I hope neither you nor anyone else took my note on structural
vs microsocial models as a criticism of _you_. It was meant
to simply identify the strengths and weaknesses of a particular
bias in viewpoint -- we all have such biases. It's also interesting
that your experience with these issues has focussed on the
contrast between individual-intentional and public-accountable;
that is probably what puts ethnometh solidly in sociology rather
than psych (another bias!). But I had in mind more the issue
of local, as in situation-specific and taking the scope of data
and inquiry as situation-bound, vs. global (from slightly globalized
as in intertextuality, to more so as with Latour's networks, to
exclusively so as in most structural models).
I find ethnomethodological perspectives often wonderful for
close analysis of those aspects of situations which depend
mainly on other aspects of the same situation. And I recognize
that such dependencies may themselves generalize across
similar situations.. It's the aspects that depend on more
distant connections to otherwise dissimilar situations/events,
linked only through concepts that arise in making those further
sorts of 'external' connections and comparisons, where I find
other models more helpful (though of course I believe in a
dialectical analysis that moves from micro-situated to macro-
structural and back again). You might find Boudieu's own
critique of ethnomethodology in _Invitation to Reflexive Sociology_
useful. I generally agree with it, though I might put it in
slightly different terms, and would not be fully satisfied
with his alternative (though I like most of it so far as it
goes). JAY.
JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
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