1800s: Martineau · Tocqueville · Marx · Spencer · Le Bon · Ward · Pareto · Tönnies · Veblen · Simmel · Durkheim · Addams · Mead · Weber · Du Bois · Mannheim · Elias Ethnomethodology is the study of how social order is produced in and through processes of social interaction.
[10] This interest developed out of Garfinkel's critique of Talcott Parsons' attempt to derive a general theory of society.
John Heritage writes: "In its open-ended reference to [the study of] any kind of sense-making procedure, the term represents a signpost to a domain of uncharted dimensions rather than a staking out of a clearly delineated territory.
A multiplicity of theoretical references by Anne Rawls, in her introduction to Ethnomethodology's Program, might be interpreted to suggest a softening of this position towards the end of Garfinkel's life.
[19] However, the position is consistent with ethnomethodology's understanding of the significance of "member's methods", and with certain lines of philosophical thought regarding the philosophy of science (Polanyi 1958; Kuhn 1970; Feyerabend 1975), and the study of the actual practices of scientific procedure.
Ethnomethodology is not Durkheimian, although it shares some of the interests of Durkheim; it is not phenomenology, although it borrows from Husserl and Schutz's studies of the lifeworld (Lebenswelt); it is not a form of Gestalt theory, although it describes social orders as having Gestalt-like properties; and, it is not Wittgensteinian, although it makes use of Wittgenstein's understanding of rule-use, etc.
[3][10][12] Ethnomethodologists have conducted their studies in a variety of ways,[14] and the point of these investigations is "to discover the things that persons in particular situations do, the methods they use, to create the patterned orderliness of social life".
[19] Michael Lynch has noted that: "Leading figures in the field have repeatedly emphasised that there is no obligatory set of methods [employed by ethnomethodologists], and no prohibition against using any research procedure whatsoever, if it is adequate to the particular phenomena under study".
"[12]: 143 On the other hand, where the study of conversational talk is divorced from its situated context—that is, when it takes on the character of a purely technical method and "formal analytic" enterprise in its own right—it is not a form of ethnomethodology.
When such analytical concepts are generated from within one setting and conceptually applied (generalised) to another, the (re)application represents a violation of the strong form of the unique adequacy requirement of methods.
Garfinkel speaks of phenomenological texts and findings as being "appropriated" for the purposes of exploring topics in the study of social order.
As Garfinkel states in regard to the work of the phenomenologist Aron Gurwitsch, especially his Field of Consciousness (1964: ethnomethodology's phenomenological urtext): "you can't do anything unless you do read his texts".