Cheers,
(still freezingly c cold here in Toronto :-{ )
Angel
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 1995 12:11:37 -0800
From: Thomas P. Wilson <wilson who-is-at ALISHAW.UCSB.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list ETHNO
<ETHNO%RPITSVM.BITNET who-is-at UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu>
Subject: Ethnomethodology, CA, and all that
I would like to make several comments concerning the recent exchange on
ethnomethodology and CA.
First, it is essential to be clear about how one understands the word
"ethnomethodology". In particular, it is necessary to bear in mind the
disjunction between Garfinkel's early program of empirical research and his
later program of radical inquiry. The former fits closely with CA, while
the latter is explicitly hostile to it.
Garfinkel's early program can be coherently viewed as ordinary empirical
investigation of sense-making practices motivated by questions arising out
of his critique of Parsons and his, Garfinkel's, transformation of Schutz's
abstract theorizing into an empirically researchable program (see
Heritage's admirable exposition in Chapters 1-7 of _Garfinkel and
Ethnomethodology_).
However, Garfinkel's later work has abandoned the original program in favor
of what he calls "radical" inquiry (apparently, inquiry into the
foundations of all possible inquiry). This appears to be centrally
informed by Husserl's concern for the ground of knowing, but rather than
pursue Husserl's introspective phenomenology, Garfinkel is interested in
what he believes to be the unique situated practices of the individuals
present in a given situation on which their knowledge of it is based and
give it its sense of being "just this" occasion. Moreover, he expressly
contrasts radical inquiry with ordinary empirical investigation as found in
the natural and social sciences. Garfinkel's recent writings seldom refer
to and make little or no systematic use of the earlier empirical
discoveries, but he has nevertheless retained the term "ethnomethodology"
for this new program. Apparently he rejects the early work as not
sufficiently radical - initial efforts, perhaps necessary to get started,
but now irrelevant.
In contrast, CA is quite consistent with Garfinkel's early
ethnomethodological discoveries and makes important use of them. This
connection is seldom made explicit, though it is evident in Heritage's
account of CA in Chapter 8 of _Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology_. In this
sense, then, one can speak coherently of ethnomethodology/CA as a field:
ECA. Garfinkel and those attracted to his current program of radical
inquiry are explicitly and sharply critical of ECA as it has developed into
a technical discipline, and Ethnomethodology-
as-radical-inquiry does not combine with CA, if only because CA is ordinary
empirical inquiry and not in the least radical in Garfinkel's sense.
There are also numerous other accounts of ethnomethodology in the folklore
and literature of the social sciences, most of them seriously inaccurate
and some quite bizarre. As Chris Nelson remarks, it is appalling that
authors, editors, and referees continue to perpetuate these sometimes gross
misrepresentations.
Second, Mary Cotter and Chris Nelson are correct if what they have in mind
is conversation analysis and the early program of ethnomethodology: ECA is
more than simply a "methodology", though of course it has given rise to
distinctive empirical techniques and analytic procedures. Rather, ECA is a
substantive discipline, based on those techniques and procedures, having as
the core of its subject matter the fundamental processes of human social
organization wherever and whenever found, but including as well the
adaptations of these processes in particular cultural and institutional
settings. Historically, this is not how things started out, nor are
particular investigations framed in these broad terms, but rather address
specific phenomena and questions. However, retrospectively this is now
more than a merely plausible way to characterize ECA in its most general
terms. In contrast, it is not at all clear how
ethnomethodology-as-radical-inquiry should be thought of with respect to
the question of "method" vs. "field".
It is, then, one thing to use methods borrowed from or inspired by those of
ECA, or to use the substantive results of ECA research for purposes other
than pursuing ECA as such, and quite another to claim that one is doing
ECA. There has never been a patent on methods, and published knowledge is
there to be used by whomsoever will, but to be taken seriously as doing
ECA, one must in fact be doing it and not something else and calling it by
the same name.
Third, several contributors note that this raises the question of the
relation between ECA and other approaches in the social and behavioral
sciences and related fields. The issues here are complicated, and I will
make only three brief undeveloped observations.
While ECA is not radical in Garfinkel's sense, it most certainly does
depart, for empirical reasons, from the assumptions underlying most of the
social and behavioral sciences. As a consequence, one can generally
accommodate ECA to other paradigms only by selectively appropriating
fragments while neglecting the import of the larger body of work (Anthony
Giddens' theory of structuration is a clear example).
Further, ECA is not a "micro-sociology" that can be appended to a
"macro-sociological" theory, at least as this distinction is currently
understood. ECA does not deny that members of society orient to, what is
for them, a larger social world that is external to and constraining on
their actions and which transcends any particular concrete situation.
However, ECA treats this fact very differently than do standard approaches
in the social sciences.
Finally, I argued in my previous posting that ECA is not directed at the
same order of question about human social life as standard social science,
which makes the question connections even more complex.
Thomas P. Wilson
Department of Sociology
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9430
USA
Telephone: (805) 893-3344
FAX: (805) 893-3324
Internet: wilson who-is-at alishaw.ucsb.edu