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Ethnomethodology (Characteristics (Common sense theory and common sense…
Ethnomethodology
Characteristics
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"People's method" // study of methods used by people to construct, account for and give meanings to their social world
Common sense theory and common sense rule: acquired through trial and error and constructs an appearance of social order
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Members of society are actively making sense of social life and societies are seen as having regular and ordered patterns because members perceive them as such
Ethnomethodologiests explain that there is no real social order assumed by other sociological perspectives
Social order as fiction
Like Schutz, EMgist believe there is no real social order as assumed by other sociological perspectives
Social life appear orderly to members of society because members are actively engaged in making sense of social life
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It is made accountable in the sense that members of society are able to provide explanations and descriptions of their actions
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Breaching experiments
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People are generally cultural dopes who simply act out the standardised directives provided by the culture of their society
Documentary Method
Garfinkel explained that members employ this method to make sense of the social world and give it an appearance of order
In Maxwell Atkinson's study of coroners, suicide was seen as reference to an underlying pattern which makes the common sense theory of suicide
The instances of the pattern and the underlying pattern reinforces on each other is known as reflexive
Indexicality
Like Schutz, EM sees meanings as always potentially unclear - a characteristic Garfinkel calls indexicality
Nothing has a fixed meaning: everything depends on the context and the way the context is interpreted
Understanding and account of events are indexical and they make sense in terms of particular settings
Reflexivity
For Garfinkel, what enables us to behave as if meanings are clear and obvious is reflexivity
Refers to the fact that we use common sense knowledge in everyday interactions to construct a sense of meaning
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Critics
Reynolds (1975)
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In micro theories, structures are overlooked
Class, culture and socio-economic status could help us understand everyday interactions
Choices made by people cannot be fully subjective as we are affected by e.g: law, poverty
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Agreement
The Asch Experiment by Solomon Asch tested how peer pressure to conform would influence the judgement and individuality of a test subject
This idea indicates that people tend to follow what others are doing, leading to the development of common group behaviour