Routledge Revivals: Ethnomethodological Studies of Work (1986)

Harold Garfinkel

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138716704
• eBook ISBN: 9781351714303
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

First published in 1986, this collection of essays brings together ethnomethodological studies from key academics of the discipline, including the renowned scholar Harold Garfinkel who established and developed the field.

In addition to four case studies, the volume begins and ends with two essays which discuss some of the theory employed by ethnomethodologists. The essays in this collection look at a range of areas, from truck wheel accidents and their regulation, to martial arts and alchemy and provide concise and insightful examples of the ways in which ethnomethodology can be applied to a number of settings and subjects.

This work will be of interest to those studying ethnomethodology and sociology.

1 Sociological indication and the visibility criterion of real world social theorizing

Μ. D. Baccus

Peter Winch, in his book The Idea of a Social Science¹ discusses the nature of social regularity in terms of the rules for deciding the equivalency of events. Since regularity is understood as the recurrence of similar events its analysis is thought to be a problem of identity judgment. This problem is to be met with the provision of some rule with which to specify the criteria of such a judgment. Only one rule is to be associable with an equivalency. The rule, it seems, is particular to an inquiry and so judgments of identity are to be made with respect to that one rule prevailing over some specific inquiry. It may be that this 'one rule' provision arises from the notion that a given set of conditions holds for the determination of the validity of some measure, experimental result, or decision about the appropriateness of some data. For whatever reason, the one rule thus refers to the existence of a formulation of a given set of conditions and not to the situated work of doing an inquiry.

The problem of the nature of rules arises. Winch refers to the feature of informed looking which a rule presupposes in order for it to direct anything. Winch, however, confounds the issue by introducing a regressive argument about the social context of the observer's looking and the communication system (shared with his colleagues in science) presupposed in that looking. This is a false issue of objectivity in that the looker cannot be separated from his fellows, given Winch's notion of context, in order to look 'objectively' at them or the object of study. There is no way he can be logically extricated from his colleagues into a position of objective purity for he knows how to look only via his association with them. This membership can be referred to as the contextual necessity of an investigation, remembering that our original problem was one of deciding equivalencies.

To make judgments about institutions, or other social phenomena which display 'regularities,' then, the criteria and concepts in use must be understood 'in relation to the rules governing sociological investigation,'² in general and as a practice. Winch states that a problem ensues in that the phenomena under study, as well as the investigator's activities, are themselves subject to rules - the 'social rules' holding within the phenomenon, and which, in fact, produce its accountable regularities. This can be referred to as the docile subject issue, for instead of lighting upon the constitution of the phenomenon by investigatory practices, Winch takes the phenomenon as given and as having an objective existence (in this case, what it is accountably about) unaltered by constructive analytic theorizing. However, in that social phenomena are subject to social rules, according to Winch, he does recognize what might be called the pre-eminence of the phenomenal rules. It is, says Winch, those rules which hold within the phenomenon and not those of the investigation as a scientific enterprise which are of primary importance in deciding equivalencies; 'the same thing' equivalency is to be decided by those rules presiding over the social phenomenon as recognized by its practitioners and not as brought to the scene by investigators. There is a set of interphenomenal criteria which determine equivalencies, and specifically with respect to the structure of that social setting. These criteria are not directly answerable to those of the investigator's rules. The issue, then, is that the investigator cannot have a simply 'objective' relation with his object of study: he is both a member of a contextual necessity (as investigator) and his object of study has its own internal rules of the equivalency of its events.

Social investigation is not, therefore, analogous to that in the natural sciences. External accounts, no matter how logically adequate, are insufficient: 'more reflective understanding must necessarily presuppose ... the participant's unreflective understanding.'³ That is, the investigator must first have some idea of the internal workings of a social phenomenon (in its naturally available way) before he can go on to make statements about the phenomon from his point of view as an investigator. He thus must have some practitioner's knowledge about his object, knowledge which is 'unreflective' because it is in natural use by members of the production of the phenomenon. The investigator's concept of a phenomenon, which is informed primarily by investigatory practices and rules rather than from the phenomenon itself, still must rest on an understanding of those natural use concepts at work in his subject. Investigatory concepts must be answerable to the requirements of those intrinsic to the subject. This raises the issue of what constructs are and also of the 'integrity' of phenomena.

Theoretic constructs may not be the investigator's also (if they are naturally available to parties to the phenomenon), but they also may not be easily and naturally observable without 'knowing how to look' as the analyst's enterprise. A constructive analytic account formulating non-vernacular accounts but utilizing vernacular concepts as its elements gains in observability (and so in reliability, objectivity, reasonableness - in real worldliness) while preserving the analyst's technical enterprise of producing accountably non-vernacular accounts which make social phenomena their docile objects of study. In that Winch is providing for the integrity of phenomena he may also be providing for a stronger sense of the observability of their features. If phenomena have conceptual rights of their own, and those concepts are natural use notions and, so, practical visibles (with strong visibility for members engaged in producing the phenomenon), then the investigator's constructs gain visibility by being formulated by appropriating those strongly visible natural use concepts as real-world talk. Social theorizing about real-worldly phenomena can thus capture an aura of observability, and avoid a speculative or metaphysical tone by trading on the strong sense of the observability of real-world activities.

But there is a question to be raised here. Does this assume that real-worldly practical actions are a) unreflectively engaged in because of the unremarkableness of methods of production and accounting practices; b) are 'unreflective' because they are directed to producing some practical achievement to thus preclude reflective inquiry during the course of this production; or c) that because it is a practical production its elements are all highly observable ones ('practical' here having to do with accountably observable)? What constructive analytic accounts make social phenomena out to be trades on this unreflectiveness and seizes on it as a resource for the analyst's enterprise.

The criteria of real-world social theorizing

Accounts of social phenomena are accomplished in such a way as to constitute their objects of discourse as real-worldly, that is, as actual, objectively extant phenomena. To say that there are criteria for real-world social theorizing is to say that accounts of social phenomena provide those elements which assure the real-worldly character of its objects, whether they be events, actions, properties, structures, ideal types, concepts, or constructs. The 'objects' of social accounts are thus things to be found in the real world; above all they are recognizable as things that are or happen in the real world. The criteria should not be thought of as necessities to be met by the account but as elements which, in being provided by the account, are the account. They are the criteria which establish the worldly reality of the objects of discourse of the account. One such criterion is that of visibility.

Winch hits on interphenomenal integrity as a way of making social theorizing more appropriate to its objects (though he is pursuing a solution to the problem of generalization in social theory) in that it takes into account the properties, or structures, relations, etc., of social phenomena within themselves. The judgments of equivalency, the fundamental problem of regularity in social research, is to be based on these phenomenal properties. That phenomena have rights of their own is not a new idea, but the extension of this notion to an operational requirement for the legitimacy of social theorizing is. If identity judgments are to be valid and appropriate to some phenomenon, given phenomenal integrity, then the 'rules' to which Winch refers are those of everyday social theorizing and investigation is a set of practices which explicitly accommodates these as not only legitimate but as primary operations of investigation. But the ultimate effect of interphenomenal integrity is not merely a careful or principled concern with 'real' properties, as opposed to only abstractive ones; it is, rather, a recognition and an explicit assurance of the strong visibility of the features of social phenomena.

Central to the notion of interphenomenal integrity is that what is looked at has properties internal to it which must be taken into account; moreover, the very selection of phenomena and the looking itself are to provide for phenomenal integrity. The rules which Winch refers to as holding within the phenomenon are 'unreflective' but are observable as a natural account of the production of the phenomenon and are known by the investigator as a party to such social productions. Those properties which are to be treated as integrous are those properties which a member knows about, but this also means that they are visible (are naturally available) and accountably so. Adherence to operations of social theorizing which preserve interphenomenal integrity makes that theorizing more 'real' in that it enhances, and relies on, the strong visibility of these properties by emphasizing the very properties which are naturally available to members, either actually observationally or imaginably so. Note that observational availability refers to the accountable features of a phenomenon. These are used as elements of the theorizing, they are the 'data' from which the account (analytic or practical) is produced and to which it, the account, is reflexively referential.

Imagined availability of those accountable features is the standard means by which social theorizing is checked for its accuracy, reliability (given the aid of statistical measures), validity, and the rest; the elements, in that they are those naturally available ones, practically visible to members, are also the stuff from which the essential reasonableness of a social account is decided. That 'reasonableness' relies on the indexicality of the account as an essentially vague referencing device which allows the imagined availability of properties and features of the phenomenon. The accomplishment of an analytic account is that it is removed from the phenomenon in such a way that 'cases,' or analytic instances of the events of a phenomenon, are now things to be measured against the account and not against each other as in the production of the account, or, as in deciding the equivalency of events or actions. Nor are cases matched to an account to find its adequacy; accounts are read to find the adequacy of the case and as an instance of the account. Thus cases are read in or out of relevance with respect to the adequacy of the account to delineate their cogent features; and, each case is relevant only as one of a collection of instances which are adequately equivalent, that is, made so by collecting naturally available properties into some accountable unit which stands as a 'case.'

That the realness of social accounts is enhanced by preserving inter phenomenal integrity and done so by emphasizing naturally available and highly visible properties of social phenomena, is of interest here only in so far as it points up the provision of a visibility criterion for social accounts. Our concern is with what that visibility criterion is and how it is accomplished.

The visibility criterion: Social objects in the world

The visibility criterion of social theorizing has to do with the requirement of real-worldly objects being visible in some way. One notion of visibility is that real-worldly objects have to 'reside' somewhere in the world where one could go looking to find them. This residence is not a 'place' in the real world, but is the constituted sense of an object as accountably locatable in the world, either physically or through knowing how to look via some technical operation. That location assures it various properties, one of which is its 'objective' visibility. We are not, however, concerned here with deciding the objective existence of social objects, nor are we interested in the distinction Husserl makes, as a traditional problem in philosophy, between the ideal object and the real or experiential one. We are only concerned with the way real-worldly talk gets done and are indifferent to the question of whether its objects are imagined, observable, or analytic, just so that they are real-worldly and accountably so. More narrowly, we are interested here in the problem of constituting social objects and the practices in analytic social theorizing which constitute them as real-worldly social objects.

That visibility is a 'criterion' for the real-worldliness of social objects is to say that social objects, the objects of analytic social theorizing, are constituted so as to provide for their visibility via some means. One such 'means' is the establishment of sign-reading and indication as an account of their visibility to analysis, i.e., those analytic practices of social theorizing engaged in by investigators which produce visible topics of analysis are accountably seen as 'indication' or sign-reading practices. It should be noted that in focusing on sign-reading practices and indication as a means for satisfying the visibility criterion, we are concerned here with the methods of referencing social objects via analytic devices and so are dealing exclusively with the problem of reference where the properties and structures of social objects are indicated because they cannot be seen directly - for whatever reason. This point will be raised again in the discussion of the 'essentially unseen' but it is important to keep in mind that we are dealing here only with the problem of reference of an unseen and not of observables in the ordinary or mundane sense. The accomplishment of sign-reading discussed here is that the visibility criterion of real worldly social theorizing can be met for the objects of theorizing which are unseeable, nevertheless, and the fact that they are unseeable does not exclude them from being accountably real-worldly objects.

We will first take up the question of signs and sign-reading as a natural and adequate account of a way of satisfying the visibility criterion. Then we will look at what indication might be for sociological inquiry.

Signs and sign-reading

'Sign' is ordinarily defined as representation, a token, an omen, a trace, or vestige. But the central implication (which it shares with its synonyms such as signal, index, icon, and symbol) is of pointing to, indicating, standing for, setting up for, or being as good as, something else. A term common to definitions of sign is 'token' - very suggestive for us because its original sense was not of partial fulfilment, mere semblance, or presentation, but was 'to show.' Signs, as things, in a very real sense 'show' their referent; they are the visibility elements of the existence of their referent objects and go to constitute their accountable features. The kind of signs with which we are here concerned are 'acommunicable,' in that they are not linguistic or behavioral but are of the same nature as those physical signs 'read' in everyday practical natural theorizing about events or states in the real world. For example, the analysis of physical evidence is the practical 'reading' of such signs for their significance in constructing indicated events or situation not seen directly. A linguistic or quasi-linguistic account of these signs, the prevalent analysis of signs, and their uses is inadequate to explicate their character as practical objects and the contingencies of their use.

The nature of sign-reading practices will not be gotten at, however, by a principled definition of 'sign.' Acquiescence to the notion of the sign as a thing to be read is the acceptance of a natural account of sign-reading which will ignore the central issue of sign-reading as a method of inquiry. That issue is that the injunctive use of such a natural account assures not just the successes of sign-reading but the very existence of that which is 'read' as evidenced by the 'sign.' The invocation of the natural account of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Sociological indication and the visibility criterion of real world social theorizing
• 2 Multipiece truck wheel accidents and their regulations
• 3 Kung Fu: toward a praxiological hermeneutic of the martial arts
• 4 Features of signs encountered in designing a notational system for transcribing lectures
• 5 Introduction to a hermeneutics of the occult: alchemy
• 6 On formal structures of practical actions
• Index