ ], mark off an EM endogenous order that then informs and is procedural account of the phenomenon that is described informed by just what a geometric figure with the name in the enclosed brackets. might be as a type of person" (Maynard, 30 See my study of the phenomenal-field properties of 1995). Galileo's inclined-plane demonstration in Garfinkel (forthcoming). Indexing the classic gestalt domain of 31 Lebenswelt pairs are discusses in 3.2 below. illusions and figural alternates in experi-
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mental perception, Maynard asks whether of a phenomenon's production exhibits its "there could be "more" to those processes staff as a population. glossed by the terms perception, conscious- <7> The Dictionary of Occupational ness, cognition, etc. In a classroom con- Titles is a premier collection of formal text, working with gestalt figures, percep- analytic studies of work, and an extraordinary tion and its production cannot be separated achievement in the social sciences. In formal from public descriptions that students and analytic studies of work, entries in the professors produce and attend to as joint Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT), on courses of action. In embodied tellings of the one hand, and analytic ethnographies of their seeings members bring into being work, on the other, can be adequately read "panels-of-a-cube," "fronts," "backs," and understood interchangeably either as "tallness," "width,"6 "depth," "alternating synopses or as elaborations of each other. configurations." These emerge in and as Their interchangeability is therein the subject temporalized narratives enacted both of a massive literature in bibliographies of through talk and through the body's social analysis, for in that relation they specify, satisfy, and are exhibits of the corpus gestures that concertedly model and re- status of their details of structure. hearse visualizations as classroom-specific Therein, DOT entries are sources for accomplishments" (Maynard, 1995). well-known advisories that serve across Also, EM's "Heideggerian" uses of studies of work and occupations as analytic incongruities of bodily impairments and ethnographic detailing devices: e.g., "goal brain injuries and illnesses are perspicuous oriented behaviors," "context-dependence," in revealing the ("hidden") transparent "rational problem solving," "local settings," work of achieved coherence. "tacit knowledge," "skills," "the village <6> Phenomena made instructably ob- versus the city." Course bibliographies offer servable in formal analytic details of concert- technical guides to their existence and correct edly recurrent achievements of practical use in established topics of university depart- actions are so provided for by FA that a ments and professional schools. phenomenon, whatever the phenomenon and [7] Various university departments teach whatever its scale, is made instructably ethnomethodological expertise in studies of observable as the work of a population that work and occupations. Their required staffs its production. An instant population is emphasis is on ineradicable, unavoidable, surveyable. It is exhibited in surveyable indexical properties of adequate descrip- particulars of body counts and dimensional- tions of work, etc. They require that ized demographics. These are elucidated with attention be paid to the uniquely adequate variable analysis, quantified arguments, and competence of the analyst/practitioner as a causal structures. Analytic descriptions of requirement for describing methods of populations inhabit the literatures of demog- work. This involves indifference to the raphy, the U.S. Census, the survey industry, transcendental analyst, and eschewing the university-based social sciences, professional universal observer. "Ethnographic de- schools, and the rest. scriptions" are accounts of worksite- [6] Endogenous populations are specific specific "relevances" that consist in-course EM alternates. An instant phenomenon of of occupation-specific, instructably observ- order-freeway traveling waves, service able, instructably reproducible coherence lines, conversational greetings-along with of ordered phenomenal details of struc- endogenously exhibiting its other details tures. Remedial expertise is directed to such as [unmotivated slowing ahead] in elucidating, as its targets, generic repre- traveling waves, [the apparent line that sentational theorizing, replacing it with the exhibits an order of service] in formatted phenomenon as the origin and source of queues, [the hearable absence of a greeting trouble. in return] in conversational greetings- exhibits as another detail its staff as a 2.3 Three Advisories population that produces it. More, the phenomenon exhibits its staff as an inter- Advisories in EM studies of work are also changeable population. More, it exhibits its available for use as ethnographic detailing staff as a surveyable population. The work devices. These are offered in various lists by
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various authors as one or another agenda in properties are ubiquitous. They are essentially the seminars at UCLA. Advisories were taped unavoidable and without remedy or alterna- and developed to deliberately provide for and tive. They are also specifically ordinary and exhibit the relevance of uniquely adequate uninteresting, and in both of these respects, in competence to the described work of its assuring as achieved phenomena coherent practitioners, who are also its analysts. Their sense, reference, and correspondence to descriptions are written by design to be read objects, they do so achievedly in uniquely praxeologically-i.e., to be misread-as adequate details. These are uniquely adequate worksite-specific instructions for their observ- details of structures. By that is meant that ability, followability, completeness, suffi- these phenomena exhibit their locally staffed ciency, their bodily/equipmental intertwining, production as the commonplace work in their in-course evolving elaboration, their details of populations. autochthonous coherence, their autonomous These properties mark their observability as criticism, and the rest in procedurally enacted phenomena sine qua non in EM studies of coherent details of structures. work. Their existence is demonstrable-their I offer three examples of such specifically existence is both instructably observable and EM advisories: 1) the uses by practitioners/ instructably reproducible-in all studies of analysts of an "etcetera clause"; 2) their uses work. Their adequate observability is staff- of the interpretive gloss described by Mann- specific, worksite-specific, discipline-spe- heim as the documentary method of interpre- cific. tation; and 3) their uses of the properties of These properties of indexical expressions indexical expressions. are unique to incarnate investigations of 1) It was news that and just how an immortal, ordinary society. They are not "etcetera clause" can be used to provide properly used as cognitive functions. They according to local occasion, for completeness are improperly used as transcendentalized and generalizability in a collection of rules. It intentionalities of analytic consciousness. The can be used as well to provide for other phenomena that the devices are used to properties of rules-e.g., followability, suffi- elucidate cannot be found or recovered if the ciency, ideality of meaning, factual adequacy, devices are interpreted psychologically or if universality, necessity, and any of the rest. the ethnographic descriptions are explicated 2) Another advisory is the documentary as psychologized activities. And, in any case method of interpretation. The reader need where they are administered as predescribed only recall the vexed jobs of reading and codes, the result can be lucid, perfectly clear writing careful, empirically adequate descrip- analytic ethnographic description, and the tions of work. The documentary method of description will have missed the subject interpretation is a convenient gloss for the matter, its probity, and the point of the work of local, retrospective-prospective, pro- description, with no accompanying sign that actively evolving ordered phenomenal details they are misunderstood. of seriality, sequence, repetition, comparison, The lessons are clear: In order to lose the generality, and other structures. The gloss is phenomena that the devices describe, give convenient and somehow convincing. It is them over to the intentionalities of conscious- also very powerful in its coverage-too ness. And in order to assure their loss in any powerful. It gets everything in the world for actual case, do so with the methods of generic practitioners/analysts. Its shortcomings are representational theorizing. notorious: In any actual case it is undiscrimi- In deliberately careful* descriptions of their nating and just in any actual case it is work, EM practitioners/analysts provided for absurdly wrong. the procedural presence of indexical expres- 3) From the beginning of EM studies, the sions with respect to persons, biographies, well-known properties of indexical expres- identities, settings, equipment, costumes, sions have offered and continue to offer less gestures, architecture, and language, vernac- heroic possibilities. The properties of indexi- ular and technical, in unavoidable relevancies cal expressions are witnessable only locally to the parties. By attention to these, practi- and endogenously. This is known to one and tioners/analysts in careful* descriptive expo- all. Therein they are known and are available sition make instructably observable work's to one and all in that they consist of uniquely coherent definiteness of details; their practitioners' vulgarly competent skills. The clarity, consistency, coherence, and the rest
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of work's observable properties of logic, completeness of its collection of basic rules; meaning, reason, and method. Their studies in any case of rule-governed actions, the of work describe, specify, make instructably completeness of a collection of rules; in the observable, satisfy, and are exhibits of the Mooersian catalog; in formatting in queues; in unique adequacy requirement of methods; the the local, occasioned, endogenously achieved uniquely adequate competence of analysts/ properties of logic, reason, method, and practitioners who can be taken seriously by structure of occasion maps; in EM pairs; in local companies and by "our shops" of Lebenswelt pairs; and in the praxeological practitioners whose work the analysts de- validity of instructed actions. In the EM scribe; and the observable in-course, ongoing catalog these are propaedeutic cases with carrying out of descriptions in empirical, which to emphasize, with studies of in- instructably observable details of structures structed actions, the enormously prevalent while exercising ethnomethodological indif- and commonplace skill of praxeologizing ference to policies, methods, and the corpus descriptive accounts. status of formal analytic investigations. All this while making no use of the privileges of transcendental analysis and the universal 3.2 Praxeologizing Descriptive Accounts observer, and without bowdlerizing issues of structure, while at every point satisfying the In endlessly many disciplines, as local demands of empirical adequacy for claims of occasion demands, practitioners are required corpus. to read descriptive accounts alternately as instructions. They do so occupationally, as a skilled matter of course, as vulgarly compe- 3.1 The Praxeological Validity of Instructed tent, specifically ordinary, and unremarkable Action worksite-specific practices. These are chained The many achievements by the worldwide bodily and chiasmically to places, spaces, social science movement in the uses of formal architectures, equipment, instruments, and analytic technology are pointless to dispute. timing. Within a discipline, practitioners Among these achievements, FA technology's require such competence of each other, not premier achievement is the corpus status of its exclusively but centrally just in any actual bibliographies of studies. From the outset of case, and then unavoidably and without EM investigations, the corpus status of FA's remedy, passing, evasion, or postponement. bibliographies has provided ethnomethod- When occasion calls for a division of work, ological investigations with themes of instruc- practitioners can be found to concert their tions and instructed actions in topics galore efforts to assure a praxeological reading its for respecifications as distinctively achieved recurrent, smooth, uninterrupted achievement phenomena of order* in and as the great by the culturally and organizationally local recurrencies of immortal, ordinary society staff of its production. without sacrificing, downgrading, bowdleriz- The EM catalog examines, as astronomi- ing, avoiding, or losing ordinary society's cally, massively prevalent work, various ways endogenous, naturally accountable achieve- in which an account that is readably descrip- ments of structure, or changing the subject, tive-say diagrammatically, or as freeway and without lip-synching the natural sciences. signing, or as wall announcements, or in the EM does not deny FA's achievements. prose of declarative sentences-can be read Without denying FA's achievements, the alternatively so that the reading provides for a investigations of the EM catalog of radical phenomenon in two constituent segments of a phenomena of order* [repeatedly] pose the pair: 1) the-first-segment-of-a-pair, which empirical question: "What more is there to consists of a collection of instructions; and 2) instructions and instructed actions than FA the work, just in any actual case of following does, did, ever did, or can provide?" which somehow turns the first segment into a Distinctive investigations in the EM catalog description of the pair.32 of achieved radical phenomena of order* bear particularly and uniquely on instructions and 32 I emphasize of the pair. This is in contrast to a instructed actions. Cases of instructed actions common and even hackneyed use that would read this from the EM catalog have been described in passage like this: Following instructions somehow turns games-with-rules; in a game with rules, the them-i.e., the disengaged and disengageable instruc-
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Call 2) the-second-segment-of-a-pair. Call later analytic formats that topics and themes the pair an instructed action, and call the of instructed actions are collected and come to work of reading a descriptive account, as focus in EM studies respecifying the natural related constituents of an instructed action sciences as discovering sciences of practical "praxeologizing descriptive accounts." action. For both technologies of social analysis- Conditions of adequacy in EM investiga- for the administered policies, methods, and tions are used in each of these to respecify corpus of formal analysis (FA) and for those FA's formats, < > and [ ], and their of ethnomethodology (EM)-somehow is relations. By "adequacy conditions" is meant key. Both FA and EM are preoccupied with that EM investigations, in each of the groups, their technical jobs and as their technical jobs ask "What did we do? What did we learn?": of empirically specifying praxeologizing's (i) What did we learn that is other than work. Both seek to replace somehow with an what FA does, did, ever did, or can provide? instructably observable just how. Each does (ii) What did we learn that FA recognizes so with distinctive policies and methods of as massively and unavoidably prevalent and analysis in distinctive analytic formats. available to FA in worksite-specific details? Characteristically, FA does the specifying (iii) What did we learn that FA depends job by designing and administering generi- upon the existence of for FA's worksite- cally theorized formats. Instructions < > and specific achievements, for FA's pride of instructions-in-use [ ] are described in gener- profession and technical stock in trade of ically represented relations of correspon- instructably observable adequate professions dence. The analysis furnishes empirical de- of worldliness and reality, and for the scriptions of < >, and [ ], in one or another instructably observable corpus status of its of their relations. With these, the pair's actual bibliographies? adequate correspondence is made decidable in (iv) What did we learn that FA uses and any actual empirical case. recognizes EM everywhere in and as its in EM does the specifying job differently. In vivo worksite-specific practices? EM's early interests, < > and [ ] in These are practices that FA practitioners technically achieved relations were described just in any actual case know and recognize are as achievements of "interpretive work" such unavoidable, without remedy, and without as "etcetera" and the documentary method of alternatives. The practices are indispensable interpretation in ordinary fact finding. Later to practitioners, and practitioners demand studies examined locally produced, endoge- them. Just in any actual case the practices nously achieved, naturally accountable coher- identify FA practitioners' work, they are ent haecceities that constitute as coherent known to FA's practitioners, and are recog- instructed actions the phenomenal fields of nized by them to be that. In all these respects ordinary human "jobs." These studies exam- the practices are specifically uninteresting to ined the two segments of docile instructions practitioners and are ignored. Known to and their implementation when in vivo they practitioners and recognized by them in all are distinguished and with the distinction they these respects, the practices are known to and are provided for in vivo in formal analytically recognized by them categorically. and other classically specified, remedially And, FA practitioners, being deeply careful sought relations of adequate description, in endless enterprises that for FA's various adequate facticity, adequate followability, disciplinary reasons must make the adequa- adequate completeness of instructions, and so cies of their achieved professions of worldli- on. Since 1972 EM studies of work in the ness and reality instructably observable in professions and sciences have added to these generically theorized structures of practical previous EM focusings that instructions < > action, therein do not know what to do with and instructions-in-use [ ] are related as EM these practices. asymmetrical alternates or EM pairs, as EM catalog investigations respecify FA's Lebenswelt Pairs, and as the praxeological analytic formats. Each of the different groups validity of instructed actions. of studies does so distinctively with its It is with these later interests and with these particular investigations. In each group of studies the practices that are specified EM- tions-into a description of following them. See wise are known to and recognized by FA Livingston (1986). practitioners; their existence is demanded by
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them and depended upon; their existence is Logic, Reason, Meaning, Method, etc. in and As of specified and made instructably observable the Essential Haecceity of Immortal, Ordinary Soci- ety," Sociological Theory 88, V.6, No.1, pp. 103-109. in, about, as and in established languages, as . 1994. "Seven Cases with Which to Specify How of worksite-specific competent practices of Phenomenal Fields of Ordinary Activities Are Lost". shopwork and shoptalk; for FA's practitioners Unpublished manuscript. they are unavoidable, without remedy, with- . Forthcoming. A Catalogue of Ethnomethodolog- ical Investigations, edited by Anne Warfield Rawls. out alternatives; they identify FA competent Boston: Basil Blackwell. accounting practices in worksite-specific wit- Garfinkel, Harold and D. Lawrence Weider. "Two nessable detail. And in worksite-specific Incommensurable, Asymmetrically Alternate Technol- detail they are specifically uninteresting and ogies of Social Analysis," Pp. 175-206 in Text in ignored. Context, edited by Graham Watson and Robert M. Seiler. Newbury Park CA: Sage. EM asks: What in the world is so Gurwitsch, Aron. 1964. Fields of Consciousness. obstinately and relevantly omnipresent? What Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. in the world is so unanimously known and Heider, Maryanne and Fritz Simmel. 1944. "An recognized by FA practitioners? Where in the Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior." American world is it found? And how? Journal of Psychology. 57:243-259. Heritage, John. 1984 Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. The issue is this: In the entirety of FA's Cambridge: Polity Press. corpus, "What More" is nowhere specified or Livingston, Eric. 1986. The Ethnomethodological Foun- specifiable. Nor can "What More" to instruc- dations of Mathematics. London: Routledge and tions and instructed action be found with FA's Kegan Paul. methods. Then just what in the world is being Maynard, Douglas. W. 1995 "Gestalt Theory and Ethnomethodology." Unpublished manuscript. looked for? Just what is to be found? Just Maynard, Douglas W. and Steven E. Clayman. 1991. where? Just how? "The Diversity of Ethnomethodology. " Annual Review The investigations in the EM catalog offer of Sociology 17:385-418. selected answers to these questions. The Rasmussen, Nicholas. 1994. "Through Another Looking answers cover selected perspicuous settings Glass: The Phenomenal and Cultural Import of the Electron Microscope in Mid-Century America." Un- from the EM catalog. What did we do? What published manuscript. did we learn? What can we do? And what can Rawls, Anne Warfield. 1995. "Durkheim's Epistemol- we learn? EM investigations, along with their ogy: The Neglected Argument." Unpublished manu- accompanying EM policies and methods, script. Schegloff, Emmanuel. 1987. "Analyzing Single Epi- compose a catalog of tutorial problems. Their sodes of Interaction: An Exercise in Conversation epistemological and ontological status is that Analysis." Social Psychology Quarterly (50)2:101- of a catalog of tutorial problems. These are 114. grounds in EM investigations for replies to Sudnow, David. 1978. Ways of the Hand. Cambridge: these queries. Harvard University Press. . 1979. Talk's Body. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
REFERENCES . 1983. Pilgrim in the Microworld. New York: Warner Books. Borges, Jorge Louis. 1962. "The Library of Babel" in, . 1996. The Sudnow Method. Princeton: The Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings, Sudnow Method, Inc. edited by Yeates. Irby New Directions. Wallis, Helen M. and Arthur H. Robinson. 1987. Bums, Stacy. 1995, "Practicing Law: A Study of Cartographical Innovations. Map Collector Publica- Pedagogic Interchange in a Law School Classroom." tions 1982 Ltd. in association with the International Unpublished manuscript. Cartographic Association. Garfinkel, Harold. 1988. "Evidence for Locally Pro- Znaniecki, Florian. 1937. Social Actions. St. Albans: duced, Naturally Accountable Phenomena of Order*, Canfield Press.
Harold Garfinkel is Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Department of Sociology at UCLA. His research interest is with the problem of social order.
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