Ethnomethodology - Ethnomethodology and Traditional Sociology

Ethnomethodology and Traditional Sociology

Core differences between traditional sociology and ethnomethodology are:

1. While traditional sociology usually offers an analysis of society which takes the facticity of the social order for granted, ethnomethodology is concerned with the procedures by which that social order is produced, and shared.

2. While traditional sociology usually provides descriptions of social settings which compete with the actual descriptions offered by the individuals who are party to those settings, ethnomethodology seeks to describe the actual procedures these individuals use in their actual descriptions of those settings.

3. While Structural Functionalist research programs methodically impose pre-existing analytical schemata on their fields of study; Symbolic Interactionist programs assume the facticity of the symbols being interpreted by actors party to social scenes; and various forms of Social Constructionism assume the objective character of the building blocks that make up their descriptions of social structures, and then work retrospectively to account for these social constructions in terms of a formal, predetermined conceptual apparatus; Ethnomethodology specifically avoids engaging with these types of taken-for-granted programmatic assumptions and descriptive resources in its descriptions of social scenes.

In contrast to traditional sociological forms of inquiry, it is a hallmark of the Ethnomethodological perspective that it does not make theoretical or methodological appeals to: outside assumptions regarding the structure of an actor or actors' characterization of social reality; refer to the subjective states of an individual or groups of individuals; attribute conceptual projections such as, "value states", "sentiments", "goal orientations", "mini-max economic theories of behavior", etc., to any actor or group of actors; or posit a specific "normative order" as a transcendental feature of social scenes, etc.

For the Ethnomethodologist, the methodic realization of social scenes takes place within the actual setting under scrutiny, and is structured by the participants in that setting through the reflexive accounting of that setting's features. The job of the Ethnomethodologist is to describe the methodic character of these activities, not account for them in a way that transcends that which is made available in and through the actual accounting practices of the individual's party to those settings.

In 1967, Garfinkel states: Ethnomethodology's, "...central recommendation is that the activities whereby members produce and manage settings of organized everyday affairs are identical with member's procedures for making those settings 'account-able' "(1967:1).

Over thirty-five years later, Garfinkel states: "Phenomena of order are identical with procedures for their endogenous production and accountability" (2002:72).

Although the language has changed, the message remains the same: social orders are identical with the procedures members of a particular social group employ to produce and manage a particular setting of organized everyday affairs. These social orders are endogenous, and made available for study through the demonstrable accounting practices of the group members party to that particular setting.

These characters of particularity and embeddedness of the: social order, procedures, activities, accounts, and person's party to such settings are essential features of the ethnomethodological perspective, and clearly differentiate it from traditional sociological forms.