Date: 	Tue, 13 May 1997 02:38:36 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ziggy Rivkin-Fish <ziggy@princeton.edu>
To: Sociology Graduate Students -- International <socgrad@csf.colorado.edu>
Subject: Re: Ethnomethodology
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On Mon, 12 May 1997, Dave Alan Coon (: wrote:

> Is ethnography one form of ethnomethodology?

It could be, but usually is not. The "ethno-" part certainly refers to
studying people in 'natural action' situations, but ethnomethodology has
room for an experimental approach (via breeching actions taht serve to 
bring out taken-for-granted assumptions of action by intentinally
acting agaist expectations and thereby shaking your informants
taken-for-granted notion of reality) that is usually a no-no in
the deep-immersion anthropological ethnography, or the interview-based
sociological variant. The suffix "-methodology" is quite important because
it refers to examining the methodologies that interactants use to create,
infer, and act in social situations (very much like the social scientist,
hence also a reflexive emphasis on the scientist's own
ethnomethodologies). The interactive assumptions of doings in social
situations seems to me to be a different level of analysis than
anthropologists' emphasis on larger (extra-situational) strategies and
culture or sociologists' emphases on aggregate (and thus
individual) beliefs and values (I know I am painting very broad brushes
about anthro and soc here). 

Ziggy Rivkin-Fish
Sociology, Princeton