Abstract
In this text, I discuss the concept of culture that ethnomethodology suggests. First, I will review the sources that Garfinkel refers to: While he draws heavily on Parsons’ conception of culture, he also criticizes it with reference to Schütz. I start the second part with examining Garfinkel conception of ethnos—that suffixes ‘ethnomethodology’—to then present six salient dimensions of the ethnomethodological conception of culture: (1) recognizability; (2) normatively interspersed knowledge and cooperative continuation; (3) familiarity and trust; (4) indexicality and vagueness; (5) practice; and (6) fractality and fragmentation. The text ends with some thoughts comparing the ethnomethodological notion of culture to other conceptions.
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Notes
Garfinkel refuses to accept any theoretical ex-ante models of human beings, and argues that all qualities should be understood as situational rather than intrinsic (Lynch 2012). This even includes the portrait of social actors, often emphasized by ethnomethodology, as “reflexive,” “competent,” and “situation-sensitive”. Thus, Garfinkel does not claim that social actors are omniscient in terms of history, politics, or culture; rather, that it is necessary to study sociologically in every situation the concept of man of the actors, instead of establishing it theoretically beforehand. Moreover, from an ethnomethodological point of view, the reflexivity, competency and situation-sensitivity of the actors is by no means to be viewed as their propositional knowledge, but rather adopts practical form—i.e., is implicit, procedural and contextual.
Only when their insights also make sense to the everyday actor, social scientists can claim to have adequately expounded the primary constitution of the everyday experience (Lynch 2000).
I am grateful to Ilja Srubar for this reference.
Conversation analysis examines how social order is produced in small and seemingly banal practices, and thus operates beyond a micro–macro distinction. Its focus is on the minute, often embodied and implicit everyday practices that enable the actors to produce the meaningful order and rationality of their social world in a practical manner in situ through responsive adjustment accomplished methodically and reflexively from moment to moment (Bergmann 2005: 641).
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Meyer, C. Ethnomethodology’s Culture. Hum Stud 42, 281–303 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-019-09515-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-019-09515-5