Ethnomethodology provides methods which have been used in ethnographic studies to produce accounts of people's methods for negotiating everyday situations. Ethnomethodology is the study of methods people use for understanding and producing the social order in which they live. Ethnomethodology is a perspective within sociology that focuses on the way people make sense of their everyday world, and there are three central strands to ethnomethodology: Mundane Reasoning, Membership Categorization, and Conversational Analysis.
Ethnomethodology generally seeks to provide an alternative to mainstream sociological approaches. Ethnomethodology is a sociological theory developed by Harold Garfinkel, building on the influence of phenomenologists such as Edmund Husserl and Alfred Schutz and more recent linguistic philosophers.
Indexicality as used in ethnomethodology refers to the contextual nature of behavior and talk. reflexivity as used in ethnomethodology means that an object or behavior and talk have a mirror-like relationship. Commonsense reasoning as used in ethnomethodology is also referred to as mundane reasoning. In its most radical form, Ethnomethodology poses a challenge to the social sciences as a whole.
Ethnomethodology means the study of people's practices or methods. This is a micro-perspective and it does not see the social world as an objective reality but as something that people must build and rebuild constantly in their thoughts and actions. Rather than treating ordinary members of society as ‘cultural dopes’, driven by society.
Ethnomethodology tries to uncover the methods and practices that are used by people as they create the taken-for-granted-world. Recognising everyday life as an achievement, collective sense making, and the central importance of talk as a social process, ethnomethodology had an impact on all those arenas of sociology where ordinary interaction is an element.
Ethnomethodology and sociology: an introduction -
Stephen Linstead.
Abstract: Ethnomethodology set out an
alternative programme to reveal social order as a dynamic, contingent 'ongoing
accomplishment'. This introduction to the special section discusses the
contributions of each of the papers, which cover mundane
reasoning, social learning, the early acquisition of social competence, and the
application of membership categorization analysis to gender, in relation to the
continuing relevance of Garfinkel's legacy to contemporary sociological theory and
practice.
Garfinkel, Harold. 1984. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Malden MA: Polity Press/Blackwell Publishing.
Garfinkel, Harold. 1986. Ethnomethodological Studies of Work. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Garfinkel, Harold. 2002. Ethnomethodology's Program. New York: Rowan and Littlefield.
Sacks, Harvey. 1992. Lectures on Conversation. Oxford:Blackwell.