Pragmatism and Ethnomethodology

Abstract

Three features of pragmatist thought remain empirically underdeveloped or insufficiently explored: its call for a return to experience or recovery of concrete practices; its idea that obstacles in experience give rise to efforts at creative problem-solving; and its understanding of language in use, including conversational interaction, as an order of empirical practices in and through which problem-solving efforts are undertaken and social order ongoingly and collaboratively accomplished. Our aim in this article is to show that there exists a long-standing, theoretically informed, and empirically rich research tradition in which these pragmatist themes are further developed, albeit in ways the originators might have foreseen only in dimly programmatic form. This research tradition is ethnomethodology. We present in bold strokes the classical pragmatist ideas of Peirce, James, Mead, Dewey, plus Addams, focusing on the three themes mentioned above. We show how Garfinkel’s work surpasses even that of the pragmatists in developing the larger implications and promise of those themes. We demonstrate how ethnomethodological studies of work and science and conversation analysis, respectively, continue as well to develop the original pragmatist impulse in unsuspected ways. Finally, we step back from this account to ponder the broader significance of the connections we have explored between pragmatism and ethnomethodology.