Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 11:13:36 -0700
Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970515110735.08f7d126@pop.ben2.ucla.edu>
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To: socgrad@csf.colorado.edu
From: Jill Marie Stein <jstein@ucla.edu>
Subject: re: Harold Garfinkel
As a student of Harold Garfinkel's here at UCLA, I can't resist telling some
HG stories myself, from one who "sat at the foot of the master".  Personally
TR, I like to think of Harold as being more of a "character" than an
"ass-hole", but either way he is definitely NOT an easy person.  When I
decided to enroll in his grad course on Ethnomethodology, I did so knowing
that there was as much a chance of getting an "F" as an "A", (he had been
known to fail otherwise excellent students) and that I was willing to risk
that just for the experience of working with him.   The entire class was
like an experiment in EM.  I had the sensation the whole time that I was
chasing a mirage... just as I started to come upon something that I could
grasp, my previous understanding would disappear as I took another step
forward.  It was absolutely exhilarating.  Harold often created his own
vocabulary for referring to things (I suppose he found the given language
too constraining), and once you got the meaning of the words, he would make
up new ones.   He would give us vexing assignments (ie: go home and watch
the phone ringing), which he would rarely explain or discuss even after we
completed them.  He patently disavowed not only others' interpretations of
his work (and their own EM studies), but the value of almost anything he had
ever done up until what he was currently working on (scientific discovery).
During the semester he took each of his students (only a half dozen or so
had survived past the first weeks), individually, to lunch and discussed
what we were interested in.  His encouragement to continue in radical or
controversial pursuits was something I will always treasure.  He told me to
learn to play the game but to look for those (subversive) compatriots where
I could find them.   His final assignment for the course was for us to write
a "Dear Harold" letter telling him what we got out of it.  I called him to
ask whether I could turn the paper in late and he hung up on me.  I took
that as a "no" and made the deadline.  I won't say here what grade I got, it
wasn't the point.  What I can say is that studying with him was one of the
great highlights of my career as a sociologist, and perhaps beyond.  JILL