Date: 	Tue, 13 May 1997 11:54:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ziggy Rivkin-Fish <ziggy@princeton.edu>
Reply-To: Ziggy Rivkin-Fish <ziggy@princeton.edu>
To: Sociology Graduate Students -- International <socgrad@csf.colorado.edu>
Subject: Re: Ethnomethodology
In-Reply-To: <9704138635.AA863562304@smtplink.lse.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.95.970513112311.22820A-100000@tucson.princeton.edu>
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On Tue, 13 May 1997 M.AMOAH@lse.ac.uk wrote:

> Is ethnomethodology postmodernist?  
> 
> >As for a distinction with 
> >Phenomenology, Ethnomethodology is generally more structuralist, very 
> >much in a Parsonian way -- but so is PostModernism for that matter.

Parsonian structural-functionalism is structural like postmodernism!???
Garfinkel wrote his book in explicit challenge to Parsons (see Heritage's
excellent exposition of Garfinkel). Garfinkel sought to solve the problem
that Parsons had sought out to tackle before (Hobbes' problem of how
social order is possible), but Garfinkel sought to show that order is
contructed and is endemic to micro-level interactions and therfore does
not need to be integrated on a macro-functional level via a mystical form
of integration. Garfinkel also rejected Parsons notion of norm and showed
how interactive regularities and order derives from expectations that can
be amended, challenged, rejected, appropriated, used etc. If there is a
structuralism in Garfinkel I fail to see it. Indeed, the disparate
elements and rules taht make up the Garfinkelean universe seems much less
structuralist than Berger and Luckmann's monumental treatise which is 
integrated.

On Tue, 13 May 1997, Alan wrote:

> Ethnomethodology is definitely NOT postmodernist in terms of denying
> the possibilities of formalized theory and truths, it is definitely
> a precursor to postmodernist approaches in its treatment of discourse
> as social-factual.

I aggree with the first part of the statement, but which forms of
sociology do not treat discourse as social-factual (incuding Parsonian,
Weberian, Marxian, Durkheimian, Simmelian...)? Treating ethnomethodology
as pre-postmodern is reaching a little, but some similarities include
1) The narrative construction of the subject (Garfinkel's study of Agnes, 
   post-hoc accounts of reality etc.)
2) Destabilized social reality (not made out of fixed norms, but
   challengable, fragile expectations that can break down)
3) Emphasis on the situation (as opposed to macro-structural approaches,
   which tend to see the situation as a derivative of macro-structures)
4) Rejection of grand narratives for social explanations
5) Rejection of positivist causal framework for social science
6) Reflexivity of method (that the social scientist is not external to
   the sitation that s/he studies, but is deeply embedded in it, and thus
   there is a potential need to examine the scientist as part of the
   explanation/situation, ot explicate the criteria by which the
   scientist makes his/her judgements)

Postmodernism has many different incarnations and versions, but it tends
to focus more on power (in a Foucaultian sense rather than Weberian one)
than ethnomethodology originally did. But most later users of
ethnoemthodology have seen it as a useful tool to explicate larger power
formations from the micro level or the micro-techniques of power that
Foucault examined (Giddens, Bourdieu, Cicourel, Collins, West etc.) An
early brilliant use of ethnomethodology was done by Candace West and Don
Zimmerman to show how interactants 'do gender'.

Ziggy

=++++++++++++++++++++++=
^ Ziggy Rivkin-Fish    ^
^ Dept of Sociology    ^
^ 2-N-1 Green Hall     ^
^ Princeton University ^
^ Princeton, NJ 08544  ^
=++++++++++++++++++++++=