Harold Garfinkel

memorial remarks, recollections and reflections

Stacy Lee Burns

pp. 159-161

in: George Psathas, Martin Endreß (eds), In memoriam of Harold Garfinkel, Human Studies 35 (2), 2012.

Abstract

The worldwide social science movement lost a major figure and one of its most distinguished members when Harold Garfinkel passed away in April 2011. Over his long and very interesting life and career, it is indisputable that Harold succeeded in reorienting, even revolutionizing, the field of sociology and social scientific thought more generally. He boldly set forth the research agenda for ethnomethodology, stating that it makes a “radical break” with ‘classic’ social science, and that “every feature of sense, of fact, of method” is to be re-discovered as the “contingent accomplishment of socially organized common practices” (Garfinkel 1967: 32–33, emphasis added). Rather than treating the orderly features of society as a priori, objective structures which are disengaged from social action, Harold recommended instead that the regular and orderly features of social activity be treated as the “managed practical accomplishments” of work done by participants in various settings to interactionally...

Cited authors

Garfinkel Harold