Ethnomethodology – Flashcards
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Who are the main thinkers of ethnomethodology?
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Harold Garfinkel and Harvey Sacks.
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What is ethnomethodology?
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The study of methods we use in interaction that make social order possible.
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What do ethnomethodologists reject?
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The idea that people can have a flawed view of social reality. People are not 'cultural dopes'.
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What did ethnomethodologists argue about traditional sociology?
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That it overlooks and neglects every day life.
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What did Harold Garfinkel (1967) argue?
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Social reality is constructed, it is not a real objective thing.
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What are the two strands of ethnomethodology?
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Studying every day life. Conversation analysis: analyses the structures of conversation.
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What are accounts?
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Explanations of our behaviours. Actions may be mundane or routine but they are in need of explanation.
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What type of experiments do ethnomethodologists use?
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Breaching experiments. Harold Garfinkel, lodger/border breaching experiment.
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In Harold Garfinkel's experiment, what were the conclusions?
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That people try to explain abnormal behaviours in every day life. For example, the family thought their child was ill or stressed.
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What are some examples of breaching experiments in the media?
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Trigger Happy TV and Punk'd.
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What is indexicality?
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How things have different meanings in different contexts.
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What was Harold Garfinkel's study of Agnes?
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Raised questions concerning whether our gender is biologically determined. Agnes was feminine etc, she had learned how to act like a woman. Agnes learned how to act like a woman by following patterns of behaviour associated with it.
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What is conversation analysis?
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The analysis of conversation, such as words, pauses, fillers, hesitations, intonation etc. Zimmerman, 1988.
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What is sequential organisation?
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Conversations are sequential; they follow on from each other. The 'tying' of words operates from utterance to utterance.
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What are some criticisms of ethnomethodology?
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Focuses on 'trivial' matters. How are these meanings constructed? Too positivist? Internal motivations are ignored.
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What did Heritage argue?
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Conversation analysts are only interested in the 'architecture of subjectivity' rather than intersubjectivity itself.
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What did Richard Fitzgerald and William Housley's (2002) work on conversation analysis explore?
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Radio phone-ins. Sequential conversation analysis. Membership categorisation analysis.
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What does the idea of a host and a caller suggest?
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The dynamics. Membership categorisation? Belong to the same device? Lexical field?
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What is membership categorisation analysis?
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How members use categories to organise interaction/s.
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What is Harvey Sacks' example?
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"The baby cried. The mommy picked it up". The 'baby' and the 'mommy' belong to the member categorisation device of 'the family'.
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According to Harvey Sacks (1995), what is the economy rule?
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By using one category from any device a person is adequately referencing a person.
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What is the consistency rule?
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If one person has been categorised under a particular device, other members of that population can also be categorised within the same collection.
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What is 'hearer's maxim'?
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Showing consideration to others in conversation.
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What are some criticisms of Ethnomethodology?
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Ian Craib: too trivial, we know most of the findings by using commonsense. If social reality is just a construct, why should we believe the ethnomethodology theory? Can everyone construct meaning? Marxists argue that constructs are ruling class ideology.
