Ethnomethodology's Legacies and Prospects

Abstract

This article considers the large range of empirical research that has emerged under the broad aegis of ethnomethodology, in the period between the publication of Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967) and the present day. Starting with a brief overview of Garfinkel's intellectual career, we discuss the relation of ethnomethodology to Schütz's phenomenology, Parsons's systems theory, and Weber's concern with meaning construction. A central concern was with the problem of contextuality, which Garfinkel initially addressed by drawing on, while fashioning in his own way, Mannheim's concern with the documentary method of interpretation. Ethnomethodologically-related studies have proliferated in a variety of domains, including conversation analysis, membership categorization analysis, and (related to Garfinkel's own early work) empirical initiatives in the study of everyday life involving racial, gender and other minoritized groups. Further ethnomethodological studies emerged from legal environments, from social problems and deviance, and in relation to ability differences. Still other investigations concerned instructed action and its ramifications for the sciences, technology and organizations, including the workplace. A longstanding concern for ethnomethodology has been with the conduct of social sciences—how coding is done, how surveys are conducted, and how standardization is achieved. Many of these areas have given rise to thriving subfields, have dedicated journals, and resulted in applications. Few initiatives in sociological theory have resulted in a wider range of innovative research than Garfinkel's and successor studies showing, explicating, and demonstrating the organization of details in social life and their consequences for social order.