These are notes from the pig meeting held on Thursday the 20th of February, 2003.
In attendance at the meeting were TimCedermanHaysom, BrettCampbell, BenMatthews, BenMcGarry, MargotBrereton, JesperPedersen, and JaredDonovan.
This is not a transcript, just some incomplete notes taken down by JaredDonovan.
BenMatthews lead a discussion on the differences between Ethnography and Ethnomethodology. Before the meeting we were given to extracts to read. The references are;
Garfinkel, H. ( 1967 ). Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice Hall. SS&H call no. HM24 .G3 1967
Geertz, C. ( 1983 ). Local knowledge: further essays in interpretive anthropology. New York, Basic Books. SS&H call no. GN316 .G43 1983
The reason I chose to compare Ethnomethodology and Ethnography is that often the two terms are used interchangeably. Most people cite Geertz when talking about Ethnography and Garfinkel when talking about Ethnomethodology.
I was thinking of Ethnomethodology as a perspective and Ethnography as the study.
What about Ethnology? I think they've gone from Ethnology to Ethnography with the move from a science of culture, ( e.g. Straus ), to a description of culture.
My first impression of the Geertz paper is that he's giving an interpretation of an interpretation.
It seems like Ethnography moves from the real world to meta-description or theory but leaves out something in-between, ( description ) and Ethnomethodology goes from the real world to description but leaves something off the end, ( theory ).
When I was talking about abstraction, this is what I was getting at.
I don't see that Geertz is making a grand claim - he's arguing against the grand claim that meaning is innate by providing a counter example.
Yes, but the level at which his implications operate is at a very abstract one.
Geertz doesn't show anything of his process.
I liked the way that Garfinkel structured his findings.
I was repulsed.
History, - this was done in the 60's - since then it's become more of a science. They've tried to distil out as much of the interpretation as possible. It can become so descriptive that it doesn't add anything. ( e.g. study that examined a proof of Godel's Theorem ).
Where to we fit in? -> We seemed to decide that we would use both of them for different things. That maybe Ethnography was good for finding your way into a context to a problem and Ethnomethodology was useful for more detailed observations of the activity of work when we're trying to solve a particular problem.
We also talked about SymbolicInteractionism, which is quite similar to Ethnomethodology. There is a book by Herbert Blumer, the reference is;
Blumer, H. ( 1969 ). Symbolic interactionism : perspective and method. Englewood Cliffs : Prentice-Hall. SS&H call no. HM291 .B57 1969
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