Abstract
This chapter will position ethnomethodology in the praxis of sociology and phenomenology to trace Garfinkel’s theoretical heritage and highlight his intellectual innovation. With this historical investigation, I will outline the pathways along which individual social actor’s order-producing and -maintaining work (including but not limited to languaging and communicating efforts) comes to take centre stage in Garfinkel’s thought. Ethnomethodology, even in its heyday, was never recognised as the mainstream of sociological thinking. However, as accounted by Garfinkel (2002), ethnomethodology claims to be the heir to Emile Durkheim—the father of sociology, and its project is to carry on with the study of ‘social facts’ which is famously contained in the aphorism by Durkheim (1895/1982, p. 60): ‘The first and fundamental rule [of sociology] is to consider social facts as things’. There are many different interpretations of Garfinkel’s program and its status in both sociology and philosophy; my view is that, despite that ethnomethodology represents a radical way to do sociology, its concern is still a sociological one though phenomenology fuelled its innovative power. I will explain this in the following.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Earlier in the same book, Durkheim defines social facts in the following words: ‘A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint; or again, every way of acting that is general throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own right independent of its individual manifestations’ (1895/1982, p. 60).
- 2.
I mainly follow Heritage’s (1984) interpretation, which sees ethnomethodology as a creative solution to the sociological problem of order by drawing upon phenomenological resources. Hilbert (1992) provides valuable insights concerning the roots of Garfinkel’s thinking: Parsons’s theory suppressed the very classical ideas in Durkheim and Weber’s theories; by correcting Parsons’s theory of social action, Garfinkel resurrected the very core of classical sociology. He offers detailed arguments that linked up classical ideas in Durkheim and Weber with empirical ethnomethodological studies.
- 3.
Following Durkheim, Garfinkel defines ‘immortal, ordinary society’ as ‘the society that is there prior to and independent of the methods and discourse for describing it’ (Garfinkel, 2002, p. 143).
- 4.
Psathas (2004) gives a detailed documentation of their exchanges during 1950s–1960s.
- 5.
It is based on Husserl’s two concepts called ‘and so forth’ and ‘one can always again’. (Husserl, 1969, p. 189).
- 6.
Schütz makes a distinction between first-order constructs of lay people and second-order constructs of social scientists: ‘The thought objects constructed by the social scientist, in order to grasp this social reality, have to be founded upon the thought objects constructed by the common-sense thinking of men, living their daily life within their social world. Thus, the constructs of the social sciences are, so-to-speak, constructs of the second degree, that is, constructs of the constructs made by the actors on the social scene’ (1962, p. 59).
- 7.
The problem lies in Husserl’s understanding of ‘constitution’, a fundamental concept explaining how the objective world with its spatio-temporal conditions, which occupies a central place in our everyday lifeworld, is constituted intersubjectively. Schütz engages with the deep ambiguity in Husserl’s conception of ‘constitution’. He comments: ‘But unobstrusively, and almost unaware, it seems to me, the idea of constitution has changed from a clarification of sense-structure, from an explication of the sense of being, into the foundation of the structure of being; it has changed from explication to creation […]’(quoted in Natanson 1973, p. 28). For Schütz, this accounts for Husserl’s failure to work out his theory of empathy and resolve the problem of the other selves.
- 8.
References
Atkinson, J. M. (1978). Discovering suicide: Studies in the social organization of sudden death. London: Macmillan.
Durkheim, E. (1895). Les règles de la méthode sociologique [English version: Durkheim, E. (1982). The rules of sociological method (W. D. Halls, Trans.)]. New York: Free Press.
Durkheim, E. (1897). Le suicide [English version: Durkheim, E. (1952). Suicide: A study in sociology (J. A. Spaulding, & G. Simpson, Trans.)]. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Eberle, T. S. (2012). Phenomenological life-world analysis and ethnomethodology’s program. Human Studies, 35(2), 279–304.
Garfinkel, H. (1952). The perception of the other: A study in social order. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University.
Garfinkel, H. (1967a). Practical sociological reasoning: Some features in the work of the Los Angeles suicide prevention center. In E. S. Schneidman (Ed.), Essays in self-destruction. New York: International Science Press.
Garfinkel, H. (1967b). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Garfinkel, H. (1991). Respecification: Evidence for locally produced, naturally accountable phenomena of order, logic, reason, meaning, method, etc. in and as of the essential haecceity of immortal ordinary society, (I) – an announcement of studies. In G. Button (Ed.), Ethnomethodology and the human sciences (pp. 10–19). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Garfinkel, H. (2002). In A. W. Rawls (Ed.), Ethnomethodology’s program: Working out Durkeim’s aphorism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.
Hilbert, R. A. (1992). The classical roots of ethnomethodology: Durkheim, Weber, and Garfinkel. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Husserl, E. (1969). Formale und transzendentale logik. Versuch einer kritik der logischen vernunft [English version: Husserl, E. (1969). Formal and transcendental logic (D. Cairns, Trans.)]. The Hague, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff.
Lynch, M. (1993). Scientific practice and ordinary action. Cambridge, MA: University Press.
Lynch, M. (2004). Misreading Schutz: A response to Dennis on ‘lynch on Schutz on science’. Theory & Science, 5(1), 1–9.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1973). Phenomenology and the sciences of man. In M. A. Natanson (Ed.), Phenomenology and the social sciences (Vol. 1, pp. 47–108). Chicago, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Natanson, M. A. (Ed.). (1973). Phenomenology and the social sciences. Chicago, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Parsons, T. (1937). The structure of social action. A study in social theory with special reference to a group of recent European writers. New York: McGraw Hill.
Psathas, G. (1977). Ethnomethodology as a phenomenological approach in the social sciences. In R. Zaner & D. Ihde (Eds.), Interdisciplinary phenomenology. The Hague, The Netherlands: Martinus-Nijhoff.
Psathas, G. (1989). Phenomenology and sociology. Theory and research. Boston: The Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology: University Press of America.
Psathas, G. (2004). Alfred Schutz’s influence on American sociologists and sociology. Human Studies, 27(1), 1–35.
Psathas, G. (2009). The correspondence of Alfred Schutz and Harold Garfinkel: What was the “terra incognita” and the “treasure island”? In H. Nasu, L. Embree, G. Psathas, & I. Srubar (Eds.), Alfred schutz and his intellectual partners (pp. 401–433). Konstanz, Germany: UVK.
Rogers, M. F. (1983). Sociology, ethnomethodology, and experience: A phenomenological critique. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Schütz, A. (1945). On multiple realities. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 5(4), 533–576.
Schütz, A. (1962). In M. Natanson (Ed.), Collected papers I: The problem of social reality. The Hague, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff.
Sharrock, W. (2004). What Garfinkel makes of Schutz: The past, present and future of an alternate, asymmetric and incommensurable approach to sociology. Theory & Science, 5(1), 1–13.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Zhou, F. (2020). From Durkheim to Garfinkel: Social Facts and Social Order. In: Models of the Human in Twentieth-Century Linguistic Theories. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1255-1_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1255-1_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-15-1254-4
Online ISBN: 978-981-15-1255-1
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)