Ethnomethodology's Program
Harold Garfinkel
Social Psychology Quarterly, Vol. 59, No. 1. (Mar., 1996), pp. 5-21.
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http://www.jstor.org Wed Nov 7 19:05:20 2007 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, 1.1 What Is Ethnomethodology? in endless analytic arts and sciences of 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.l 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 least those many students and colleagues whose eth- contemporary and historical. 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 corpus mean its unrelievedly empirical enterprise. I thank also Doug bibliographies. By I (1) 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. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY QUARTERLY 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 unquestionabl~l 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- know and demand the existence of, that FA gies-could be without sacrificing issues of depends upon the existence of for FA'S structure. That means without sacrificing the worksite-specific achievements in carefully great achievements-of describable recogniz- instructed procedures, that FA uses and able recurrencies, of generality, and of recognizes everywhere in and as its lived comparability of these productions of ordi- worksite-specific practices. nary activities-activities that carry with them There are practices that FA practitioners the recognizable achievements of populations 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 world of familiar, ordinary activities, does 'If this claim is read as irony, it will be read incorrectly. To read it without irony, recall the scene in immortal, ordinary society consist of as the Ionesco's Rhinoceros. The last man and his girlfriend, locus and the setting of every topic of order, - A Daisy, are looking out into the street below filled with every topic of logii, 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 standingu technical ~reoccu~ation 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 ~ro~osineto institute and carry out EM enous production and natural accountability A . - investigations of ordinary society while being in the of immortal familiar society's most ordinan midst bf organizational. things -and therein knowing organizational things in the world, and 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 procedural1~'~as meth- bearings again], by [completing an investigation] we'll odologies. land ourselves in the midst of things. Procedurally we The identitv of obiects and methodologies" know something. We're not agnostic. EM'S commit- is key. T~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~are incarnate in ments are the same as those of FA in worldwide analytic studies of practical action and practical reason: In the society' Therein they are 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- ETHNOMETHODOLOGY'S PROGRAM 7 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.' 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 gene~ality.~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, " Catalog of EM Investigations with Which to rationality, science, truth, respecified and Respecifi 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 Inzmortal, 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 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 Specifj, 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 ' The unique - adequacy requirement of methods is Flow, Service Lines, and Computer Supported Real Time explained briefly in Garfinkel and Wieder, 1992. Occupations. SOCIAL PSYCHO1,OGY QUARTERLY 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- For a deep explication of that claim see Schegloff, ing and methods of constructive analysis to 1987. specify the generality of remedial expertise. ETHNOMETHODOLOGY'S PROGRAM 9 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 pedagogics. 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*' 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 carefulYdescriptions; nied by ethnomethodological alternates, and in the praxeological validity of instructed they are accompanied everywhere. Wherever action^;^ and in one of EM's distinctive in an actual investigation one is found, the results and its central uhenomenon: 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 investigation^.^ 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:1° 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 A collection of EM investigations estab- consist of at the worksite, as the worksite, lishes and specifies, by making instructably first time through? FA investigations and EM studies are both and simultaneously incommensurably differ- ' 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 Valid~tyof Instructed Action. In an aspect of their curious absence, EM alternates 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 works~tem~sreading a description as instructably the work of mainstreaming is done in details of structures. work of following which exhibits the phenomenon that 'O Maynard and Clayman (1991) first used this term to the text describes. describe the alternates. 10 SOCIAL PSYCHO1>OGY QUARTERLY 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, althouih 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 procedurallyL1 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- libraryL2of 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 immortalL4ordinary society whose particu- of investigations and by both technologies of analysis, FA and EM. Their takes are '~mmortalis 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 lated. For one thing-one organizational greeting to a freeway traffic jam where there is this to 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." 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 sonzehow, 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 formal analytic practices. You can't do it the detail could be. In and as of the just thisness (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 thitzg as of their doing, as of their own I' By way of a reminder, in ethnomethodology doing, but not of their very own, singular, distinctive procedurnl 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 driuings doings are in concert phenomenal-field details of producing it. doing. '* Jorge Louis Borges talks about a "The Library of Immortnl 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 l3 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, ETHNOMETHODOLOGY'S PROGRAM lar staffs so concerted their activities as to EM took itI8 that the workings of immortal, exhibit to~icsof 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. s~ecifi- 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 ethnomethodoloeicalu 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. l9 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 l8 Took it, that is, beyond hermeneutics, beyond sociology's fundamental phenomenon. l7 interpretive sociology, certainly beyond Husserl's Leb- ens+velror 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). '"arious 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%pelled with an asterisk is a proxy for any research program. She shows in the detailrd texts of The and all topics of logic, meaning, reason, method . . . Elententar! Forms of the Religiou~Lfe, as the book's 17 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. 12 SOCIAL PSYCHOL,OGY QUARTERLY 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 bodylworld 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 LITALTZ0pairs Mooers. Graduate studies with the use of are preposterous problems. Mooers' "Zatocoding" and "Catalog" began at UCLA in 1954. They were developed in 2.1 A Collection of FA Literatures and Their PhD dissertations at UCLA, and later by EM Alternates2 faculty and students at other universities: UC 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 sub.jects 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 'I By demoilsfrable I mean instructably observable. '' Credit is long overdue for Florian Znaniecki's ETHNOMETHODOLOGY'S PROGRAM no~s.~'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 FAIEM 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
Harold Garfinkel is Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Department of Sociology at UCLA. His research interest is with the problem of social order.