Ethnomethodology

Ethnomethodology studies the practical methods people use to make social situations intelligible, recognizable, and orderly. It examines how social order is produced in everyday interaction rather than treating it as a fixed structure.

Indexicality: The dependence of an expression’s meaning on the context in which it is used. Context-sensitive meanings show why participants must interpret more than words alone.
Harold Garfinkel: An American sociologist who founded ethnomethodology and developed its central concepts. His studies and writings established ethnomethodology as a distinct research program.
Medical sociology: The study of social causes, experiences, and organization of health and illness. Clinical encounters reveal how professionals and patients make diagnoses and decisions intelligible.
Structural functionalism: A sociological theory explaining social institutions through their contributions to the stability of society. It treats social order as a system-level problem, unlike ethnomethodology’s focus on members’ methods.
Social order: The patterned coordination and stability of relationships and institutions in society. Ethnomethodology recasts order as an ongoing accomplishment rather than a background given.
Reflexivity: The way descriptions of a situation also help produce and sustain that situation. Accounts both report social order and help bring it into being.
Studies in Ethnomethodology: Harold Garfinkel’s 1967 book introducing ethnomethodological studies of ordinary social practices. The book presents foundational analyses and gives the approach its defining name.
Workplace studies: Research on how work is organized through practices, tools, and coordination. Ethnomethodological studies trace how workers accomplish tasks that formal procedures only partly describe.
Symbolic interactionism: A sociological perspective studying how people create meanings through interaction. Both examine interaction, but ethnomethodology concentrates on the methods that make it orderly.
Common-sense knowledge: Practical, taken-for-granted knowledge people use to interpret and manage ordinary situations. The approach makes this usually unnoticed knowledge a subject of systematic inquiry.

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