Chapter Summary

What is Ethnomethodology?

Ethnomethodology is the study of the methods or practices that people use to accomplish their everyday lives. The founder of this sociological approach, Harold Garfinkel (1917-), was particularly interested in how social actors provide accounts of situations. Ethnomethodologists are not so much concerned with the actual content of these accounts, but rather with the practice of accounting as a topic of analysis. For example, an ethnomethodologist might study how a telephone conversation is shaped by the actions of a caller and the responses of a receiver rather than by the subject matter of the conversation. Early ethnomethodological research included breaching experiments, which required subjects to deliberately disrupt the typical procedures of everyday actions (e.g., addressing family members in a formal manner). Today, ethnomethodologists focus their studies on social interactions in two broad areas: conversation analysis and institutional settings.

Conversation Analysis

The goal of conversation analysis is to study the ways in which conversations are organized. The unit of analysis of this method is the relationship among utterances, not the relationship between speakers and hearers. Conversation analysts have researched a variety of different types of speech, including telephone conversations, laughter, applause, booing, and even nonverbal communication. The openings of telephone conversations have been analyzed to discover the sequences social actors use to identify and recognize each other without the benefit of visual contact. The organization of utterances has also been analyzed in terms of how laugher is initiated. In a two-party conversation, the speaker uses two techniques to generate laughter from the listener: either laughing at the end of an utterance or laughing mid-sentence. However, in a multi-party conversation, someone other than the speaker usually initiates laughter.

Political speeches have also been analyzed in terms of how politicians generate applause from their audiences. Politicians have been found to use seven different rhetorical devices to generate applause, the most common being contrasting the same point within a statement. Applause, like agreement, is generated promptly, in an unqualified manner, and requires no special account. In contrast, disagreement, particularly booing a public speaker, is delayed, qualified, and accountable. Unlike applause or agreement, booing is not a result of individual decision-making, but of mutual monitoring among audience members. Audience members will listen for vocal cues (e.g., whispering or jeering) among each other, and they will predict from these cues that no one will be booing alone.

Other important findings of conversation analysts include the fact the story-telling is a collaborative process: audiences are not passive recipients of stories, but can actively shape a story as it is being told. Conversation analysts have also found that shyness and self-confidence, usually thought of as psychological traits, are actually accomplished through speech acts, particularly "setting-talk." "Setting-talk" refers to talk about our immediate surroundings (e.g., the weather). Shyness is accomplished by engaging in "setting-talk," while self-confidence is accomplished by addressing the actual topic at hand.

Studies of Institutions

Analyzing conversations and social interactions that take place within institutional settings is another area of research for ethnomethodologists. Research of job interviews has found that interviewers use different strategies to prevent interviewees from returning to or even correcting questions that have been asked. A study of negotiations among business executives discovered that they are generally detached and impersonal. Telephone calls to emergency centers have been found to be structured in such a way that confusion arises because of the lack of everyday openings, sequences, and recognition. While emergency dispatchers are often blamed for this confusion, ethnomethodologists have shown that it is the specific organization of the conversation that causes mishaps. Finally, research on mediation hearings has shown that the institutional setting of conflict resolution lessens the chance of conversations escalating into arguments.

Criticisms of Traditional Sociology

Ethnomethodologists are critical of traditional sociologists because the latter focus on the socially constructed world instead of the everyday practices of social actors. According to ethnomethodologists, traditional sociologists distort the social world by relying too much on statistical analysis and preconceived coding categories, which mask the sophisticated interactions people use to accomplish everyday life. Indeed, traditional sociologists are becoming increasing removed from the real world as they come to depend on research techniques that do not require them to actually observe everyday practices. Ethnomethodologists criticize conventional sociologists for confusing topic and resource — the everyday social world becomes more of a resource than a topic in its own right.

Stresses and Strains in Ethnomethodology

Conventional sociologists view this sociological perspective with suspicion, because they feel it focuses on trivial matters. Others worry that ethnomethodology has become increasingly removed from its phenomenological roots, neglecting internal motivations for action. Another concern raised by ethnomethodologists is that the perspective is beginning to lose sight of its original radical reflexivity, particularly the emphasis on how all social activity is accomplished. Finally, although some ethnomethodologists worry about the capacity for this perspective to bridge the micro-macro divide, others feel that there are positive signs that ethnomethodology is well-suited for synthesizing and integrating micro-level interactions with macro-level structures. Indeed, the "radical thesis" of ethnomethodology is that it transcends the issue of micro-macro linkages because micro and macro structures are generated simultaneously.