ethnomethodology

Question 1

What is Ethnomethodology

Answer 1

• it’s a specialised interpretivist approach that aims to analyse how people construct and make sense of social activity by uncovering the meanings in situations

Question 2

What do people share unconsciously?

Answer 2

• they share complex unwritten rules using this commonsensical knowledge

Question 3

GARFINKEL: Reflexivity

Answer 3

• he believes that social meanings that people share can’t be taken for granted because they are potentially unclear

Question 4

What is reflexivity

Answer 4

• the way that two individuals in social interaction will mirror each other’s behaviour and talk in a way that make sense to both of them

Question 5

Investigating social meaning

Answer 5

• ethnomethodologists believe we only become aware of these rules and their social meaning when they break down

Question 6

GARFINKEL: 2 methods to investigate social meaning

Answer 6

1. CONVERSATIONAL analysis
2. INFORMAL SOCIAL experiments

• he argued that these help to show that social order is not inevitable rather it’s done by people sharing rules about how interaction evolved

Question 7

investigating social meaning:

1. CONVERSATIONAL analysis

Answer 7

• recording conversation that is part of routine social interactions to identify shared meanings

Question 8

Investigating social meaning:

2. INFORMAL SOCIAL experiments

Answer 8

• set of social experiments that aim to break the accepted rule that underpin family and to challenge reflexivity

Question 9

Evaluation

Answer 9

+ challenges the idea that people are puppets of society ( social behaviour is socially constructed and depends on the sharing of rules)

• dismiss ethnomethodology as self indulgent due to its findings are interpreted as trivial
• everyday reality is still influenced by social forces which are beyond people’s control