On the study of human action

Schutz and Garfinkel on social science

George Psathas

pp. 47-68

in: Lester Embree (ed), Schutzian social science, Berlin, Springer, 1999

Abstract

In contrast to Schutz's approach to social science, Garfinkel presents ethnomethodology as an "alternate technology of social analysis" which seeks to respect the phenomena of order* as produced and achieved order and to show how such phenomena become accessible through the various study policies which it enumerates and delineates. The result is systematic, rigorous, empirical studies of practical action and practical reasoning in and as of the methods actually used, concretely, by members in the course of living their ordinary society.

Cited authors

Schütz Alfred

Garfinkel Harold