Harold Garfinkel (born 29 October 1917) is Professor Emeritus in sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Garfinkel studied the works of Aron Gurwitsch and Alfred Schütz and is one of the key developers of the phenomenological tradition in American sociology.
His own development of this tradition (which he terms ethnomethodology) is widely misunderstood. In contrast to the social constructionist version of phenomenological sociolog...
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Harold Garfinkel (born 29 October 1917) is Professor Emeritus in sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Garfinkel studied the works of Aron Gurwitsch and Alfred Schütz and is one of the key developers of the phenomenological tradition in American sociology.
His own development of this tradition (which he terms ethnomethodology) is widely misunderstood. In contrast to the social constructionist version of phenomenological sociology, he emphasises a focus on radical phenomena, rather than on the various ways they are interpreted. His recommendation that sociologists suspend their assumption of social order is often wrongly taken to mean that he believes social life to be chaotic, or that members of society are free agents. However, this suspension (bracketing in the phenomenological jargon) is merely an analytic move designed to bring the existing social order more clearly into focus. He emphasises the indexicality of language and the difficulties this creates for the...
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