Early glimmers of the now familiar ethnomethodological themes in Garfinkel's "the perception of the other"

Timothy Koschmann

pp. 479-504

in: Martin Endreß, Stefan Nicolae (eds), In memory of Harold Garfinkel, Human Studies 35 (4), 2012.

Abstrakt

Garfinkel's dissertation, "The Perception of the Other," was completed and defended 15 years prior to the publication of Studies in Ethnomethodology. This essay seeks hints of the familiar ethnomethodological themes (indexicality, reflexivity, accountability) within his thesis. It begins by examining the contributions of earlier social theorists, particularly Talcott Parsons and Alfred Schütz, to Garfinkel's thought. It then examines the dissertation itself seeking evidence to support the claim that Garfinkel was already moving in the direction of an "incommensurable, asymmetric, and alternate' program of sociological inquiry well before the term "ethnomethodology' had even been coined.

Cited authors

Parsons Talcott

Garfinkel Harold