• This record comes from PubMed

Harold Garfinkel and Edward Rose in the early years of ethnomethodology

. 2023 Apr ; 59 (2) : 171-192. [epub] 20221128

Language English Country United States Media print-electronic

Document type Journal Article

Grant support
Czech Fulbright Commission

This article documents the beginning of the intellectual companionship between the founder of ethnomethodology, Harold Garfinkel, and Edward Rose, who is most often associated with his program of "ethno-inquiries." I present results from archival research focusing on the contacts and collaborations between Rose and Garfinkel in the years 1955-1965. First, I describe the review process for Rose and Felton's paper, submitted to the American Sociological Review in 1955, which Garfinkel reviewed and after Rose's rebuttal recommended for publication. The paper induced Garfinkel to write an extensive commentary that has remained unpublished. Second, I discuss the 1958 New Mexico conference sponsored by the Air Force, which was an opportunity for Rose and Garfinkel to work together on topics related to common-sense knowledge and scientific knowledge. Third, I give an overview of the ethnomethodological conferences in 1962 and 1963, supported by an Air Force grant written collaboratively by Rose and Garfinkel. Here I focus primarily on Rose's research on "small languages," which stimulated many discussions among the early ethnomethodologists. Rose's work and exchanges with Garfinkel demonstrate the former's affinity for miniaturization as a research approach and search for ways to empiricize topics of sociological theory in locally observable settings.

See more in PubMed

Bales, R. F. (1950). A set of categories for the analysis of small group interaction. American Sociological Review, 15(2), 257-263.

Birdwhistell, R. (1968). A looking-glass conversation in the rare languages of Sez and Pique. Edward Rose. American Anthropologist, 70(4), 830.

Button, G. (2008). Against ‘distributed cognition’. Theory, Culture and Society, 25(2), 87-104.

Button, G., & Sharrock, W. (2009). Studies of work and the workplace in HCI: Concepts and techniques. Morgan & Claypool.

Carlin, A. P. (1999a). On the linguistic constitution of research practices [Unpublished PhD thesis]. University of Stirling.

Carlin, A. P. (1999b). The works of Edward Rose: A bibliography. Ethnographic Studies, 4, 61-77.

Carlin, A. P. (2002). Biography and bibliography: An intellectual profile of Edward Rose. Auto/Biography, X(1-2), 41-54.

Carlin, A. P. (2006). “Rose's Gloss”: Considerations of natural sociology and ethnography in practice. Qualitative Sociology Review, 2(3), 65-77.

Carlin, A. P. (2009). Edward Rose and linguistic ethnography: An ethno-inquiries approach to interviewing. Qualitative Research, 9(3), 331-354.

Carlin, A. P., & Watson, R. (2019). Rose, Edward. SAGE Research Methods Foundations. Retrieved February 28, 2022, from https://methods.sagepub.com/foundations/rose-edward

Cicourel, A. V. (2016). Response to Smith and Atkinson. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 19(1), 111-120.

Eisenmann, C., & Lynch, M. (2021). Introduction to Harold Garfinkel's ethnomethodological misreading of Aron Gurwitsch on the phenomenal field. Human Studies, 44(1), 1-17.

Festinger, L. (1999). Reflections on cognitive dissonance: 30 years later. In E. Harmon-Jones & J. Mills (Eds.), Cognitive dissonance: Progress on a pivotal theory in social psychology (pp. 381-385). American Psychological Association.

Flynn, P. J. (1991). The ethnomethodological movement: Sociosemiotic interpretations. Mouton de Gruyter.

Garfinkel, H. (1960). The rational properties of scientific and common sense activities. Behavioral Science, 5(1), 72-83.

Garfinkel, H. (1962, circa). On et cetera (Outline) [Unpublished manuscript]. Garfinkel Archive.

Garfinkel, H. (1963). A conception of, and experiments with, trust as a condition of stable concerted actions. In O. J. Harvey (Ed.), Motivation and Social Interaction: Cognitive Determinants (pp. 187-238). Ronald Press.

Garfinkel, H. (1964). Studies of the routine grounds of everyday activities. Social Problems, 11(3), 225-250.

Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Prentice Hall.

Garfinkel, H. (ed.). (1986). Ethnomethodological studies of work. Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Garfinkel, H. (2002). Ethnomethodology's program: Working out Durkheim's Aphorism (edited and introduced by A. W. Rawls). Rowman & Littlefield.

Garfinkel, H. (2008)[1952]. Toward a sociological theory of information. Paradigm Publishers.

Garfinkel, H. (2019)[1959]. Common Sense Knowledge of Social Structures. A paper distributed at the Session on the Sociology of Knowledge, Fourth World Congress of Sociology, Stresa, Italy, September 12, 1959. Edited by C. Erbacher and E. Schüttpelz. Retrieved February 28, 2022, from https://dspace.ub.uni-siegen.de/bitstream/ubsi/1546/3/WPS_11_Garfinkel_Common_Sense_Knowledge.pdf

Garfinkel, H. (2019)[1960]. Notes on language games as a source of methods for studying the formal properties of linguistic events. European Journal of Social Theory, 22(2), 148-174.

Garfinkel, H. (2019)[1962]. Parsons' primer (edited by Anne W. Rawls). Springer.

Garfinkel, H. (2021). Ethnomethodological misreading of Aron Gurwitsch on the phenomenal field. Human Studies, 44(1), 19-42.

Garfinkel, H. (2022)[1960]. A comparison of decisions made on four “pre-theoretical” problems by Talcott Parsons and Alfred Schütz. In D. W. Maynard & J. Heritage (Eds.), The ethnomethodology program: Legacies and prospects (pp. 71-89). Oxford University Press.

Garfinkel, H. (2022). Harold Garfinkel: Studies of work in the sciences (edited by M. Lynch). Routledge.

Garfinkel, H., & Sacks, H. (1970). On formal structures of practical action. In J. C. McKinney & E. A. Tiryakian (Eds.), Theoretical sociology: Perspectives and developments (pp. 337-366). Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Garfinkel, H., Wieder, D. L. (1992). Two incommensurable, asymmetrically alternate technologies of social analysis. In G. Watson & R. M. Seiler (Eds.), Text in Context: Contributions to Ethnomethodology (pp. 175-206). Sage Publications.

Hammersley, M. (2019). The influence of Felix Kaufmann's methodology on Harold Garfinkel's ethnomethodology. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 50(1), 23-44.

Hanson, R. C., Rose, E., & Little, Z. (2001). A comparative investigation of the semantic structure of language. Cross-Cultural Research, 35(3), 303-342.

Hill, R. J., & Crittenden, K. S. (Eds.). (1968). Proceedings of the purdue symposium on ethnomethodology. Purdue Research Foundation.

Hinkle, G. J. (1977). ‘When is Phenomenology Sociological?’ A panel discussion with Harold Garfinkel, James Heap, John O′Neill, George Psathas, Edward Rose, Edward Tiryakian, Helmut R. Wagner, D. Lawrence Wieder, chaired by Gisela J. Hinkle. The Annals of Phenomenological Sociology, 2, 1-40.

Hollander, M. M., & Turowetz, J. (2017). Normalizing trust: Participants' immediately post-hoc explanations of behaviour in Milgram's ‘obedience’ experiments. The British Journal of Social Psychology, 56(4), 655-674.

Hooker, E. (1957). The adjustment of the male overt homosexual. Journal of Projective Techniques, 21(1), 18-31.

Hutchinson, P. (2022). Wittgensteinian ethnomethodology (1): Gurwitsch, Garfinkel, and Wittgenstein and the meaning of praxeological gestalts. Philosophia Scientiae, 26(3), 61-93.

Hutchinson, P., Zielinska, A. C., & Hardman, D. (2022). Editorial introduction: Praxeological gestalts-philosophy, cognitive science and sociology meet gestalt psychology. Philosophia Scientiae, 26(3), 5-19.

Kaufmann, F. (1944). Methodology of the social sciences. Oxford University Press.

Kendrick, K. H. (2017). Using conversation analysis in the lab. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 50(1), 1-11.

Laurier, E., Krämer, H., Gerst, D., & Salomon, R. (2019). The “Studies in Ethnomethodology” are a way of understanding and handling empirical materials and thoughts. Forum: Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 20(2), Art. 2.

Lynch, M. (1993). Scientific practice and ordinary action: Ethnomethodology and social studies of science. Cambridge University Press.

Lynch, M., & Bogen, D. (1994). Harvey Sacks's primitive natural science. Theory, Culture & Society, 11(4), 65-104.

MacAndrew, C., & Garfinkel, H. (1962). A consideration of changes attributed to intoxication as common-sense reasons for getting drunk. Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 23, 252-266.

Meyer, C. (2022). The phenomenological foundations of ethnomethodology's conceptions of sequentiality and indexicality: Harold Garfinkel's references to Aron Gurwitsch's “Field of Consciousness.” Gesprächsforschung-Online-Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion, 23, 111-144.

Mondada, L. (2014). The local constitution of multimodal resources for social interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 65, 137-156.

Parsons, T. (1979/1980). On theory and metatheory. Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, 7(1), 5-16.

Psathas, G. (2009). The correspondence of Alfred Schutz and Harold Garfinkel: What was the “terra incognita” and the “treasure island?” In H. Nasu, L. Embree, G. Psathas, & I. Srubar (Eds.), Alfred Schutz and his intellectual partners (pp. 401-434). UVK.

Rawls, A. W. (2013). The early years, 1939-1953: Garfinkel at North Carolina, Harvard and Princeton. Journal of Classical Sociology, 13(2), 303-312.

Rawls, A. W. (2019). Introduction to Garfinkel's ‘Notes on language games’: Language events as cultural events in ‘systems of interaction’. European Journal of Social Theory, 22(2), 133-147.

Rawls, A. W. (2022). Situating Goffman's “Interaction Orders” in Durkheim's social fact lineage: Grounding an alternate sociology of modernity in heightened awareness of interaction. Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa, 1, 27-62.

Rawls, A. W. (2020). Developing ethnomethodology: Garfinkel on the constitutive interactional practices in social systems of interaction. In P. Kivisto (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of social theory (pp. 343-368). Cambridge University Press.

Rawls, A. W., & Lynch, M. (2019). Harold Garfinkel's History of Gulfport Field 1942, Part II, The Aircraft Mechanics School: Mocking-up and making-do in the midst of wartime urgency. In H. Garfinkel (Ed.), The History of Gulfport Field 1942, Part II: The aircraft mechanics school (pp. I-XLVIII). Media of Cooperation.

Rawls, A. W., & Turowetz, J. (2019). Introduction to Parsons' Primer. In H. Garfinkel (Ed.), Parsons' primer (pp. 1-108). J. B. Metzler.

Richardson, L. (1999). Paradigms lost. Symbolic Interaction, 22(1), 79-91.

Rose, E. (1948). Innovations in American culture. Social Forces, 26(3), 255-272.

Rose, E. (1960a). The English record of a natural sociology. American Sociological Review, 25(2), 193-208.

Rose, E. (1960b). The organization of microcultures. In D. Willner (Ed.), Decisions, values and groups I. Reports from the First Interdisciplinary Conference in the Behavioral Science Division held at the University of New Mexico (pp. 171-175). Pergamon Press.

Rose, E. (1962). Uniformities in culture: Ideas with histories. In N. F. Washburne (Ed.), Decisions, values and groups II (pp. 154-176). Pergamon Press.

Rose, E. (1967). A looking-glass conversation in the rare languages of Sez and Pique. University of Colorado.

Rose, E. (1973). Putting society into words. A lecture delivered at the University of Iowa, April 12, 1973. Recording available at the Garfinkel Archive.

Rose, E. (1992). The werald. The Waiting Room Press.

Rose, E. (1997). Rose's Gloss on talk about achievements. In E. Rose & H. Garfinkel (Eds.), Mystifying kinds of achievement, conversation on July 15, 1973 (pp. ix-xv). The Waiting Room Press.

Rose, E., Lauderdale, S., Leuthold, F., & Pratto, D. (1964). Small languages I. Bureau of sociological research report no. 14. University of Colorado.

Rose, E., Lauderdale, S., Leuthold, F., & Wilson, H. (1965). Small languages II. Bureau of sociological research report no. 15. University of Colorado.

Rose, E., Forester, A., & Higman, A. (1966). Small languages III. Bureau of sociological research report no. 16. University of Colorado.

Rose, E., Gorman, A., Leuthold, F., & Singer, I. J. (1997[1965]). The unattached society: An account of the life on Larimer Street among homeless men. Ethnographic Studies, 1(xiii-xvi), 1-93.

Rose, E., & Felton, W. (1955). Experimental histories of culture. American Sociological Review, 20(4), 383-392.

Rose, E., & Willoughby, G. (1958). Culture profiles and emphases. American Journal of Sociology, 63(5), 476-490.

Sacks, H. (1963). Sociological description. Berkeley Journal of Sociology, 8, 1-16.

Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation. Blackwell.

Schegloff, E. A. (2004). Putting the interaction back into dialogue. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27(2), 271-272.

Scodel, A., Ratoosh, P., & Minas, J. S. (1959). Some personality correlates of decision making under conditions of risk. Behavioral Science, 4, 19-28.

Slack, R. S. (2000). The ethno-inquiries of Edward Rose. Ethnographic Studies, 5, 1-26.

Ting, C., & Fitzgerald, R. (2020). The work to make an experiment work. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 23(3), 329-345.

Washburne, N. F. (Ed.). (1962). Decisions, values and groups II. Pergamon Press.

Watson, R. (1997). Prologue. Ethnographic Studies, 1, iv-xxi.

Watson, R., & Coulter, J. (2008). The debate over cognitivism. Theory, Culture & Society, 25(2), 1-17.

Watson, R. (1992). The wording of the world. In E. Rose (Ed.), The werald (pp. xv-xxxiii). The Waiting Room Press.

Wittgenstein, L. (2014). Philosophische Untersuchungen/Philosophical investigations. Wiley-Blackwell.

Find record

Citation metrics

Loading data ...

Archiving options

Loading data ...