Week 7 - Ethnomethodology

A baby boy picks up a utensil. He calls it a fork, when it is actually a spoon. Is he wrong? How do we know that it is a spoon? What defines a spoon? The answer lies in the haecceity, or thisness of the spoon: it's characteristics and properties that define it. What gives things these characteristics and definitions? The only reason that we, as a society, know the difference between a spoon and a fork is because we were taught the characteristics of each as a young child and these notions have been passed down through generations and are reflected in dictionaries, etc. As defined by Garfinkel, the documentary method of interpretation is the method used to make sense of such social means such as why a spoon is understood to be a spoon among societies. This method helps us recognize patterns in social situations and rationalize things for ourselves while interpreting our surroundings. The forks and spoons that the baby plays with are reinforcing that the baby is in a kitchen. The patterns of cutlery, chairs, tables, food, etc., are all justification that the setting is a kitchen because of their relevancy to the kitchen environment.

In a review of Garfinkel's idea of ethnomethodology, John Heritage states that it is "utterly devoid of significant content [and is] preoccupied with narrow methodological concerns" (1986, pp 346). John also claimed that ethnomethodology was "lacking any methodology whatsoever, especially procedures of deciding validity and replicating accounts of the social world" (pp 347). I also found Grafinkel's terms within ethnomethodology very ambiguous and hard to understand. The definitions all seem very intertwined in that they all describe ways to rationalize and understand the social world in means that make sense to oneself.


Reference
Heritage, J 1986, Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 346-349, viewed 13 September 2012.