ethnomethodology
ethnomethodologyA sociological approach that emerged from the breakdown of the so-called orthodox consensus in the mid-1960s. The label was coined by the American sociologist Harold Garfinkel, who laid the foundations of ethnomethodology as a theory and as a self-conscious critique of all conventional sociology. Explaining the origins of the term, he suggests that ‘ “ethno” seemed to refer, somehow or other, to the availability to a member of common-sense knowledge of his society… If it were “ethno-botany”, then it had to do somehow or other with his knowledge of and his grasp of what were for members adequate methods for dealing with botanical matters … and the notion of “ethnomethodology” was taken in this sense’ (‘The Origins of the Term “Ethnomethodology” ’, in R. J. Hill and K. S. Crittenden (eds.), Proceedings of the Purdue Symposium on Ethnomethodology, 1968). This interest led Garfinkel to analyse, in great detail,...
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