Egon Bittner: Approaching Explications

Abstract

Egon Bittner was a phenomenological sociologist who made extensive and fundamental contributions to ethnomethodology, the sociological study of mental illness, organisational sociology, the sociology of professions, and to the study of police and police work. His studies of the police are justly famous, and earned him the soubriquet ‘criminologist’. However, his work is not limited to what may be perceived as criminology and we suggest that the prima facie categorisation of his studies as ‘criminology’ hides the aspect of his police studies as elaborative of his work on organisations. This paper provides an overview of Bittner’s sociological work. Reviews and critiques of his work on crime and policing are available elsewhere (Brodeur 1994 2001). This paper details themes, e.g., Bittner’s engagement with colleagues who were attempting to work out how sociology accounted for sociological phenome‐ na, inter alia, Harold Garfinkel and Edward Rose; Rose’s ‘Larimer Street’ ethno‐ graphies on Denver’s skid row, which Bittner joined to conduct fieldwork with the police; and Bittner’s observations on the use of statistics and adequacy of methods for discipline-specific and organisational purposes. These threads consolidate an overview of Bittner as a phenomenological sociologist – and his seminal contribu‐ tions to ethnomethodology and ethnography – as well as a researcher on policing; studies of police work may have been his bailiwick, but we suggest that policing was an adventitious and specialised expression of his sociological work.2