“I’m trying to become a dog myself so I can carefully examine dog’s life.” – Father
Description and History
What is Ethnomethodology?
Ethnomethodology is an area in sociology originating in the work of Harold Garfinkel (1967). It studies everyday methods people use for the production of social order and has an objective to document the methods and practices through which society’s members make sense of their world. 
Ethnomethodology is also not designed to provide people with judgments on human behavior or its causes, but rather to explain how people interact with each other and with society at large. People do ethnomethology all the time even they do not realize it. For example a kindergarten teacher explaining a concept to his students usually thinks about the way in which the students approaches the world and processes information to put the concept in terms the kindergarten students will understand. The Greek roots of Ethnomethodology literally mean the methods people use.
Ethnomethodology in HCI
HCI researchers admit that ethnomethodology have some legacies in HCI field. The most important legacy is ethnomethodology encourages HCI researchers to have a commitment to respect those human subjects who they study. This attitude can result in deep understandings of the object of the research. Button and Dourish (1996) mentioned that HCI designers might profit by ethnomethodology’s respectfulness for the notion of improvised design, or for the social production and use of representations.
Limitations of Ethnomethodology
Ethnomethodology tends to have an atheoretical focus and HCI researchers argue that it is not possible for research in a field to have that perspective. The concept of ethnomethodology which rejects theory as the foundation of research is also challenged when HCI researchers realized the important roles of theory in HCI. They believed that theory can forms community through shared concepts. It can also provide “a language” so that all HCI researchers can speak to one another. Finally theory helps the researchers to make strategic choices about how to proceed. From those arguments, the anti-theoritical stance of ethnomethodology becomes unpopular and forces HCI researchers to use a better theory.
Friend of Ethnomethodology
Harold Garfinkel
Father : “If grandpa introduce all of you to Herbert Simon, I will also introduce you to an insightful man. He is going to prove that we do not need any theory to design a robo-dog. Theory is useless!! “
Son : “Who is he, dad?”
Father : “He is the founding father of ethnomethodology., Harold Garfinkel!”
Who is he?
Harold Garfinkel is the founder of ethnomethodology who was particularly interested in how social actors provide accounts of situations. For his contribution in sociology, he was awarded the Cooley-Mead Award from the American Sociological Association in 1995.
Short biography
Born from a family who worked in a furniture dealer business, Garfinkel was predicted to continue running his family buisinees. However, it did not happen. Garfinkel got his bachelor degree in accounting from the University of Newark. After finished the study, he joined a volunteer work where he needed to work in an interdisciplinary environment with the other students. From that experience, Garfinkel decided to pursue a career in sociology and continued his study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1946, after World War II he pursued PhD degree at Harvard University where he met a number of European scholars such as Aron Gurwitsch, Alfred Schutz, and Felix Kaufmann.
After finished his doctoral degree from Harvard, Garfinkel had research projects in a number university such as Ohio state University, Oxford University, and UCLA. He joined the sociology faculty at UCLA from 1954 until he retired in 1987.
What is his contribution in ethnomethodology?
Generally ethnomethodology, a field of inquiry in sociology was established and developed by Harold Garfinkel. He established the foundation principles for conducting a study for exploring how people interact with the world and make sense of reality. Garfinkel argued that the inquiry study in sociology should not designed to provide people with judgments on human behavior or its causes, but rather to explain how people interact with each other and with society at large. He coined the term ‘ethnomethodology’ in 1967 and from that point he started to lay out some of the ground rules and concepts which continue to be used in ethnomethodology today.
Applications of Ethnomethodology
Ethnomethodology could be used for conducted inquiry research in almost every field. For instance, ethnomethologists can find some facts regarding conversations and social interactions that take place within institutional settings. From the studies, they found some interesting facts:
- Interviewers use different strategies to prevent interviewees from returning to or even correcting questions that have been asked (ethnomethodolgy study in job interviews)
- A study of negotiations among business executives discovered that they are generally detached and impersonal.
- Telephone calls to emergency centers have been found to be structured in such a way that confusion arises because of the lack of everyday openings, sequences, and recognition.
- Ethnomethodology research on mediation hearings has shown that the institutional setting of conflict resolution lessens the chance of conversations escalating into arguments.
Generally, ethnomethodology methods can be used in many areas from music, online community, to academic literacy. It can happen because ethnomethodology provides methods to probe and pay attention to communication problems between people and organizations. Ethnomethodology can also be useful during cultural exchanges in which people have difficulty understanding the cultural norms of the people they are trying to work with.
Links for Further Study
- The International Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (http://www.iiemca.org)
- A Textual Analysis of Harold Garfinkel’s Story of Agnes (http://www.ejhs.org/volume4/agnesabs.htm)
- Ethnomethodology and Deviance (http://www.umsl.edu/~rkeel/200/ethdev.html)
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