Studies of the Routine Grounds of Everyday Activities Author(s): Harold Garfinkel Source: Social Problems, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Winter, 1964), pp. 225-250 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Study of Social Problems Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/798722 Accessed: 05-01-2017 21:37 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/798722?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Oxford University Press, Society for the Study of Social Problems are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Problems This content downloaded from 128.192.54.167 on Thu, 05 Jan 2017 21:37:21 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms The Social Problems of the Sociologist 225 sources, the traps of the post civiliza- to increase in intensity as the dis- tion period. 3) We must accept with cipline moves along its uneven course equanimity the varied roles of teacher, in becoming a profession and as it at- researcher, consultant, administrator, tempts to use wisely its new power and others yet to emerge, utilizing andall to meet its concomitant obligations of these opportunities to advance the and expectations. The new-found pow- growth of the discipline, its work sys- er will confound, confuse, and mislead tem, and its professional collectivities, some of us. There are two old sayings: and to promote a more just society thatas one can swell with power or grow well. Finally, we must recognize that with power, and that a dying fish be- norm inconsistencies are peculiar to ginsall to swell in the head. I believe social systems. Ambivalence and am- that sociologists will choose to grow biguity for the sociologist will continue with power. STUDIES OF THE ROUTINE GROUNDS OF EVERYDAY ACTIVITIES HAROLD GARFINKEL University of California, Los Angeles THE PROBLEM treated by members as the "natural For Kant the moral order "within" facts of life," are massive facts of the was an awesome mystery; for sociolo- members' daily existence both as a real gists the moral order "without" is aworld and as the product of activities technical mystery. From the point of in a real world. They furnish the view of sociological theory the moral "fix," the "this is it" to which the order consists of the rule governed ac- waking state returns one, and are the tivities of everyday life. A society's points of departure and return for members encounter and know the every modification of the world of moral order as perceivedly normal daily life that is achieved in play, courses of action-familiar scenes of dreaming, trance, theatre, scientific everyday affairs, the world of daily theorizing, or high ceremony. life known in common with others In every discipline, humanistic or and with others taken for granted. scientific, the familiar common sense They refer to this world as the world of everyday life is a matter of "natural facts of life" which, for mem- abiding interest. In the social sciences, bers, are through and through moral and in sociology particularly, it is a facts of life. For members not onlymatter of essential preoccupation. It are matters so about familiar scenes, makes up sociology's problematic sub- but they are so because it is morally ject matter, enters the very constitu- right or wrong that they are so. Fa-tion of the sociological attitude, and miliar scenes of everyday activities, exercises an odd and obstinate sov- ereignty over sociologists' claims to This investigation was supported by a Senior Research Fellowship, SF-81 from the adequate explanation. U. S. Public Health Service. I am indebted Despite the topic's centrality, an to Egon Bittner, Craig MacAndrew, Ed- immense literature contains little data ward Rose, Harvey Sacks, and Eleanor Shel- and few methods with which the es- don for their many criticisms and sug- gestions. sential features of socially recognized This content downloaded from 128.192.54.167 on Thu, 05 Jan 2017 21:37:21 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 226 SOCIAL PROBLEMS "familiar scenes" himmay about them be he hasdetected little or noth- and related to dimensions ing to say. of social organ- ization. Although Forsociologists these background expectancies take so- cially structured scenes to come into viewof oneeveryday must either be life as a point of departure a stranger tothey the "life rarelyas usual" char- see1 as a task of sociological acter of everyday inquiry scenes, or become in es- its own right the general tranged from question them. As Alfred Schutzof how any such common pointed sense out, a "special world motive" is re- pos- sible. Instead, the quired possibility to make them problematic. of In the everyday world theis sociologist's either case this settled "special mo- by theoretical representation tive" consists in theor programmatic merely task as- sumed. As a topic of treatingand a methodologicalsocietal member's practical ground for sociological circumstances, whichinquiries, include from the the definition of the common sense world member's point of view the morally of everyday life, though it is ap- necessary character of many of its propriately a project of sociological in- background features, as matters of the- quiry, has been neglected. My purposes oretic interest. The seen but unnoticed in this paper are to demonstrate the backgrounds of everyday activities essential relevance to the program of are made visible and are described sociological inquires of a concern for from a perspective in which persons common sense activities as a topic of live out the lives they do, have the inquiry in its own right and, by re- children they do, feel the feelings, porting a series of studies, to urge its think the thoughts, enter the relation- "rediscovery." ships they do, all in order to permit the sociologist to solve his theoretical MAKING COMMONPLACE SCENES problems. VISIBLE Almost alone among sociological In accounting for the stable features theorists, the late Alfred Schutz, in a of everyday activities sociologists com- series of classical studies2 of the con- monly select familiar settings such as familial households or work places and 2 Schutz, Alfred, Der Sinnhafte Aufbau ask for the variables that contribute Der Sozialen Welt, Wein: Verlag von to their stable features. Just as com- Julius Springer, 1932; "The Problem of Rationality in the Social World," Econ- monly, one set of considerations are omica, 10 (May, 1943), pp. 130-149; unexamined: the socially standardized "Some Leading Concepts in Phenomenol- and standardizing, "seen but unnotic- ogy," Social Research, 12 (1945), pp. 77- ed", expected, background features of 97; "On Multiple Realities," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 4 (June, everyday scenes. The member of the 1945), pp. 533-575; "Choosing Among society uses background expectancies Projects of Action," Philosophy and Phe- as a scheme of interpretation. In their nomenological Research, 12 (December, terms, actual appearances are for him 1951), pp. 161-184; "Common Sense and Scientific Interpretation of Human Action," recognizable and intelligible as the Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, appearances of familiar events. Dem- 14 (September, 1953), pp.1-37; "Concept onstrably he is responsive to this and Theory Formation in the Social Sci- background. At the same time he is at ences," American Journal of Philosophy, 51 (April, 1954), pp. 257-274; "Symbol, a loss to tell us what specifically the Reality and Society," Symbols and Society, expectancies consist of. When we ask Fourteenth Symposium of the Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion, edited 1 The work of Alfred Schutz, cited in by Lyman Bryson and others, New York: footnote 2, is a magnificent exception. Read- Harper and Brothers, 1955, pp. 135-202; ers who are acquainted with his writings Collected Papers: I. The Problem of Social will recognize how heavily this paper is Reality, edited by Maurice Natanson, The indebted to him. Hague; Martinus Nijhoff, 1962. This content downloaded from 128.192.54.167 on Thu, 05 Jan 2017 21:37:21 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms The Routine Grounds of Everyday Activities 227 stitutive phenomenology of the world tell us something about how the struc- of everyday life, described many of tures of everyday activities are ordi- these seen but unnoticed background narily and routinely produced and expectancies. He called them the "at- maintained.3 titude of daily life." He referred to A word of reservation. Despite their their scenic attributions as the "world procedural emphasis, my studies are known in common and taken for not properly speaking experimental. granted." Schutz' fundamental They work are demonstrations, designed, in makes it possible to pursue further Herbert the Spiegelberg's phrase, as "aids tasks of clarifying their nature and to op-a sluggish imagination." I have eration, of relating them to the foundproc- that they produce reflections esses of concerted actions, and assign-through which the strangeness of an ing them their place in an empirically obstinately familiar world can be de- imaginable society. tected. The studies reported in this paper SOME ESSENTIAL FEATURES OF attempt to detect some expectancies COMMON UNDERSTANDINGS that lend commonplace scenes their familiar, life-as-usual character, and Various to considerations dictate that relate these to the stable social struc- common understandings cannot pos- tures of everyday activities.