Ethnomethodology

Definition and prospects

Harold Garfinkel known as of its research (and of the discipline which corresponds to it) that it is directed towards the task to learn how the real ordinary activities of the members consist of methods to make the actions practical, practical circumstances, the Connaissance of common direction of the social structures and the sociological reasoning practical, analyzable .

The ethnomethodology is not a methodology of the Ethnologie, but the discipline which is interested in the ethnométhodes. The concept of ethnométhode rises from work completed in Ethnologie, which underlines the interest of the specific practices of the groups studied about a whole series of questions particular. One finds there for example the ethnomédecine, which is interested in the various practices all over the world aiming at causing the cure.

The term of ethnomethodology thus indicates a discipline which studies the way in which participants in an activity confer its own intelligibility to him. It is about a reversal of prospect compared to the methods of the formal analysis, insofar as the ethnomethodology does not aim at observing, with a certain externality, phenomena of which it would offer a reading according to concepts discussed within the discipline, but is interested of the interior in the way in which the observable main features of a phenomenon are manufactured. In simpler terms, where the conventional disciplines arrange the social world in adapted boxes, the ethnomethodology seeks to describe the boxes which a group gives itself to itself to arrange the activities of the social world. The ethnomethodology claims for this reason to be a sociology without induction.

The ethnomethodology recognizes a filiation with the Phénoménologie, while making loans with authors of varied horizons: Wittgenstein, Husserl, Schütz, Bar Hillel, Noam Chomsky, Erving Goffman… the discipline recognizes a fundamental importance with the language, certain ethnomethodologists practitioner besides that the conversational Analyze.

A certain number of key concepts, which were préentées in a traditional work published in English in 1967 and recently translated into French establish an analytical mentality without to prescribe the least subject of research.

Notions of the ethnomethodology

If there exist various ways of approaching the ethnomethodology, this one was built in reference to a whole of concepts which became traditional.

Indexicalité

The Indexicalité indicates a property of the world more than one social phenomenon. The indexicality is a borrowed concept from the Linguistique, she was initially formulated in 1954 by the Linguiste and Mathématicien Bar Hillel. This one known as of the concept of Indexal expressions , a concept that it formed itself, “there are expressions indexicales which cannot beings taken out of their context”. The ethnomethodology borrows this concept to give an account of the need that there is, to include/understand the exchanges within interaction, to index them on the local situations which produced them. She expresses the idea according to which the direction of any thing is attached to its context. The Deictic S (here, now, behind, I, it, us…) for example, are identical words for all those which pronounce them, but return for each one of their use to a single context. Thus, at the time of the drafting of this article, here and now refers to a situation different from that of each one of its future readings.

A sentence can also cover with the different directions in function;

of that which pronounces it,
audience for which it is intended,
place and moment of its elocution,
or of the intonation of the voice, to name only some contextual elements.

To remove all the signs allowing interpretation limits the comprehension of the sentence largely, it becomes thus difficult with whoever to allot to it a precise direction of which it is completely convinced. In fact, all the forms symbolic systems, verbal, gestural or different, are controls by the indexicality. That implies that the direction is always produced locally, since no situation is reproducible strictly with the identical one.

Let us take as example a Graffiti located close to the Gare Montparnasse, which was seen during years since a daily borrowed suburban train: Lives the PCP . Is it about PCP, a Drogue, or acts it of the Peruvian Communist party? It would have just as easily been possible that it is about a completely different PCP . The absence of context lends to confusion. One sees here how the indexicality in ethnomethodology is a property of the natural Langage and not simply of certain particular expressions like are the deictics.

The indexicality can be also found out of the language. Behaviors and individual particular practices can also be indexicaux. For woman, for example, to walk centres naked on beach French to end of 20th century constitutes behavior normal, but if it does it in the streets of the city which borders this same beach, then her act concerns the indecent assault and shocks her fellow-citizens. In such a case, it is the difference in places which constitutes the indexicality. It is with this indexicality relentless that one can associate various rules.

Reflexivity

Reflexivity like activity of interpretation

Reflexivity is a precise but delicate concept to handle, because one can quickly confuse it with the indexicality. Contrary to the indexicality, reflexivity is an observable phenomenon in the behaviors. One can include/understand it as the capacity of each one to interpret the signs which it observes to build of the direction.

The same event gives place to an always different comprehension since each one operates it from its characteristic lived. Indexicality created not direction by itself. In the example of the graffiti evoked previously, certain indices can allow a more particular interpretation. One can add that Vive the PCP is written with red painting, color which can hold the attention while being associated with a political symbolic system. Moreover, one can add that to this same place, 10 meters further, figure also the inscription Fujimori genocide , obviously written consequently nobody. The interpretation of these signs concerns reflexivity insofar as the individual who reads the graffiti and who questions himself as for his significance will not obtain the same result according to his culture. For an individual who sees this graffiti for the first time being adolescent, his more or less restricted culture can nevertheless lead it to seize minimalement that Fujimori is a Japanese name and that Peru is not located at Japan. Its own reflexivity thus indicates to him a paradox in this association of the Peru with a possible political personality of Japanese origin. Thus, a toxicological interpretation of nature of the initials PCP can be essential more naturally if the teenager is more versed on subversive subjects (drug and violence) that in the political history of Peru.

The ethnomethodologists frequently evoke the queue as example of what is reflexivity: a queue exists because individuals take part in it, because they all recognized it like such. The phenomenon queue exists because the reflexivity of each one indicated the existence of it to him. However, this common perception of the queue does not prevent that all have an image different from this same file. Some for example will be pleased to see such a discipline in this file, others will take the thing like a constraint with their individual freedom, others still will regret being able to advance few places without pointing out itself.

The articulation indexicality/reflexivity

The indexicality is at the origin of any phenomenon of questioning concerning a perceived thing. That it is a question of including/understanding the direction of a publicity, the use of an object or the easy opening of a packing, there is “creation” of a direction which concerns reflexivity. The context does not bring in itself information fixing definitively and in an immutable way the direction, this one is regarded by the ethnomethodologists as being a cognitive phenomenon, something resulting from the operation of the human brain. The context continues to exist apart from the reasoning, whereas the direction in is resulting and lives only by him. In fact for example the same stars caused mythological interpretations , astrological then astronomical different a little everywhere in the world. The indexicality is consisted here the starry sky which seems quasi immutable, on a human scale at least, whereas reflexivity is consisted the panoply of interpretations here, often irreconcilable, which rises from its observation.

Cultural idiot

Generalization of the capacity to build the direction

According to Robert Jaulin, there is no cultural idiot, thus refuting the models which introduce individuals subjected to phenomena of which they are not aware. Whatever its behavior, the individual is able to produce a speech to justify it. If him a new question is asked, the direction will be built in the moment. It does not matter the veracity of the built direction, the direction always exists. The direction, that each one with the capacity to build, should not be included/understood as a more or less reliable expression what actually does without. It is not an image of the truth, but a practical idea equipped with a certain force of conviction. For Harold Garfinkel, the scientific reasoning takes the same ways as the common reasoning. This one is certainly more systematic and more rigorous, but there remains consubstantial. It is subjected, like any reasoning, with the context in which it is stated. The gasoline of the scientific speech, like profane speech, is thus indexicale. Scientific rationality is only one local expression of a phenomenon indexical.

Thus, whatever the subtlety of an idea and the work of observation which is in the beginning, it has direction only for one precise population at a given time. It is not stripped of practical interests for its contemporaries, but its claim with the truth can constitute another thing only one claim related to a certain context.

Utopia of cultural not-idiocy

The Aphorisme of Robert Jaulin according to which there does not exist cultural idiot is often included/understood as a possibly tinted humanistic design of a certain liberal dimension which would like that each one is free of its choices and that constantly it decides for itself without being subjected to the least determinism. This political design, to see metaphysical, overflows of the field of the ethnomethodology. This expression simply makes it possible to establish the idea according to which to create direction is a general activity and systematic for all the human ones. The initial target of this remark was more particularly the sociology of the Années 1950 and 1960 and the claim of the sociologists to see social phenomena inaccessible to those which are directly implied in those.

Documentary method of interpretation

Description of the construction of the direction

The process of construction of the direction can be illustrated by an experiment that Harold Garfinkel realized on its students. Those were to meet an eminent psychologist, considered ready to effectively advise them in their lifestyle choice. The principle was to pass individually in front of him, by asking him ten questions whose answer could be formulated by yes or not. What the students were unaware of however, it is that the psychologist answered identically yes or not the questions according to a list preestablished by chance. In its search of truth, the studied guinea-pig modified its questions according to the answers obtained previously. It did not make great case of possible contradictions in the answers which the chance had been able to dictate. It always found an explanation, a subtlety enabling him to restore the balance of the direction which was built. One of between-them required for example if, as a catholic, it would be good for him to marry the Jewish girl with whom it left. The answer was not. He interpreted this a little brutal answer while calling into question the problems raised by his question, considering that the problem was not any more that of the marriage itself, but raised of another factor hidden behind the question of the marriage. He will choose only one of them, corresponding to his own perception of his situation. But a crowd of others could have been selected according to her own reflexivity: its own acceptance of the Jewish religion, the problem of the religion of their future children, his real desire for engaging in the marriage, etc

The very large majority of the students who lived this experiment estimated satisfied with the service of the psychologist, whereas the answers given could as well have been given by a coin and ten pullings of pile or face. It is a purely reflexive work which enabled them to establish a direction, whereas the indexicality, the support of their reflection, did not carry any from there.

Illustration: documentary method of interpretation

One could summarize the indexicality like the whole of the objective signs attached to a phenomenon and indicating it like single object, whereas reflexivity would be the result of a particular culture, each one articulating oneself with the other in a chronological report/ratio where the direction would be built within sight of the context then with the only help of the reflexive process of interpretation. As we will a little further see it, it is a simplification because the two processes closely seem in fact dependant. This cognitive mechanism is very widespread. A dynamic example would lie in the following dialog:

"Do you know Hopopop RPG? "

"Not… "

"Then, the Master known as: “What you made? ” "

"One goes to the auberge"

"“Hopopop, you are with the inn. ” "

This small dialog, stated such as it is, should plunge some much in abysses of perplexity, because the indications indexicales are reduced. The amateurs of Carambar S will have possibly recognized the form of a riddle. It is the first stage of the documentary method of interpretation. One recognizes a known structure (or Pattern in term ethnomethodologic) to which one can try to hang up again the text. This one passes then from the statute of text to that more precise of riddle. One can then suppose that it is undoubtedly about something of funny, the continuation of the reflection consisting in amongst other things finding a direction amusing with this small monolog.

A rolist (i.e. that which practices the Roleplay) will have access to more information by the fact even of his reflexivity. He will think that RPG are the initial ones of Role Playing Game (English roleplay). The evocation of a main will direct it still more towards this way. The evocation of an inn, place impossible to circumvent of the fantastic medieval plays, will complete to convince it. The association as of these three elements will come to reinforce a first assumption. The final construction of the direction will thus be done in connection with the roleplays. However, the riddle will undoubtedly be comprehensible only for certain rolists and will probably not make them all laugh. Those which play of the parts consisting to fight the monsters, to avoid the traps and to pile up the gold coins and the points of experiment will probably not include/understand. The inn is simply a formality of beginning of part to arrive at the keep, where the action occurs. Others, playing in a more theatrical direction, will perhaps see there the “flemme” of the Master to describe moments not very important scenario, even if it means to cut down a little on the environment which it could create while being interested at this time particular of the history. Others still, which have a high opinion in their way of playing, will scoff at the first type of player who awaits only one thing: to go right to the action to type, avoid and pile up.

In these three cases, the indexicality is partly accessible only by the means of an evaluation from the listener. It will estimate in what it is about a joke and in what it refers to the roleplay. Nona rolist who knows that the practical person expressing this type of play will be able to possibly associate the joke with the “rôlesque” activity. If it does not include/understand it, it will always have the possibility of creating a direction: the rolists are mentally ills whom one cannot include/understand, the roleplays are a sect whose language is coded… It can just as easily not establish this link and seek a direction elsewhere - for example, by noting that RPG is (inter alia things) the name of a weapon Russian anti-tank device…

This example also shows that the indexicality does not constitute an apparent data of a phenomenon. One cannot draw up the exhaustive list of the situations indexicales and some are included/understood only through one reflexive process which is not accessible to all. The construction of the direction takes place by the means of the development of a system of assumptions and research of the truth where one tries to make stick signs which one perceives with a possible direction of the situation.

“Accountability”

Dimensions of a subject ethnomethodologic

The ethnomethodology is interested in the direction such as it is constituted. The concept of accountability is an English term that the French-speaking ethnomethodologists chose not to translate, for lack of equivalent term.

The accountability is a character which must apply to the subjects of ethnomethodologic studies. Those must be referable, describable, observable, résumables with all fine practice according to the terms of Garfinkel. One thus leaves side the objects built by the human understanding conveying a big part of imaginary, impossible to circumscribe.

Thus, French , the young people or unemployment are artificial categories which allow the individuals to be partially represented within the world which surrounds them. Ethnométhodologie could completely to interest so that such concepts recover for the members of a precise group that she studies, but to in no case these concepts would not constitute a subject of study in themselves, because they are not accountable and are thus located apart from the field of the ethnomethodology.

Can one for example observe the young people ? It will be initially difficult to find a definition with each group and sub-groups finding itself there (for example about their occupations or their employability). If the public authorities regard as young people the 15-25 years, one already finds within those several definitions of what is an unemployed. All these definitions seem to be appropriate for the public authorities (another concept which is not a account and is thus foreign with the ethnomethodology). It is not known as only all the individuals who have a reflection on youth or unemployment are satisfied of the work period or age limits recognized by the institutions. Moreover, the population thus defined is particularly heterogeneous, in addition to being dispersed in all the country. In the same way, the choice itself of the nature of the thresholds can be called in question. Of any can consider that the person who does not seek work that once its rights to the almost exhausted ASSEDICS should not be regarded as unemployed. Contrary, the graduate who occupies a post of cash clerk at the same time as it seeks an use of framework will be able to always regard himself as unemployed, while at the same time it is gainfully employed. Another limit is consisted the size of the groups in question. French for example is famous being 60 million. If one excludes the question from what is French, it is impossible of all to observe them directly. One will be able to always use statistics, but those will remain the result of a construction of a national object which will return only the image of a cut image to the measurement of the search for those which are interested in it.

To reason starting from a small number of individuals while being based on the law of the great numbers remains a hazardous inductive reasoning. If it is possibly possible to determine some main tendencies which one finds at a majority of French, for example, this information will remain nevertheless partial and tinted by the concerns of those which establish them. They do not allow, moreover, to include/understand what the phenomenon observed for those means which live it, nor to establish how it was built and negotiated with the wire of time.

Within the framework of the ethnomethodology, a group must thus be observable , i.e. it must have a concrete reality, to be palpable and its dimensions must remain on a researcher scale who studies it (and incidentally members which composes it). But this character of observability is insufficient, it must also be referable , which means that the members of the studied group have access to the phenomenon which they constitute and are aware of it. They must also be able to describe , i.e. to translate into words and of concepts what is observed. Lastly, the ground must be résumable with all fine practice , which means that the phenomenon observed has its own justification, it exists for itself and not like revealing of a possible reality of a higher nature. The remarks are worth because the members find there an interest practical, i.e. directly related on their own activity and the resolution of their immediate problems. These four criteria allow the construction of the direction. All that does not answer these four criteria is not studied by the ethnomethodologists.

Perceptions indexicales of the same subject

The ethnomethodology is not interested in categories resulting from the simple reflexivity of the researcher. Indeed, if it were the only able one “to see” the phenomena which it studies, its observations would remain field of the expression of its own reflexivity. Since one is interested in the direction building itself, this direction must exist for those which live it. The ethnomethodologist does not determine thus, starting from testimonys of members of the group, the invisible concepts in their eyes.

To bring back the way in which the members tell themselves exposes the reflexivity of the members of the group, i.e. the subject of the study. One will be able to take as example the concept of Social class initiated by Karl Marx. This one represented, starting from a theoretical and empirical analysis, the human society as animated the dynamic ones of fights between antagonistic social classes, middle-classes and proletariat, defined according to reports/ratios of production. Initially, this representation in social classes constitutes tool for a historical and practical analysis of the companies. It is, let us recall it, according to the tracking of political targets that the concept of class consciousness was born. If the thought of Karl Marx had not been the success which was it his, the social class would have remained the simple expression of a particular reflexivity in a definite context: an individual course specific in Europe at the end of the 19th century. But the Marxisme took all the more multiple forms as he knew a great success. The leaders of Communist parties and Socialists and the intellectuals Marxist developed a crowd of representations of the fight of the social classes, and good hard-working number of had indeed the certainty to belong concretely to the working class.

In order to avoid an induction on the Marxist intellectuals and the working of which it has just been made mention, one can, as example, to compare a text of Sartre on the working class with the words of a workman having crossed the 20th century, assiduous reader of Humanity, fan of Pif the dog and convinced Communist. While simplifying, one can say that the first tended to regard as origin of the working class, nothing in which the middle-class had been able to plunge it: no education and a “abrutissant” work, which prevents the man from thinking. All cultural or personal differences being then levelled by the vacuum that one imposed to them. The workmen were to necessarily join since they were nothing. No incompatibility was possible since they had very to gain and nothing to lose. The second, a welder, ironmonger also musician and large reader, very sure of him and its competences, unpleasing with respect to the American engineers of the Marshall plan and taking a malicious pleasure to show to them the superiority of its art for better making fun of them thereafter, very proud and anxious to work better and more quickly than no matter whom. Scorning and also keeping its distances with the operation, an alleged good workman with nothing according to him. One observes here how a phenomenon exists only when it is relatable. One can build outside a working object and social class, to find objective reasons of existence to him, that will remain the result of an imaginary private individual. When this one manages to extend to the individuals concerned, it is noted immediately that this appropriation is a different reinterpretation for each interested party. Thus, the original idea of the working class shows its artificiality for its concrete application to particular groups of workmen who will have different visions of them, and thus of a greater richness of direction. The study of the history reveals on the other hand the considerable practical range of such a concept in the political arena. It does not matter that it represents or not the truth, it is its capacity to cause social phenomena of great width which gives him such an importance.

Ethnométhodes

The ethnométhodes are the processes which the members of a group use to conclude their practical actions . The practical actions are the daily and banal activities that each one ensures without paying an special attention to it. The ethnomethodology is thus the study of these ethnométhodes.

During these actions, as uninteresting as they can appear, the members of a group must solve situations in which the other members are also implied. To manage to conclude these actions, they must share common ways of doing and representations. The methods which they use for that are a result negotiated with the other members. These methods exist only locally, i.e. inside the studied group.

Energies of oneself

Definition

The active of oneself is an expression which qualifies the whole of the behaviors seen and not noticed , i.e. the ethnométhodes that the actors implement without to do it consciously.

In each daily action, the behavior follows a very high number of implicit codes which it is useless to develop so much they seem natural. It is a self-explanatory not to require meat in a bakery. Nobody acts this way and it would not come to the idea from anybody to make the remark of it. In addition, the baker at all does not feel the need to put a panel recalling it in his shop.

It is thus interesting to note that there orally exist rules of behaviors established and respected by a large majority of people, without it being however necessary to enact them, or in a more institutional way.

One could also consider that the active self are also potential rules. They are not known as because they exist only with the state of potential, absent from the spirit of the members. The existence of other explicit rules limit nevertheless the potential infinitude of the directions. The self-explanatory is thus the rule which is determinable by a reflexive process of a member according to a preexistent context and which limits the possibilities of interpretation.

Shared direction

The negotiation of a common direction between the various actors of a group takes, partly, the form of self-explanatory . It is because there exist implicit standards of behavior recognized by all that one can say that the direction is shared.

One could consider that the active self are only the form of the more punts banalities. Nobody asks for meat in a bakery because it knows that it will not find any. That could appear like the result of a simple good sense; admittedly divided, but which remains simple and obvious and which does not deserve any constant attention.

Negotiated direction

But the active of oneself are not simply divided by the various members of a village. They are also negotiated, i.e. they are set up by those which follow them. It is particularly interesting to highlight them insofar as, although they generally appear to run of source, one more closely realizes by examining them which they are very often purely conventional.

For example, French having spent two months of his existence in an anglophone Canadian family which bought, to undoubtedly please to him, of the bread rolls French prétenduments, noticed with surprise that they put their bread in their plate and not at side, as it seemed to him to have to be made. The use of the bread seemed to him an obviousness, that is not it more. One could think that the use of the bread is a cultural phenomenon to which it was subjected as French. The continuation of this anecdote shows that there is no fate in the field, this Canadian family was that of a person having lived in France during two years. It had a use of the bread which varied according to its indexicality. In France, its bread was posed beside the plate, whereas it was posed inside in Canada. Its choice was to conform for the use of the group where it was. By thus conforming to the active of oneself local, it did not cause a breaching . It does not remain about it less than the decision to conform to the local use was the result of a negotiation between this Canadian person and the group French which she attended. The French group however never was aware to negotiate anything. However, its active of oneself not having anything naturally legitimates or of impossible to circumvent, their simple practice is not a neutral action. It poses the first stage of a negotiation process of direction. One could perfectly call into question the French practice of the bread on bases of hygiene. Bakery with the mouth, the bread follows a course where it is particularly exposed with any kind of contaminations which can be estimated perfectly natural for the bread, but which would be completely unthinkable for other food. Thus, an obvious practice which one can be hardly aware reveals to be the result of a construction, which was carried out apart from the positive will of the individuals concerned. It is only one manner among others and consequently reveals a manner of operating symptomatic studied village.

So to speak, which can seem to come under the field of the obviousness carries despite everything information concerning the practices of the group. It is in the study of normality and by making re-appear the existing ethnométhodes in the form of active of oneself that one can manage to include/understand the operation of the detail of a group.

Member

Concept of member revêt a fundamental importance in the discipline. The ethnomethodology is interested in sometimes named groups village . It poses like requirement to have like subject of study of the observable and relatable phenomena. A village at the badly definite borders would ruin all the preceding effort. How to observe something of blur? The problem is thus to define solid limits, a coherent object.

The business is more delicate insofar as the Réflexivité is of setting in the fields of the human action. One previously reproached impossibility of giving a solid definition to a general phenomenon such as unemployment, the ethnomethodology must avoid the pitfall which she denounces at the others while being able to determine legitimate borders with her object of research.

The researcher and his object of research

The statute of the researcher compared to the village is moreover high importance and makes it possible to clarify this point. Contrary to the Sociology which recommends a catch of distance favourable with the analysis, the ethnomethodology considers that the researcher must be member of the studied village. This position allows two essential things:

On the one hand the researcher studies a village of outside not as if it were invisible, but a process of which it forms part.
In addition, it has a more intimate comprehension of what occurs. It is more capable to include/understand, thanks to certain special methods, the way in which the direction is built.

The set of themes of the objectivation of the objectifying subject is also central in sociology, but rather than to try to minimize the disturbances due to the presence of the researcher at the point sometimes to deny them, the ethnomethodology recommends to integrate the researcher in his work of study, even if it means to give elements to the readers so that it can take it into account in his reading.

The ethnomethodologist can, while being member, to avoid copying directly the specific patterns to another village. The external researcher more easily will interpret a phenomenon starting from an external reflexivity. At best, it will miss a multitude of signs which will not evoke anything for him. In the worst case, it will apply patterns which are clean for him and will produce a particularly committed analysis.

One will be able to thus quote the example of Pierre Bourdieu which, judging the music rock'n'roll , known as of this one that it was simplistic, basic and which it corresponds well to the acculturation of the popular masses. This kind of judgment will undoubtedly make leap an amateur of the kind which knows well the complexity of the determination rock'n'roll . For this last, the rock'n'roll can be estimated like not being a kind of music, but rather as correspondent with the genealogy of a diversity of kinds - with its batch of nullities, virtuosos and geniuses. One will be able to always object of the theoretical elements to prove this inferiority: binary rates/rhythms and simple melodies. To suppose that always corresponds to reality, a value judgment can always take place on completely different criteria: felt emotion, spontaneousness, the conveyed message, the feeling to be member of a movement…

Who can consider a priori that one of the criteria of judgment is more suitable than the others? How a researcher can include/understand what a type of music represents if it does not feel anything by listening to it? There will collect testimonys of the interested parties in vain, he will remain prisoner of his externality. Either it is confined with a role of tape recorder without much interest, or it deforms the remarks by its own reflexivity.

Criteria of the condition of member

Indeterminability of the condition of member

For Alain Coulon, of a village that is member which has the active of them self and the ethnométhodes. If the study of a village is done by the means of its ethnométhodes and by the setting in light of its energies of oneself, the member is that which has the knowledge and the control of those, according to the ethnomethodology.

One could consequently think that there exists an objective reality of the situation of member. However, to know if somebody has or not the language and the ethnométhodes of his village, it would be necessary to have a description of those to compare it with those of the alleged members. But to know the active ethnométhodes and of oneself , it is necessary to observe the members of the village. Members and practices are defined in a reciprocal relation. Does the member have a particular knowledge, certainly, but how to judge some? The substance of the village is human, it is the member who, by his actions, carries information concerning the village, but it is also him which determines it since the ethnométhodes are the result of a permanent negotiation.

Determination of the member, a ethnométhode of the studied village

The membership of the researcher enables him to define who is or is not member, which are the limits of the village. It is as a member that it implements a specific ethnométhode to his village which enables him to define the limits of them.

In parallel, certain members can not recognize all the other members like belonging to the village. Others, contrary, can want to integrate into it people who are not considered in the first definition of the village. The researcher must pose the limits of the village which he studies. Since he admits that work that he produces is not to in no case an expression of the truth, he can betray only itself by posing the limits of his village. Outside, it can choose arbitrary limits which will be more or less relevant. The legitimacy of the village could always be called into question by whoever, and especially by the members of the studied village. On the other hand, if the researcher is itself member, it with the capacity to define the limits of the village with full knowledge of the facts. Moreover, its particular position of member makes it quite as qualified as whoever to decide which is or is not in the village.

Obviously, the choice of the researcher is “subjective”. It has simply the merit to clarify which are its choices and the reasons which justify them. The subjectivity of the researcher constitutes the standard invariant which makes it possible to define and to speak about the village. Moreover, the ethnomethodology considers that the alleged objectivity of an external researcher is already an error. To imply itself directly in the action consists in admitting the indexicality as a general phenomenon from which the researcher does not escape. As said it Robert Jaulin: One does not make the saving in living being .

Installations of the position of member

If the researcher must be member of the village which he studies in a strict sense, the field of study which is offered to him is limited. It will not be able for example not to launch out in the study of such or such subject (to answer an order for example), because he will not be member of the village. The professional ethnomethodology - within the meaning of an principal activity aiming at accumulating scientific knowledge - can be done only through one crowd of researchers implied in different villages. With less than one installation of the condition of member, a single individual cannot systematize the ethnomethodologic studies.

The role of the Sociologue is to produce answers to the great questions which agitate the company. It does not seem that it can exist of statute equivalent to the range of the ethnomethodologist. To conclude a conventional work of study as could make it sociology, it becomes absolutely imperative to modify the definition of the member. Thus, some arrange the position of member by considering that the researcher, in his relationship to his subject of study, constitutes a second village where the direction is again created. It is then advisable to produce a description of the ethnométhodes starting from this position. The statute of the researcher compared to his ground is then hardly any more distant from that of the contemporary sociologist or the Ethnologue. It invests a ground and tries to include/understand the mechanisms of them while becoming member of a village which will be never completely it his since it integrated it to study it. Its only characteristic will be to produce a speech on a particular subject: the description of the ethnométhodes.

Methodology

The word of the researcher/member finally does not have more weight than that of any other member. Does one have to finally grant to the ethnomethodology any credit? If what is known as is worthy of interest, while at the same time the individual does nothing but tell what he saw, then its speech can be regarded as component a work ethnomethodologic worthy of interest. The speech of the researcher has simply the merit to be formulated and to be based on some specific methods. The conclusions to which it leads do not have on the other hand necessarily more value than those of another member.

It is necessary to note here that the ethnomethodology does not have as an aim to build a direction, it rather tries to include/understand how the direction is built in a precise group - a work which is generally done neither in the discussions of bar, nor inside a village whatever he is. If the members have a single competence to build direction, they wonder only seldom about the way in which they are built. The ethnomethodologist is thus interested in his village under a new angle.

“Breaching”

The ethnomethodologist uses some simple methods to try to make emerge relevant information which it does not perceive when it uses his single competence of member to build direction. One of it is the breaching . It consists in disturbing the usual routine to emphasize its mechanisms ( active of oneself ) by which the direction is negotiated. Information is in general new in the village. It can be validated by this one or produce a debate which reveals even more the ethnométhodes (i.e. local methods of construction of the direction) that the members use to negotiate this new direction.

Harold Garfinkel for example required of its students to return in their parents while behaving like guests. They did not speak too much and were shown very polished. As they were family members, their courtesy was perceived like obsequiosity. The family village did not include/understand what occurred. This disturbance made it possible to include/understand certain mechanisms of construction of directions practiced since strong not noticed a long time and yet , i.e. they were not consciously known, nor voluntarily formulated since they rose from the good sense.

It is noted that in this idea of active of oneself , there exist behaviors which escape the conscience from those which adopt them. The basic difference with sociology is that these behaviors are seen and not noticed , which means that they remain with the range of the members of the village. The researcher is not the only one who is able to see them and to interpret them.

Ethnomethodologic indifference

The researcher/member calls upon his membership of other villages to take a certain distance compared to what it observes. It must adopt a general attitude ethnomethodologic indifference . Not that he refuses to express value judgments, but more radically he must manage to feel partly disunited action. The joint use of the points of view of its other villages of membership and of the voluntarily shifted behavior of the breaching make it possible to reach this state.

Yves Lecerf considers that the researcher occupies three positions in his work of observation:

the complete and sincere implication in the action of the village concerned offers to the researcher a place of member as well as any member.
By the simple fact of starting to describe the action in progress, it is posed like observer of its own village and thus takes an external position.
Using its capacity of interpretation, it structure the experiment which it has of the ground and the speech that it produces at its place.

The ethnomethomethodologic indifference rises from these three attitudes which cannot be held simultaneously. How the researcher could be at the same time implied and distant? It must adopt the three points of view consecutively, one making it possible to clarify the others. These three positions must clearly arise in its writings. If it adds in more some biographical elements, the reader can then interpret even more effectively his work.

Ethnomethodology and science

ethnomethodology with the claim to answer three criteria of scientificity:

Observation of reality: The researcher observes the reality of a ground
Limite of the object: The researcher knows the whole of his ground in a practical way, because he is member of his ground he has any legitimacy to pose the limits of them.
Accumulation of the knowledge: The description of the direction being done within a group since the position of enquiring member/makes it possible to produce a rigorous knowledge because positioned in time and space. It cannot thus lose its validity.

The respect of these three criteria founds the rigor of the discipline and is used as base from which it positions compared to the other social sciences, in particular sociology.

The ethnomethodology borrows thus from the Phénoménologie, in particular by the requirement of a return to the lived world (without necessarily retaining of them the criteria of analysis which one finds at Husserl, such as the obviousnesses originating, adequate and Apodictique), the ethnomethodology consequently draws aside the subjects suitable for the Sociologie or the Ethnologie, like those of the Psychologie or the Linguistique.

One can also regard it as a form of Sociologie, insofar as it remains close to a contemporary sociology which takes into account the disturbances induced by the researcher and who is based on qualitative methods. It is however difficult to compare it to a branch of sociology, insofar as it were clearly posed in rupture with it at the time of its advent. The proximity of “modern” sociology is the result of the evolution this discipline in reaction to criticisms carried to its place and in which the ethnomethodology took part.

One can however distinguish some original aspects from the ethnomethodology. Thus, the place of the researcher like full member of the studied object, the interest carried to the phenomena creatures of habit or the distance kept with concepts which do not constitute accounts (like the company), mark an important difference with many sociologies. It determines moreover a series of quite precise concepts to which it refers and which are usable by others.

But especially, the ethnomethodology is not interested in the validity of the existing directions, but in their development. The construction of the direction is an human activity, to study it for itself amounts studying an aspect of the Man. The ethnomethodology thus deserves its label of Social science, while creating on this precise point a rupture with the tradition of Auguste Count and Emile Durkheim. Whereas the first aimed at producing a “social discipline” which is practiced like a religion for the people and a science for the elite, the second saw sociology as a “moral science” which was to make it possible to make policy options according to objective criteria.

In these two cases, sociology was a place of creation of direction, it in that was thus confused with the object of study Homme without to be able to admit it. The ethnomethodology tries to exceed this confusion and is registered in that following the second philosophy of Wittgenstein. For that purpose, it is based on phenomenology and concepts resulting from the Linguistique, comprising a series of paradigms which are not subjected to the principle of indexicality however stated like a property impossible to circumvent of the world. These paradigms resulting from the university world thus transgress their own bases.

Why should one then allot more value to these paradigms than with those of Durkheim? If all is summarized with an induction which is itself the expression indexicale of a village, it is impossible for a ethnomethodologist to invalidate the conclusions of another discipline. If the ethnomethodology grants the right to criticize sociology more than another university discipline, it is that she recognizes herself in this discipline.