Harold Garfinkel - Selected Publications

Selected Publications

The bulk of Garfinkel’s original writings came in the form of scholarly articles and technical reports most of which were subsequently republished as book chapters. To appreciate the sequential development of Garfinkel's thought, however, it is important to understand when these pieces were actually written. Although published in 2006, Seeing Sociologically was actually written as an annotated version of a draft dissertation proposal two years after arriving at Harvard. Toward a Sociological Theory of Information was also written while Garfinkel was a student and was based on a 1952 report prepared in conjunction with the Organizational Behavior Project at Princeton. Some of Garfinkel’s early papers on ethnomethodology were republished as Studies in Ethnomethodology. This publication is well known by many sociologists. Garfinkel subsequently published an edited anthology showcasing selected examples of ethnomethodologically-informed work. Later still, a mix of previously published papers and some new writing was released as Ethnomethodology’s Program: Working Out Durkheim's Aphorism. This latter collection, in conjunction with the Studies, represent the definitive exposition of the ethnomethodological approach. Garfinkel had planned to publish a companion piece to Ethnomethodology’s Program, which was tentatively entitled, "Workplace and Documentary Diversity of Ethnomethodological Studies of Work and Sciences by Ethnomethodology's Authors: What did we do? What did we learn?". This project was never completed, but some preliminary notes were published in Human Studies.