Ethnomethodology

Please see this document to envision an ethnomethodological research project of your own design “ about a topic related to my interest” Native (Indian) American reservation., you can find the explanation below, and feel free to ask for any clarification.

Ethnomethodology is a research process used to investigate how people assign meaning, understanding, or a sense of logic and order to their lives. Often, these are studies of norms and mores. Ultimately, the purpose of ethnomethodology is to demonstrate some of the background knowledge and expectations that sustain ongoing social interactions. Sociologist Howard Garfield is credited with coining the term and the practice. In his initial example, he observed that jurors in a particular court case demonstrated that they knew how to act in their roles as jurors.

Straight from Wikepedia[endnoteRef:1], here is a definition to work with: [1: ]

The term’s meaning can be broken down into its three constituent parts: ethno – method – ology, for the purpose of explanation. Using an appropriate Southern California example: ethno refers to a particular socio-cultural group (for example, a particular, local community of surfers); method refers to the methods and practices this particular group employs in its everyday activities (for example, related to surfing); and ology refers to the systematic description of these methods and practices.

Wikepedia offers an uncomplicated but working definition. That definition is expanded in useful ways by the discussion of constructionism offered by Holstein (2018, pp. 395-410) and the discussion of conversation, text, and other verbal analysis engaged by Peräkylä and Ruusuvuori (2018, pp. 395-410). You might also consider authors in the Denzin and Lincoln (2018) handbook who have addressed symbolic language, vision and ways of seeing, and other related topics.

Your assignment is to envision an ethnomethodological research project of your own design, and of your own choosing. This is a design only—you do not enact your plan or collect information or any kind of data for this activity. At this stage in your assignment, you are describing how you will go about collecting data that systematically describes the methods and practices that a particular social group utilizes in their everyday practices.

· What is the context of your study? Do you describe the context as “naturally occurring”?

· Why or why not? Who are your participants? How would you recruit participants to your study?

· If observational information is collected, what would you include in your field notes? Why?

· If you use interviews as a data collection method, what type(s) of interview methods will you use? Why? (Think of the continuum from conversation to formal, structured interviews.)

· If you use written work, what types and for what purposes?

· How will you define “text”? What forms of textual analysis will you adopt/adapt?

And so on… Personalize.

Ethnomethodology is a descriptive practice. It does not define or describe how or why particular social practices, activities, and social constructions exist. That is to say, it is not judgmental, critical, or evaluative. It is merely a closely detailed, systematic description. Such descriptions can be useful in further, analytic processes.

At this point in your design, you have a couple of additional choices to make. To complete the assignment, either describe how your information might be useful as it stands, without further analysis, but as an application.

OR, define how you would come to understand the how and why questions that have not been addressed in your ethnomethodological data collection. For example, how might a feminist qualitative researcher approach the data collected through an ethnomethodological process? Or, how might a critical arts-based researcher utilize your data/information?

References

Denzin, N.K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (Eds.) (2018). The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, (5th ed.). Los Angeles: Sage.

Ethnomethodology. (n.d.). In Wikepedia. Retrieved October 23, 2019, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnomethodology

Holstein, J.A. (2018). Advancing a constructional analytics. In N. K. Denzin and Y. Lincoln. Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 5th edition, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 395-410.

Peräkylä, A., & Ruusuvuori, J. (2018). Analyzing talk and text. In N. K. Denzin and Y. Lincoln. Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 5th edition, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 669-691.

https://thevisualcommunicationguy.com/2018/01/30/how-to-do-ethnography-research/

https://www.greenbook.org/Content/housecalls/ETHNOGRAPHYGUIDELINES.pdf

https://www.silearning.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/ethnographic-fieldnotes.pdf

https://nsuworks.nova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1071&context=tqr

http://www.erialproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Toolkit-3.22.11.pdf