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Phenomenology and Ethnomethodology

As a philosophical movement, phenomenology is a product of the early twentieth-century intellectual fervour in the Western world. The social crisis between the two world wars generated fresh thinking on the society. Max Weber's interpretive sociology has had already put sociological thinking on a subjective mould. The idealist current in the German intellectual thought continued to probe into the problem of ‘objective’ knowledge of the society. The central question for sociological method and theory remained — whether it is valid to understand and explain the world from the perspective of the observer.

Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), the German philosopher, founded phenomenology as that philosophy which could further the cause of probing into the subjective world. Husserl posited phenomenology both as a philosophical perspective and as a theory of knowledge. There is no a priori reality per se; instead it is always given form and meaning by humans who experience it. Husserl insisted on studying phenomena not as they ‘appear’ to an observer's (analyst) consciousness, but to any consciousness whatsoever. At the turn of the twentieth-century, the entire baggage of classical sociological thinking and theories were subjected to critical thinking. Compounded with the rapid socio-political upheavals, the world of sociology took a turn towards a ‘new’ philosophy. Taking philosophy as a ‘rigorous science’ sociological theories started questioning the taken-for-grantedness of the world of experience.

The spirit of the time was to question the certainty assumptions of social scientific researches, that is, every certainty is questionable. If we intend to appreciate the basic thrust of the phenomenological school of thinking, we need to acknowledge that against ‘objectivism’ — a distinct way of looking at the reality marked the early decades of the twentieth-century. It was a turn towards a philosophical sociology which could place the world of conscious experience as its subject matter. We can see in this attempt a Weberian influence, as it prioritized the point of view of the acting subject. Thus, understanding social behaviour was premised not from the angle and perspective of the social scientist, but from the ways as experienced by the people who constitute the social reality.

We have already noted that Weberian sociology tried to account for the elements of motives, values and judgments involved in social interactions. In the similar spirit, Edmund Husserl tried to come up with a philosophy which could account for the conditions for an objective study of the subjective world. Consciousness and the content of conscious experience were fore-grounded in this new project. The fundamental idea of Husserl was to organize a systematic reflection on and analysis of the structure of consciousness.

Subsequently, ethnomethodology as a distinct school of sociological thinking developed in the Western world. The bearing of phenomenology on ethnomethodology is quite obvious. Ethnomethodology also questions the ‘facticity’ of the social order for granted. Traditional sociology, according to ethnomethodologists, has analysed the society with less attention and the procedures by which a particular society is being ordered. For a correction, ethnomethodology emphasized the procedures by which a social order is sustained. We can sense, therefore, that in both phenomenology and ethnomethodology the striving was to take account of the subjective world of the people constituting the social reality. Simplistically, the ethnomethodological thinking was to account for the methods that ordinary people employ to make sense of their world. The foremost thinker who introduced the ethnomethodogical school of sociological theory is Harold Garfinkel (1917–2011). In ethnomethodology, we find an interesting blend of the Parsonian emphasis of ‘social order’ with the classical Weberian insistence on ‘interpretation’ of human actions which give rise to social interaction and, thereby, a social order.

EDMUND HUSSERL

A Biographical Sketch and Influences

The philosophy of phenomenology was formulated by Edmund Husserl, the early twentieth-century German philosopher and social thinker. Husserl was fortunate to enjoy best schooling during his younger days. Born into a rich Jewish family, he went to school in Vienna. At the age of 10, in the year 1869, he started his German classical education. In 1876, he graduated and went to Leipzig University (then a part of the Austrian Empire). Thereafter, he went to Berlin. During that time his subjects were mathematics, physics and philosophy. Interestingly his doctoral work was in mathematics from Vienna. Husserl took up teaching positions first at Halle University, and then at Gottingen. Finally he served as a professor for the period between 1916 and 1928 at Freiburg. It was at Freiburg that Husserl developed his philosophical thinking.

We can note that the essential ideas of phenomenology were the product of that intervening year between the two World Wars. It was an anxiety about the future which formed Husserl's search for the phenomenological approach. It was a search for a deeper understanding of the essence of phenomena. For him, the task was to penetrate beyond the taken-for-granted world of experience (Lebenswelt) through a bracketing procedure to arrive at a deeper understanding of the essence of phenomena.

The classical thinkers who influenced Husserl were Descartes, Hume and Kant. Naturally, the phenomenological approach was embedded in the idealist German philosophical tradition. Although the English-speaking world realized Husserl's unique philosophy in the 1960s, the main ideas and concepts of it were to be found in his early lectures in Gottingen in 1907. He tried to assimilate ideas from the three great philosophers mentioned above.

It was Descartes who had a profound bearing on Husserl. It was Husserl's reading of Descartes that prompted him to conceive of the world as one essentially reflected upon and as experienced upon by people. David Hume's ‘phenomenism’ too had its place in Husserl's early interests. But he was sceptical of absolute ‘phenomenism’ — that, appearances reveal nothing about which appears. He was against the idea that appearances provide no knowledge about phenomena that appear because such a position would lead to a rejection of any theory of knowledge. For Husserl, these appearances are all that important to theorize on knowledge. The way such appearances are re-constructed by individuals in their own consciousness, the meanings of such appearances of ‘things’ are the bases of theory. Finally, Husserl realized the crucial difference that the realm of culture enjoys from the realm of nature from Immanuel Kant — that, active individuals act on the reality by imposing their thought categories to comprehend and construct their world. These thought categories are the a priori essential constituents, the framework into which the real world is conceptualized. Recognizing this subjective nature of the realm of culture and society, the phenomenological approach of Husserl put consciousness as the ‘absolute’ being, whereby, he strived for a science of essential being and not just a science of facts.

Early Phenomenology: Facts and Essences

The emphasis on the difference between facts and essences is fundamental in any phenomenological method of study. How do we realize facts? Rather, what is a fact? A fact is something real which enjoys a time and space and therefore has a temporal entity. We experience such facts through our cognitive faculty, that is to say, what is ‘real’ is actually experienced as ‘real’ through the mediation of our cognitive faculty. According to Husserl, an essence on the contrary is premised on consciousness which is essentially intentional, that, it refers beyond itself to things other than itself. A man is an embodiment of self-consciousness and since consciousness is always intentional, everyone by dint of this power stands beyond oneself. The datum of this essential intuition is essence. He emphasized essence, in so far as he maintained that pure essence was exemplified in the data of experience (Husserl 1967: 57). An essence, therefore, is to be understood as an essential possibility and not just an empirical possibility.

Beyond the scope of objectivity, phenomenological method is an attitude of mind that underscores a philosophical method. An orthodox practitioner of sociology would put phenomenology and sociology as two distinct pursuits. Sociology, traditionally, would study the perspective of the other and collect them in the form of data. It is in this way that a sense of order is placed on the reality. But instead of gathering data of the behaviour of others or the perspective of others, phenomenology would emphasize the ways through which individuals perceive and construct the world around them in their own consciousness. Simplistically, the emphasis here is on the reflexive experience of the individuals and the ways it shapes one's consciousness.

But the growing uncertainty about the possibility of an ‘objective’ sociology in the early twentieth-century opened up a whole range of reflexive sociology. From a high pedestal of ‘science’, sociology directed itself more towards the ordinary life and the common sense world. Thus, phenomenology could suggest the coming of a sort of creative sociology; creative in the sense that it attempted to understand and explain the world from the ‘others’ perspective, relegating the overriding scheme of thought of the analyst. Thereby, phenomenology puts a question mark on the supposed ‘objective’ world. It replaced the notion of ‘natural order’ of the society to an understanding of the ‘social construction’ of the reality. Expectedly, the heavy reliance on facts and empirical verification of theories on the basis of facts, which is highlighted by science, was scrutinized.

Does this make Husserl interested in the metaphysical world? Not only did Husserl develop his method with a critique of psychologism, he focused on individual consciousness to dismiss any metaphysical bearing. He was against the view that philosophy is reducible to a factual science. And, obviously he could see that, psychologism reduces the fundamental laws of logic and mathematics to psychological generalizations about the way an individual thinks. George Nakhnikian in his introduction to The Idea of Phenomenology (Husserl 1964: ) puts across this methodological stance of Husserl in no uncertain terms: ‘Husserl's phenomenology is an out growth of his attack on psychologism. Psychologism is a species of the view that philosophy is reducible to a factual science, in this case to psychology. Husserl is just as strongly against ‘biologism’ and ‘anthropologism’ as he is against psychologism’ (Husserl 1964). Also, the emphasis of Husserl on individual consciousness saves phenomenology from being metaphysical.

Evidence is what is being offered by consciousness, and hence phenomenology does not conform to a science of facts, but suggests a science of essential being. Thus, when it studies the way people reflect and conceive the reality, such personal reflection is not a psychological activity of consciousness. Instead, such reflection is crucially linked to an objective structure as an ideal act of consciousness. Husserl suggested a notion of eidetic science, trying to put phenomenology as a ‘science’ that strives to push for a knowledge of essences rather a ‘science’ of essential being (Husserl 1965).

Phenomenological Method

What is central to Husserl's method is the distinction that he made between ‘essence’ and ‘existence’/facts. Again, ‘essence’ can be ‘bracketed’ as distinct from ‘existence’/facts which is to say that, we may speak about any one of them, while suspending all statements about the other. However, Husserl made an attempt to relate them together. Without dismissing the empirical world of facts it is possible to ‘bracket’ the essential being. We could appreciate that for Husserl, the world of essence as ‘bracketed’ may be incompatible with the world of facts; yet the latter may remain side by side with the former. This is so, because Husserl considered the world of corporeal existents to be the empirical counter part of the world of essence. Accordingly, pure essence is exemplified in the concrete existents (Husserl 1957). Therefore, the real being of a concrete existence lies, not in its corporeality, but in its essence.

Such a method of study is a direct fall out of Husserl's skeptical attitude towards naturalism as promoted by orthodox scientific method. The cognitive approach of science was questioned by Husserl as he held that philosophical thinking is inevitably shaped by one's position towards the reality that one is attempting to cognize. ‘Bracketing’ the ‘given’ of the natural order is the plinth of phenomenology. Thus, even if objectivity is the goal of science, such a goal is always circumscribed by one's perception of the reality. Objective perception is a matter of lived experiences. It is temporal and yet related to the part time in terms of memory and the retention of it. The past subjective realities as retained in memory shape one's perception, immediate reflection and interpretation of events. Husserl proposed such a method which could view humans acting in accordance with both past behaviours and current situations. The bearing of memory as subjective reality has a crucial consequence in one's consciousness. Moreover, assigning agency to the actors, Husserl confirmed that all present acts are subject to modification on behalf of individual perceptions which allows alteration of perceived events. Proposing such a link between the past and the present, between time and consciousness, Husserl would state:

All the essential characteristics of experience and consciousness which we have reached are for us necessary steps towards the attainment of the end which is unceasingly drawing us an, the discovery namely, of the essence of that ‘pure’ consciousness which is to fix the limits of the phenomenological field. Our inquires were eidetic; but the individual instances of the essences we have referred to as experience, stream of experience, ‘consciousness’ in all its senses, belonged as real events to the natural world. (Husserl 1957: 125–26)

Such a proposal allows continuous flow of perceptual patterns to exhibit an objective ‘flow of time’ and a true knowledge of time. Thus, through an imaginative method Husserl suggested that one could probe the rudimentary structures and processes of experience.

ALFRED SCHUTZ (1899–1959)

Titled The Phenomenology of the Social World (1967), Alfred Schutz's seminal text actually placed phenomenology as a distinct school in sociological theory. The decade of the 1960s was all important for the development of phenomenological sociology precisely because Schutz's text was translated for the English-speaking world in 1967, although the original German text was out in 1932. The phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl was adopted by Schutz to give it a more vigorous sociological turn. He laid the foundations of social constructions for a wide range of social, cultural and feminist studies.

Biography and Influences

Born in 1899, Alfred Schutz enrolled himself at the University of Vienna, Austria. In fact, he hailed from Vienna and had the opportunity of studying law and social sciences. Sociologist, Othman Spann at Vienna introduced him to the works of Max Weber. Weber's methodological treatise interested Schutz, as he too endeavoured to seek a basis for an interpretative sociology.

Schutz adopted the Weberian school of thought that understanding social action was the methodological and epistemological foundation of sociology. But his was a critical acceptance of Weber's approach, and for a consistent theory of meaning (which was supposed to be distinctive of human action) he looked forward to Husserl's ideas.

The original German text of The Phenomenology of the Social World (1967), a result of a rigorous research for twelve years, was published in 1932. Between Husserl and Schutz, there had been a great deal of deliberations after Schutz dedicated a copy of the text to Husserl.

Finally, Schutz headed for the United States after spending a brief period in parts of France, to escape the Nazi Occupation of Austria. He prospered academically as he joined the New School for Social Research in New York City. Subsequently he was involved in the establishment of the International Phenomenological Research. He collaborated with Thomas Luckmann for his last work The Structures of the Life-World, which was published posthumously in 1973. Schutz died while working on this text in the year 1959. Summarily, we can say that Schutz was drawn primarily towards Weber's interpretative sociology and tried to enrich it by a critical adaptation of Husserl's transcendental phenomenology. While accepting Husserl's notion of the everyday world of experience characterized by the natural attitude of uncritical acceptance, Schutz accounted for social reality as one in which people cognitively suspend doubt.

BEYOND WEBER'S NOTION OF SOCIAL ACTION

According to Max Weber, who is to be credited for making sociology sensitive to subtle subjective ways of social life, the unit of sociological subject matter is social action. Action is social in so far as and by virtue of the subjective meaning attached to it by the acting individual/ individuals, it takes account of the behaviour of others. Thereby, it is oriented in its course. Schutz made a qualification to this act of reflection. Accordingly, while it is correct to say that we perform a reflective act of attention when we observe our own lived experiences, it is also true that observing others it is not at all necessary to live their experiences. As we accept our own existence, we accept the existence of others as well. Thus, we can only observe their experiences. A social action cannot orient itself simply by taking account of the behaviour of others, but it is a case of ‘intentional conscious experiences directed toward the other self’ (Schutz 19677: 144).

Sharing the same experiences does not automatically result in sharing the same consciousness. We can only say that, one's stream of consciousness can be in simultaneous relation to others’ stream of consciousness. One attends to all other parallel streams of consciousness. It is not simply an act of experiencing them but a reflection in the everyday life of behaviours of fellow human beings. The realm of inter-subjectivity suggests that the social world exhibits both unity and inner differentiation. If it is divided on the basis of individual experiences/interpretation of events, it is united on one's conscious awareness of the streams of consciousness; sharing the same world assures the sharing of the subjective meanings attached to our experiences.

However, such interpretation of other's experiences may not always be accurate. Such misinterpretation of the interactions among the people — the possibility of it — was admitted by Schutz. This is the reason why he emphasized on ‘intentional conscious experiences directed toward the other self’.

Conscious experiences intentionally related to another self which emerge in the form of spontaneous activity we shall speak of as social behaviour. If such experiences have the character of being previously projected, we shall speak of them as social action. Social behaviour so defined will embrace all specific–Ego-Acts (Ich-Akte) which are intentionally directed upon a Thou as upon another self having consciousness and duration. Here we include experiences such as feelings of sympathy and antipathy, erotic attitudes, and feeling–activities of all kinds. (Schutz 1967: 144)

The element of choice is also highlighted by Schutz in the context of social action. One may or may not always act purposively. Also, one's intentional acts of consciousness directed toward others, when reciprocated, give rise to social relationship.

In Schutz’ phenomenological sociology, the notion of the ‘significant other’ is in-built. It is important in this scheme of phenomenological understanding to appreciate social action as a lived experienced. A ‘significant other’ is one with whom one shares a common space and time of community. In other words, such a ‘significant other’ pre-supposes a face-to-face situation. Such face-to-face situations involve all acts of reflection and other-orientation. This inevitably leads to simultaneity of separate streams of consciousness. According to Schutz, shared lived experience is then marked by the subject's spontaneous activity which is unique from all other lived experiences by the fact of intentionality.

To satisfy the condition of objectivity, Schutz suggested that there are alternative ways for an observer to ascertain and interpret the motives/experiences of others. One can fall back upon one's own memory for similar actions of his/her own. Second, in case of an absence of such a direct reference, one can take recourse to one's own knowledge of the customary behaviour of the observed person. Finally, in the absence of the both, one interprets an action in terms of the effect which it actually has and assumes that the effect is what was intended. Yet, it is being easier suggested than actually accomplished. In one way or the other, in order to understand observed social relationships an observer must take recourse to one's own experiences of such relationships. The notion of stock of knowledge is relevant here to appreciate that, it is not only the specialist observer/researcher but also all individuals who are caught in the web of interactions in a social setting, who draw upon past experiences to interpret the present.

Schutz, therefore, invoked the notion of ‘stock of knowledge’ to account for the repository of experiences that an individual falls back upon to indulge in inter-subjective understanding. Quite obviously this stock of knowledge is a result of one's diverse life experiences and awareness of events. The more diverse it is, the richer is the stock of knowledge. Schutz talked about different categories of stock of knowledge, of which the habitual knowledge was more important for his analysis. It is that type which offers us definitive solutions to problems, which are organized in the flow of lived experiences. This type brings us closer to the notion of common sense. But Schutz would hold that even that which appears ‘common’ in everyday life is more than a simple sense presentation. Instead, he said:

It is a thought object, a construct of a highly complicated nature … in other words, the so-called concrete facts of commonsense perception are not as concrete as it seems. They already involve abstractions of a highly complicated nature, and we have to take account of this situation lest we commit the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. (Schutz 1962: 3–4)

Hence, it is quite possible that the commonsense knowledge is a sort of taken-for-granted, which could be relevant only among those who actually share the same life-experiences. Thus, quite possibly all individuals may not share the same commonsense as they differ in their life-experiences. Again, there may be people who would regularly defy the commonsense, which brings us to the proposition that any understanding of reality is a continuous process as we grasp only certain aspects of it at a time.

The everyday-life world is all that important for Schutz, whose last work is the Structure of the Life-World (1973). This text is co-authored by Thomas Luckmann and was actually finished by him. For every individual the primary reality and all his/her activities are actually played out in this primary reality. This primary reality is a construct of both-the natural elements and the social elements. This life-world is actually inter-subjective and it is the very context of where social actors act. Schutz and Luckmann attempted a comprehensive examination of the nature of social reality:

The everyday life-world is the region of reality in which man can engage himself and which he can change while he operates in it by means of his animate organisms…. Only in this realm can one be understood by his fellow-men, and only in it can he work together with them. Only in the world of everyday life can a common, communicative, surrounding would be constituted. The world of everyday life is consequently man's fundamental and permanent reality. (Schutz and Luckmann 1973: 3)

It was in this way that Schutz tired to sort out the problem of inter-subjectivity. The life-world itself appears meaningful in one's consciousness. As it is constituted of many such individuals, social action is therefore embedded in such meanings and context, and is subjectively motivated and articulated purposefully as per the structured interests and possibilities. Schutz, therefore, laid bare the structure of the life world in terms of typifications that people make in everyday life with respect to their familiarity and strangeness with life experiences and shared consciousness.

Taking the cue from Husserl, Alfred Schutz problematized the very nature of day-to-day perception. According to Schutz, Husserl's idea of the everyday world of experience is characterized by the natural attitude of uncritical acceptance. Instead, he accounted for social realities as one in which individuals cognitively suspend doubts. Commonsense does include many misunderstandings and misinterpretations in the taken-for-granted world, which does not suggest that understanding of reality is an improbable task. Rather it prepares us to be ever doubtful and be confident of capturing a part of reality at a time.

PETER LUDWIG BERGER (1929–)

A Biographical Sketch and Influences

Peter Berger, born in 1929, is an American sociologist. He was born in Vienna, Austria and later shifted to the United States after World War II. The trajectory of this early life was akin to that of Alfred Schutz. For his post graduation he studied in the New School for Social Research, New York. He secured his doctoral degree from the same in the year 1954. While in the New School, Berger came under the direct influence of Alfred Schutz. Obviously the phenomenological approach was embraced by Berger.

Primarily, Berger was interested to introduce a sociology of knowledge perspective to any analysis of the social world. The human consciousness is a result of his/her social being. Berger acknowledged the fundamental contribution of Karl Marx on this proposition. Also, the classical thinkers, whose theories had a bearing on the sociology of knowledge perspective, were reflected upon by Berger. Thus, we see the multiple influences of the theorizations of Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Karl Manheim and Talcott Parsons on him.

Initially, Berger worked for a couple of years in Bad Boll, Germany. Subsequently, he joined the University of North Carolina. He was also an associate professor at Hartford Theological Seminary from 1958 to 1963. Thereafter, he joined the New School for Social Research, New York as a professor. Since then, he has served many other colleges and universities.

Co-authored with Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (1966) stands as the most influential text of Peter Berger till date. He also covered a wide span of subjects confronting the modern society with various other authors. Some important books by him are: A Rumour of Angels (1969) and Movement and Revolution (1970), both co-authored with Richard Neuhaus; and The Homeless Mind (1973), co-authored with Brigitte Berger and Hansfried Kellner. He also co-authored books like Facing Up to Modernity (1977), The War Over the Family (1983) and a few more with his wife Brigitte Berger.

Social Reality: A Form of Consciousness

Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann were both students of Alfred Schutz. Through their book The Social Constitution of Reality they did their best to integrate the phenomenological thoughts of Schutz with the mainstream sociological theories. Central to their endeavour was to examine the individual–society relationships.

Society is both an objective as well as a subjective reality. This is the cornerstone of Berger's analysis of social reality. This analysis of society as a subjective reality examines the process by which an individual's conception/experience of reality are generated as a result of his/her interaction with social structures. Again, Berger focuses on the process of objectification, that is, how the new ideas and concepts of individuals become a part of their reality.

A sociology of knowledge perspective has to address the question of how reality is socially constructed. This has been the primary question for Berger and Luckmann. For them, it is the knowledge that governs our conduct in everyday life as the plinth of reality.

Everyday life presents itself as a reality interpreted by men and subjectively meaningful to them as a cone vent world. As sociologists we take this reality as the object of an analysis. With in the frame of reference of sociology as an empirical science it is possible to take this reality as given, to take as data particular phenomena arising within it, without further inquiring about the foundations of this reality, which is a philosophical task…. The world of everyday life is not only taken for granted ad reality by the ordinary members of society in the subjectively meaningful conduct of their lives. It is a world that originates in their thoughts and actions, and is maintained ad real by these. (Berger and Luckmann 1966: 19)

Social reality is constructed through a triadic scheme of subjectification, objectification and socialization. As we have already noted, social reality is subjective as its construction is accomplished by individuals as a result of their past behaviours which have a constant interface with present activities which allows its modification and re-creation. Simultaneously, the process of objectification tells us how the same individuals tend to view everyday-life world as a given and ordered reality independent of the actors’ agency.

At this point, Berger underscores the important role played by language in effecting the integration of everyday reality. Language is the most important sign system of human society. It links up commonsense knowledge with finite provinces of meaning. The crucial role played by language lies in its capacity of being the objective repository of vast accumulations of meaning and experience. This repository is preserved in time and as well as transmitted to following generations. Finally, internalization is the third point of this triadic scheme. Evidently, it connects individuals to society. As members in a community, individuals share the same normative order as well as behavioural expectations and thereby, they share a similar social reality. It is this socialization process that finally explains the intricate locking of the individual, norms and society.

Related to the process of objectification, that is, the process of acceptance of the constructs of the subjective consciousness as something of a pre-arranged order independent of the actors, is the process of reification. Reification denies human beings the self-knowledge. It negates human beings the knowledge that this social world is actually human-made; that the world inhabited by human beings is a creation of the same human beings is obscured by the process of reification, which in turn leads to alienation. It is a case of acute objectification in which thing-hood attains the pedestal of objective reality.

Espousing the cause of sociology of knowledge, especially in modern times and its technological growth, Berger had to address the question of reification in specific. Any sociology of knowledge that attempt to account for consciousness cannot overlook the huge impact of technology. How such technological advancement has aggravated the process of reification and consequently individual consciousness, has received analysis in Berger's The Homeless Mind, which is co-authored with Brigitte Berger and Hansfried Kellner. It examines how the level of technological knowledge affects the individual's everyday life and thereby, his/her consciousness. The ideas of Schutz were taken up by Peter Berger, his student. Along with Thomas Luckmann, Berger puts the phenomenological perspective into regular sociological theories that attempt to explain the individual–society relationship. The role of culture, social expectations and social institutions are acknowledged by Berger to account for how this social reality is constructed. It is being constructed as a result of the everyday interactions of individuals who are all implicated in social institutions. Invoking the twin processes of subjectification and objectification; and recognizing the process of socialization, Berger and Luckmann put phenomenology as an important school which emphasizes micro-oriented Sociological Theory. It allowed a wide application in sociological research because of its focus on the everyday aspects of human existence.

HAROLD GARFINKEL (1917–2011)

Ethnomethodology, simply put, is the study of the methods that people employ regularly to make sense of their world through interactions. It is quite distinct from phenomenology, but somewhere their thrust area is common, that is, put the ordinary members of society in the everyday situations on the foreground of sociological investigation. It is not so surprising to note that the founder of ethno-methodological perspective, Harold Garfinkel was taught by Alfred Schutz at the New School for Social Research, New York.

A Biographical Sketch and Influences

Harold Garfinkel, an American sociologist was born in New Jersey, 1917. He started off as a student of economics in 1935 at the University of Network, New Jersey. After his graduation, he joined the University of North Carolina in 1939. He studied Sociology which was more directed at accomplishing public works.

Obtaining his Masters in 1942, Garfinkel had to serve the military for a short while before joining Harvard University. At Harvard he came under the influence of the greatest functionalist sociologist Talcott Parsons. Immediately after obtaining his doctorate degree from Harvard, Garfinkel involved himself with studying day-to-day deliberations of juries in Winchita, Kansas. The study influenced him to coin the term ‘ethnomethodology’, which he introduced in the American Sociological Association meetings in 1954. Subsequently, he moved to the University of California at Los Angeles as a teaching faculty and continued with his work on developing ethnomethodology as an important tool for micro-sociology.

It is quite obvious that, Garfinkel was influenced by phenomenology. But, as admitted by himself, Parson's work was instrumental in shaping him as a sociologist who looked for precise and practical reasoning to account for the nature of social consensus and order. Interestingly it was at Parsons’ insistence that Garfinkel visited and studied with Alfred Schutz at the New School for Social Research, New York. In a way, Parsons introduced him to the theories of Edmund Husserl and Alfred Schutz. Apart from that, Garfinkel's ethnomethodology was also impacted upon by concepts from symbolic interactionism, linguists and anthropology.

Garfinkel differed with Parsons on the question of treatment of the ordinary and the mundane. Mundane social action does not find much attention in Parsons's Theory of Social Action. The more general and regular social action that actors engage in through internalization of norms was not sufficient for Garfinkel to explain social order. Yet, he was influenced by Parsons’ The Structure of Social Action to develop a distinct method which could account for the production and relevance of immortal, ordinary society (Garfinkel 1988). Finally, it was Schutz's phenomenological ideas of the constitution of the commonsense world and the related concepts that shaped ethnomethodology largely.

Problem of Order

From Parsons, Garfinkel realized the significance of normative order as a sustaining force of social reality. But the problem for him was to search for the process by which, not just the grand process of all too familiar norm internalization, the mundane and the ordinary maintain order and meaning in their lives. It is an attempt to look beyond the comfort zone that orthodox sociology always sought to indulge in. According to Garfinkel:

Ethnomethodology's fundamental phenomenon and its standing technical preoccupation in its studies is to find, collect, specify, and make inscrutable observable the local endogenous production and natural accountability of immortal familiar society's most ordinary organizational things in the word, and to provide for them both and simultaneously as objects and procedurally, as alternate methodologies the identity of objects and methodologies is key. (Garfinkel 1996: 6)

Literally, ethno methodology would mean the methods of ordinary people that are used on a daily basis to satisfy the order of social reality. Actually as we have noted before, while studying the jurists at Kansas, Garfinkel was interested to theorize on how people come to see the world. While researching on the deliberations of the jurists, he realized that they were indulging in their deliberations with a self-certificate of doing the job of jurists. Thus, in their decision-making process; the jurists were dependent on a taken-for-granted world. Hence it was a case of the jurors doing their own methodology while being involved in decision-making process (Wallace and Wolf 1999).

The cornerstone of ethno methodology is the ordered social reality and that order is a resultant of actors indulging in exchanging accounts of their interactions. This way it attempts to explain the subjective nature of human interactions, which have an underlying goal of striking a consensus. As Garkinkel makes if clear, ‘I use the term “ethno methodology” to refer to the investigation of the rational properties of indexical expressions and other practical actions as contingent ongoing accomplishments of organized, artful practices of everyday life….’(Garfinkel 1967l).

In every interactions actually the actors account for their actions that is they explain specific situations and contexts, and by ‘indexical expressions’ he refers to the fact that ordinary descriptive terms are powerfully influenced whenever they are being contextualized. To explain the ‘order’, the stable features of everyday life, sociologists usually select familiar settings and subjects. In the process many all-too-familiar, rather ‘expected’ features of reality are ignored. But ethnomethodology would focus on that ‘taken-for-granted’ and problematize it. There lies the immense potential of studying how people make sense of the commonsense world.

Tools of Ethnomethodology

Breaching experiments and conversation analysis are considered to be the two most useful tools that Garfinkel suggest to apply in order to account for the ways that people employ in their day-to-day life to make sense of the world of order. Ethnomethodology is always searching for the ‘unaccounted’ for in the familiar. Thus, while studying the ways people account for their ways of looking and doing things in the world, one need to intentionally disrupt the process of such accounting for the order. This is to suggest that, while actors negotiate and construct meaningfully their reality, there remains normally hidden methods of negotiation. By breaching one can disturb these normal situations of interactions, whereby one can unearth the hidden, unattended, possibly taken-for-granted acts.

Breaching experiments help a sociologist to break the everyday rules so that the hidden comes out, that is, quite often being unaware people indulge in actions that leads to interactions; that the social life is not always a result of any methodical procedures and production. Related to this technique of disrupting the normal, is the focus on conversation analysis in ethnomethodology. The mundane, day-to-day conversation is a primary focus of any ethnomethodological study. Human communication is that crucial act with the help of which human beings interact. Words are used as a means of interactions, interactions in order to clarify and reconstruct social order. Garfinkel is of the opinion that, what is being spoken or said is far less important than, what is being left out of conversation.

In our day-to-day conversation, much of the deliberations is again taken-for-granted. On the basis of past knowledge and past interactions much of the present conversation rests on anticipatory knowledge, that is, there was an area of nonverbal communication. Thus, the spoken world is marked by an appearance of consensus which is shared by all involved in any interaction. By looking beyond and searching the unstated sociology could gain crucial insights into such interactions.

Ethnomethodology, by focusing on these tools of breaching experiments, and conversation analysis basically points out how a person understands the world in their everyday life. Generally speaking, this method falls outside the scope of traditional sociology. It is so because with its focus on the mundane it stands in opposition to the scope of mainstream sociology. Mainstream sociology have deliberated a great deal and theorized on grand social structures engaging in methods of abstractions. Ethnomethodology has paid little attention to such abstracted social structures in themselves; instead the interest of ethnomethodologists is in the way that people make sense of these grand structures in their daily life.

SUMMARY

Phenomenology as a distinct philosophical method was established by Edmund Husserl. Husserl was essentially an intellectual product of the great idealist tradition of German philosophy. His analysis was based on a task of the philosopher to look beyond the taken-for-grantedness of the world of experience. Such penetrative exercise only allows a deeper understanding of the essence of phenomena. Thus, one needs to examine the phenomena of consciousness and bracket them in order to test their truth.

This is to say that, the conscious experience of the individuals constitutes the subject-matter for phenomenologist. Hence, the day-to-day routine life, common sense and conscious experience are all important for building such sociology of everyday life.

Phenomenology emphasizes that our perceptions are influenced by memories, conscious experience and recollections. According to Schutz, all of these impact upon our ways of perceiving social situations and others. Past experiences, moreover, allow us to bracket possible courses of action in the everyday-life world. As an extreme micro perspective in sociology, ethnomethodology, on the other hand, is concerned with the organization of the everyday world. Being critical of conventional sociology, it focuses on studying what people actually do, instead of imposing the theorists’ sense of reality upon them.

Key Words

• Enlightenment Ideals
• Frankfurt School
• Human Practice
• Ideal Speech Situation
• Life-world
• Mass Culture
• Neo-Marxist
• Public Sphere
• Social Criticism
• Technological Rationality

Glossary

Alienation: The process whereby human beings develop a sense of separation from themselves, their activity, fellow human beings and the world of nature.

Critical Theory: Designates several generations of German philosophers and social theorists in the Western European Marxist tradition known as the Frankfurt School. It may be distinguished from a traditional theory according to a specific practical purpose — a theory is critical to the extent that it seeks human emancipation, to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them.

Culture Industry: The term developed by critical theorists to refer to industries such as movies and radio that were serving to make culture a more important factor in society than the economy.

Enlightenment Ideals: Ideas which humans develop through the use of their reason. Individuals can seek knowledge and use their own reason rather than be told how to think by the church or the state.

Ideal Speech Situation: Developed by Habermas as a situation where communication between individuals is not bound and governed by institutional coercions, but when speeches are governed by basic — but required and implied — rules which are generally and tacitly accepted by both the communicating parties.

Life-world: May be conceived as a universe of what is self-evident or given a world that subjects may experience together. For Habermas, life-world is more or less the ‘background’ environment of competences, practices and attitudes representable in terms of one's cognitive horizon.

Mass Culture: The culture (such as entertainment media) that has been made available to, and is popular among, the masses.

Mass Society: A society resulting from and mass culture as entirely new forms of social domination that could not be adequately explained within the terms of traditional Marxist sociology.

Neo-Marxism: The concept arose as a way to explain questions which were not explained in Karl Marx's works. By drawing upon elements from other intellectual traditions like psychoanalysis and existentialism, it attempts to explain inequality moving beyond the narrow economic sphere.

Reification: In Marxist terminology, reification is a specific form of alienation in which the consciousness of the individual is so overwhelmed by his/her identification with the means and fruit of production, and the artificial designation of value that the dialectical process of identity is arrested.

Technological Rationality: An idea postulated by Herbert Marcuse, which posits that rational decisions to incorporate technological advances into society can, once the technology is ubiquitous, change what is considered rational within that society, by creating false needs.

Discussion Points

• The importance of culture in Critical Theory.
• Critical Theory as against science and reason.
• Moving beyond Marxist Theory.
• Habermas on communicative action.