Two disclaimers:
- I sometimes happen to be a bit of a cultural determinist – I see most things as culturally relative.
- Perhaps I am drawing too much upon the ethnography as harmful panel from CHI 09, but here goes.
My main problems with some of the ethnomethodological theory espoused in the Smith reading mostly come in two parts.
Ethnomethodology claims to focus on the “learning how members’ actual, ordinary activities consist of methods to make practical action, practical circumstances, common sense knowledge of social structures and practical sociological reasoning analyzable and of disovering the formal properties of commonplace, practical common sense actions ‘from within’ actual settings, as ongoing accomplishments of those settings” (68). The foundation of my problems with this passage is the lack of regard for the extreme subjectiveness of the verbiage tossed about here. Words such as “common sense” and “practical” are quite value-laden. What is common sense and practical to one person is not necessarily that for another person. These notions vary within culturally similar groups, let alone between culturally different groups. For instance, a good friend of mine is a spectacular event planner. What is common sense knowledge for her regarding how to organize workers and put together an event is baffling to me.
I find the notion that one can make common sense knowledge regarding social structures bizarre because social structures are only common sense to those that agree with them. The institution of slavery might have been common sense to many people within a time when slavery was socially acceptable, but the notion of human beings as property is not common sense within American society today. However, there might be places within the world today where women are considered property. Common sense is subjective. This makes ethnomethodology very susceptible to ethnocentric analysis.
My next annoyance with ethnomethodology is the argument that it is necessary in order to examine the common place, the ordinary or the actual. (And this is the part where I acknowledge I’m thinking beyond the Smith article and back to CHI) This annoys me because it gets set against ethnography as though ethnography does not look at the everyday or the actual. Ethnography has a tradition of examining all aspects of phenomena. It is to be a thick description of everyday life. I will grant that at least within anthropology the discipline of ethnography has tended to be correlated with studying the “other” and thus it could be viewed that something different is required to study social structures from within. However, it is my belief that ethnography is a good method for studying the social and the cultural from within and many scholars now are working in such a manner.
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September 28, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Casey Addy
(A word before my comment – I heard the ethnography panel was essentially a troll-fest in which the presenters were criticized about drawing upon PhD candidate work, as opposed to any of the big names of ethnography, and wrong citations in order to make their claims. I hope someone could validate this for everyone…)
Common sense, I believe, is super value-laden and lifeworld dependent. For me, how to “read” video games is something super natural and common sense for me, as I practice it often, and utilize the “pieces” of language laden in games for me to be able to discern what to do before I am even challenged to do so. Maybe this is similar to the way your friend works when it comes to organization: she may see necessary events happen through the day that just call out to her as needing of organization and such – without practicing this type of sight, we cannot achieve this common sense view that everyone else seems to have (I know, that I have none of this common sense in ways outside of politeness and gaming).
And as little as I understand about ethnomethodology, it strikes me just as a tool to get at the ooey gooey center of the cookies of culture and our lives. I think, in order to do this effectively (maybe even correctly, but that term implies empiricism and a value of what correct actually is), that we need to ask the tough questions about what is common sense for others. This is, for me, where a guide comes into play: they can articulate what is common sense for those outside of the “sphere” at work. Without this mediator in the middle to interpret what the cookie is, we’ll just see a cookie, and not something super yummy (and maybe even beefy – not the literal beef, but something of substantial weight and awesomeness).
(^^)V
September 28, 2009 at 9:36 pm
yujiazhao
What is the difference between ethnomethodology and ethnography? I don’t understand. ><
September 28, 2009 at 9:49 pm
Casey Addy
Here is how I interpret the differences between these two subtle “ethno”-words.
I find ethnography to be a study of cultures and people, where the person who is studying a culture to be outside of the culture, but takes a substantial amount of time (like 3+ years) to be accepted into this culture and really know the nuances of that culture. This usually ends up being some sort of “account” of what the ethnographer sees, which is some sort of field report.
I find that ethnomethodology consists of methods which try to quickly strike at the heart of other people, their cultures, and their lifeworlds. Some of these are the methods that we learned during the ethnography section of Shaowen’s class last year (like the observations and such). These are super-quick, and they suffer from the lack of trying to gain a full understanding of other people. They also come from a more objective standpoint, whereas I find ethnography to try to be objective about other cultures, but it has to be subjectively “filtered and interpreted” to others who weren’t there during the study.
That’s my interpretation – hope it helps!
September 29, 2009 at 1:09 am
vidya
Rantttt…..
ok! I wrote a lonnnng comment and then clicked ‘back’ by mistake and lost it all:(.. so this being my second attempt I might or might not write everything..l will try to be concise this time!
Comment…
This is my understanding of PSmith’s article with special lights on phenomenology and ethnomethodology that is said to inform culture studies..
The article brings to notice the micro-theories in sociologies that aims to understand social order by researching on the interactions and the meaning making by the actors in them. So I tried to understand phenomenology and ethnomethodology in the context of interactions.
Phenomenology believes in informing culture studies through a thorough the understanding of the individual meaning making(subjective and intersubjective) by the actors along with various influences that may arise due to the interaction itself or their individual life worlds. Ethnomethodology has its roots in Phenomenology with special emphasis on intersubjectivity. Ethnomethodologists believe that any interaction,if analyzed in terms of common sense and practical activities in particular contexts and setting will reveal rich insights for cultural/social studies. The term common-sense here refers to the things that are acceptable to happen in that particular setting and context by the actors in that interaction. Ethnomethodology claims that if this common ground among the actors is removed then there is no cohesive whole -society/culture but just a collection of unique individuals. Hence understanding this is highly significant. Notice that common-sense is not something characteristic to an individual cut off from the other actors,settings,context,etc. Rather, it is a common understanding of the individuals (actors) interacting and it varies with the context, setting and the fusion of lifeworlds,etc.
In your example of your friend having the expertise in event planning may be commonsense to her when she is situated among her peers or other such experts. When it comes to you and your friend interacting in a particular setting, it will not be seen as ‘common sense’ but as some life-world characteristic(of your friend) which contributes to the interaction and the corresponding action by the actors. The ‘understanding’ that it is acceptable in that particular setting to bring in your individual characteristics, that can be leveraged for better actions, is agreed upon by you and your friend and is called ‘common sense’. With that said, it is totally possible for your friend’s understanding(common sense in a different culture,setting,interaction,etc) getting merged with your understanding(common sense in the current scenario) and hence becoming common sense!
The common sense and practical activities are highly imbued with cultural beliefs and practices and hence ethonomethodologists say that this is used as a frame for meaning making which in turn informs cultural practices. It is such a mutual term!
To summarize, I think ‘common-sense’ in Ethnomethodological terms should be viewed ‘in a particular context,setting,etc along with that particular interaction and its relationships with its corresponding others(this will inform culture studies) and it is not claimed that common sense is common to all actors in all situations.
September 29, 2009 at 4:07 am
milara
@Vidya
Thanks for your comments about this topic, Vidya. I was struggling little bit as well about this ethnomethodology topic but it is clearer now based on your remark: “[common-sense means] a common understanding of the individuals (actors) interacting and it varies with the context” .
In fact, I believe we all used this common-sense approach in our attempt to phenomenologicaly interpret the song “Ne me quitte pas”, that is, we used information based on our own previous experiences to try to find out what was going on in the life of the person singing it.
For that particular case, we were using our common sense to reconstruct concepts and ideas that were not explicitly stated in the song. It seems that this particular type of “filling the gap” approach is called “Membership Categorization Device” by ethnomethodologists. Wow! It really amazes me how they can come up with all these fancy names.
Anyway, another interesting thing that might be worth pointing out is that ethnomethodology emerged as a rejection of the prevalent Parsonian way of thinking at that time, which claimed that most human behavior and actions were based on scientific rationality.
September 29, 2009 at 2:53 pm
jenterr
Okay, so I am going to do my best to remember to address all the points that I want to address. I don’t know how to do the fancy block quote thingie, so I apologize if this is difficult to read.
Casey, I think you are absolutely right about what ethnomethology strives to do. It does try to get at the ooey gooey insides of the cookie quickly and practically. Your interpretation of ethnomethodology agrees with everything I’ve heard about it – it is a tool. My problem is that I don’t believe that one can get to the ooey gooey inside of the cookie quickly and practically. I don’t think you can understand people with methods that are super quick and objective in this manner. Perhaps you can learn certain things about them, but not really understand them.
Yujia, I am not very familiar with ethnomethodological methods beyond what we read in the Smith reading, so I don’t feel as though I can explain it further than others have. I am, however, pretty familiar with ethnography. Ethnography is the study of a group of people from an emic (situated within that group) point of view. An ethnography is a (usually) written description of said group of people. Ethnographers use methods such as participant observation, interviews, focus groups etc to learn about culture from the informants themselves. Informants are the guides that Casey spoke of. The key to ethnography is participant observation – one must go and spend time with, participate and observe the people she is learning about.
Vidya, your response is fantastic. Thank you. I understand that ethnomethodology views common sense as a contextualized common understanding for meaning making. I do not mean to argue that there isn’t common understanding between individuals or that there is no common ground among actors. There is common understanding and common ground, but I believe it is under constant negotiation, which is sort of what you illustrate with your example of my example of my super organizer friend. I still feel like examining social phenomena with only the lense of meaning making through common understandings is short sighted. These social relations are under constant negotiation, and a method that captures a quick snap-shot of them will not get the whole picture. Perhaps this comes down to a micro-macro argument, I’m not sure. You can examine what is acceptable within a contextualized interaction, but I don’t think you can make sense of social structures this way. If we go back to the slavery example, even during the time of American institutionalized slavery not everyone had common understandings of this social structure. To say that we could understand it based off the interactions of agreed upon acceptable behavior would be a fallacy because we’d only be seeing one side of very complex culture. I might be willing to concede that some cultural insights can be gleaned from certain questions to which an ethnomethodological approach is appropriate. However, I believe it is very important to realize the limitations of such an approach so that the tool can be applied properly.
September 29, 2009 at 4:10 pm
vidya
oops! I somehow misinterpreted it..my bad..
Since my idea of Ethnomethodology is confined to this reading, I cannot claim/defend that the methods are awesome and/or appropriate. I completely agree with you that Ethnomethodology, by itself, cannot give an entire picture of culture and it has its own limitations. Yet, as per my understanding, I would not totally agree that the Ethnomethodologists constrict their analysis to just the common understanding (by itself without the tensions) but I assume, they also take into consideration the causes of conflicts, agreements and the nuances of negotiations(as you say) that may appear in the interaction and the practical actions. The extent to which they consider these tensions is questionable and this might be where macro-theorists see a problem with.
The Institutionalized slavery is a real good example. May be these disagreements is what lead to sub-cultures?(I m throwing-in words here! I honestly don’t know what it is!;)) Or may be culture should be viewed as something that doesn’t demand such commonsense in every action that the people do but in most actions(thus forming a pattern)? may be these patterns are what we look for to categorize people to belong to that culture?
Thanks Jenny for this post. It is definitely food for thought and it does help us uncover new dimensions (critique!).