Ethnomethodological Recovery of Durkheim

Abstract

When Parsons derived action theory from Durkheim's sociology, he also argued with Durkheim, disputed his claims, and expressly rejected some of his fundamental principles. Accordingly, American functionalism contained a hidden “negative image” of Durkheim. Parsons's student, Harold Garfinkel, addressed functionalism at its weak points, eventually overthrowing most of what Parsons had to say about society. Some of these weak points were predicated on Parsons's rejection of Durkheim, including explicit rejection of Durkheim's equivalences between society, morality, and objective reality. Garfinkel's ethnomethodology therefore rejected what had been premised on Parsons's rejection of Durkheim. In so doing, it reversed the negative image of Durkheim back to its positive classical form and empirically demonstrated some of Durkheim's most troubling principles. Since Garfinkel did not deliberately recover Durkheim in this manner, the dynamics of this case make it an interesting study of how theorists read other theorists.