W.W. Sharrock - The Ethnomethodologists (Routledge Revivals)

Originally published in 1986, this work examines how key figures such as Garfinkel, Sacks and Cicourel have revolutionised thinking about how sociology's presuppositions about being social are grounded. Yet until the appearance of this book there were no clear and authoritative introductions to the main thinkers in the field or their work. In assessing the critical reception of Ethnomethodology, Sharrock and Anderson argue persuasively that much is wide of the mark as they say, the real argument has yet to begin.

Wes Sharrock and Bob Anderson

First published in 1986 by Ellis Horwood Limited and Tavistock Publications Limited

This edition first published in 2011 by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

1986 W. Sharrock and B. Anderson/Ellis Horwood Limited

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

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ISBN 13: 978-0-415-60884-8 (hbk)

The Open University

KEY SOCIOLOGISTS

Series Editor: PETER HAMILTON

The Open University, Milton Keynes

This series will present concise and readable texts covering the work, life and influence of many of the most important sociologists, and sociologically-relevant thinkers, from the birth of the discipline to the present day. Aimed primarily at the undergraduate, the books will also be useful to pre-university students and others who are interested in the main ideas of sociology's major thinkers.

MARX AND MARXISM

PETER WORSLEY, Professor of Sociology, University of Manchester

MAX WEBER

FRANK PARKIN, Tutor in Politics and Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford

EMILE DURKHEIM

KENNETH THOMPSON, Reader in Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, The Open University, Milton Keynes

TALCOTT PARSONS

PETER HAMILTON, The Open University, Milton Keynes

SIGMUND FREUD

ROBERT BOCOCK, The Open University, Milton Keynes

C. WRIGHT MILLS

J. E. T. ELDRIDGE, Department of Sociology, University of Glasgow

THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL

TOM BOTTOMORE, Professor of Sociology, University of Sussex

GEORG SIMMEL

DAVID FRISBY, Department of Sociology, The University, Glasgow

KARL MANNHEIM

DAVID KETTLER, Professor of Political Studies, Trent University, Ontario, Canada; VOLKER MEJA, Associate Professor of Sociology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, and NICO STEHR, Professor of Sociology, University of Alberta

MICHEL FOUCAULT

BARRY SMART, Department of Sociological Studies, University of Sheffield

THE ETHNOMETHODOLOGISTS

WES SHARROCK and BOB ANDERSON, Department of Sociology, University of Manchester

WES SHARROCK

and

BOB ANDERSON

Department of Sociology, University of Manchester

First published in 1986 by
ELLIS HORWOOD LIMITED
Market Cross House, Cooper Street,
Chichester, Sussex, P019 1EB, England
and
TAVISTOCK PUBLICATIONS LIMITED
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4 4EE

Published in the USA by
TAVISTOCK PUBLICATIONS
and ELLIS HORWOOD LIMITED
in association with METHUEN INC.
733 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

1986 W. Sharrock and B. Anderson/Ellis Horwood Limited

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Sharrock, Wes
The enthnomethodologists. (Key sociologists)
1. Ethnomethodology
I. Title II. Anderson, Bob, 1946- III. Series
301 HM24
ISBN 0853129118 (Ellis Horwood Limited Library Edn.)
ISBN 0853129495 (Ellis Horwood Limited Student Edn.)
Typeset in Times by Ellis Horwood Limited
Printed in Great Britain by R.J. Acford, Chichester

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Chapter 1
Phenomenological Attitudes

Chapter 2
Some Preliminary Considerations

Chapter 3
Radicalizing Parsons: Garfinkels Sociological Project

Chapter 4
Implementing the Programme

Chapter 5
Conversations Organization

Chapter 6
The Study of Work

Chapter 7
What About the Critics?

Wes Sharrock is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester. His principal publications are shown below.

Bob Anderson is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Manchester Polytechnic. With Wes Sharrock he has been at the forefront of British studies of Ethnomethodology, contributing to numerous journals and symposia. He is the co-author of The Sociology Game and The Human Sciences and Philosophy (with Wes Sharrock and John Hughes). He edited Applied Perspectives in Sociology with Wes Sharrock.

Few theoretical positions within modern sociology can have evoked the controversy and incomprehension that ethnomethodology produced, from its first appearance in the mid 1960s, through to the present day. In a discipline where political overtones are frequently the cause of dispute about methodological presuppositions, ethnomethodology is attacked more for its conceptual stance vis--vis the activity of social research. Far from being politically radical, ethnomethodology is radical in quite a different sense, one which has significance for the whole sociological enterprise. For it is concerned with the possibility of sociological inquiry, with questioning and clarifying how it is possible to make the assumption that a sociology of human social relationships and structures can be developed.

It is in questioning the conceptual and methodological bases of sociological thinking that the true radicalism of ethnomethodology becomes apparent. This can be illustrated by reference to an experience of which anyone who has studied sociology at all seriously will be aware. On coming to sociology for the first time, the student is likely to find it difficult to understand just what it is that the sociologist studies. Some of it appears to be obvious, banal, ordinaryand hence difficult to see why the study was undertaken in the first place, for it is so obviously concerned with what everyone knows. On the other hand, some of sociology seems to deal with levels of abstraction from social experience which are apparently unwarrantable. These latter are often so difficult to understand for the beginning student that he or she thinks the problem is primarily one of comprehending a technical jargon of arcane complexity. The assumption is frequently made that the problem of grasping the sociological enterprise is thus of a purely technical nature. Learning the technical jargon will hence provide access to the meaning of sociology, it would seem. But it soon becomes clear that acquisition of the jargon alone is not the avenue to comprehension. What is required is a change of mental perspectivea sort of gestalt-switch from a taken-for-granted perspective on social reality to one which views that reality as organized, structured and presented in a particular way. Connecting the study of what everyone knows with the theoretical imaging of social reality within the new perspective makes everything slot into place. The enterprise of sociological thinking about the world hence becomes justifiable and acceptable, once the gestalt-switch has been effected, from taken-for-granted to theoretically-informed perspective.