On the Significance of “Ethnomethodological Studies of Work”

Abstract

This article aims at reviewing the goals and the significances of “ethnomethodological studies of work” and making clear their relations to the classic sociological studies of social order. It is emphasis on the rational properties of indexical expressions that identifies ethnomethodology as study distinct from and in contrast to mainstream or orthodox sociology. Indexicality is a feature that provides ethnomethodology with unique study policies, a part of which, but the most significant, is the respecification of all actions as “locally produced, naturally accountable phenomena of order”. According to Garfinkel and others, scholars working in classical vein make use of these features of order production-yet have ignored this fact completely. This article attempts to show that ethnomethodological studies of work find and respecify these phenomena in their own right.