Last week, Harold Garfinkel, one of the greatest sociologists of the second half of the 20th century, died. He was 93. Garfinkel, actually, would have scoffed at the idea of being called a sociologist. When he came of age, sociologists were too engaged in abstractions, in attempts to make sweeping generalizations. Though Garfinkel himself was the student of one of the greatest systematizers of them all, Talcott Parsons, he took a radically different stance.
Instead of allying himself with this way of doing sociology, Garfinkel turned to the New School, and the work of exiled philosopher Alfred Schutz, as a way out of grand abstractions. Instead of looking at society in the abstract, he slowly built up a language that would allow him to study what was going on in the here-and-now, the way people actually made sense of their world as they went along in the business of living. Instead of Society, with a capital “S,” he became immersed in the methods people use to make a situation what it is. In his apt, and often misunderstood, term, he became interested in ethnomethodology.
In the context of the 1960s, ethnomethodology became a banner for studying the actual way people navigate their lives. Intellectuals that were disillusioned with abstract sociology, people like Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff, Mel Pollner, and even the writer Carlos Castaneda, became allied with what was emerging as a movement on the West Coast of the USA, with its headquarters in UCLA, where Garfinkel did some of his most important work.
Though Garfinkel’s thought is rich and complex, and evolved throughout his life, there are a few themes that he stayed true to since his groundbreaking 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology. One is how inherently fragile our world was, how much work went into sustaining it, work that was not natural, but could be always undone. In John Heritage’s terms, order was constructed in the making, like The Beatles’ “Yellow Brick Road.” To show that, and to show how we constantly work to sustain our work, Garfinkel engaged in “Breaching Experiments,” unleashing his students on an unsuspecting world, wrecking interactional havoc. From simple assignments, such as asking them to haggle for prices at the supermarket, or blatantly disregard the rules of children’s game, he showed both how much work it took to sustain seeming order, and that this work was never-ending.
Thus, to be an ethnomethodologist, Garfinkel advised students to focus on actual action, to look at the minutiae of action in the making. To study how people played the piano, it wasn’t enough refer to “socialization” or “learning,” rather how people learned to put their fingers on the keyboard needed to be investigated. In order to study astrophysics, students needed to become immersed in the world astrophysicists created in their work. Almost in direct opposition to most sociology, he reiterated his disgust at abstraction, at the identification of abstract “social forces.”
But for all that, Harold Garfinkel had a profound influence on world sociology. The call to pay attention to actual action, to the ongoing production of order, is seen everywhere today—from the field of Conversation Analysis that attempts to perform an ethnomethodology of everyday conversations, to the study of organizations and the relationships between myths and practicalities of bureaucracy in the new institutionalism. Anthony Giddens was inspired by Garfinkel in his stints at UCLA; Pierre Bourdieu read Garfinkel carefully, and the two had their own shouting match at the house of a mutual friend. Indeed ethnomethodology is so inscribed in sociology that it often becomes transparent, the greatest achievement a theory can have.
Garfinkel was active to the very end, re-organizing his life’s work, thinking of writing another book. It is a great loss that this book will not be written.
When we look at the blatant disregard contemporary conservatives have of the bonds of civility, Garfinkel really hits home. A technical point — the Beatles’ “Yellow Brick Road”? Isn’t that Elton John who did that one? The Beatles tune is “Long and Winding Road.”
The yellow brick road image comes from the Beatles cartoon Yellow Submarine. I’ve never actually seen it, but apparently there is a scene where John, Paul, Ringo, and George lay down the yellow bricks- making their own path as they walk it.
Thoughtful memoriam. thank you. I’d like to know more about the shouting match with Bourdieu…
Iddo, thanks for this. I hadn’t seen Garfinkel in a long time, but the seminars I took with him were fascinating…as were detailed explanations of the sentimental-intellectual structure of even his house. I’ll hold the memories, tightly paired with the theory…
Wonderful memoriam, Iddo. Thanks. Let’s hope that the special legacy Garfinkel left to UCLA sociology endures along with his contributions to the discipline as a whole.
Also, I can’t believe Mike has never seen Yellow Submarine.
Thoughtful piece.
Thoughtful piece. I enjoy reading this. And “MoMA Kids”.
I first encountered Harold Garfinkel when he gave a talk to the Grad Sociology Club at Berkeley. It must have been 1961. I was a student of Goffman at the time, but Garfinkel’s talk made an impression that has lasted. An incredibly brilliant man. It’s good to see that he is getting recognition in obituaries.
I wish I had had the chance to spend more time with the man. He’ll be very missed.
The goodbyes to Harold wasted little time distorting his work. Early studies on common sense reasoning, background assumptions and breaches were the effect of using Husserl, Gurwitsch and Schutz as resources: the intentionality wing of Phenomenology that separates the knowing subject from its intentional object. In his late work, Harold embraced Merleau-Ponty’s focus on embodiment, which relegated consciousness to the casket already filled with Descarte, Kant, Freud and Parsons, to mention a view. In his description of assembling the chair, we find the imminent and unbreakable nexus of background expectations, et cetera provision, documentary method, reflexivity, indexical expressions and glossing. Avoid using these in concert and you have violated Harold’s work and are doing other than Ethnomethodology. Those who thought that Harold did constructivist or deconstructivist work simply did not understand Harold’s approach. Harold’s papers are the only study of ‘the social’ in the 20th century. Sociology with Parson’s embrace of Freud presumed an ‘orchestra director’ or ‘humongulous’ that structures the brains workings to impose its will on how people interact with each other. So called ‘rule’s of interaction’ or ‘conversational’ rules are part of the orchestra. The train loaded with transformational grammar and information processing reproduces Freud’s idea of ego. People adjust to each other to be accepted, in step with others, not lose face, produce music together. Interaction and conversation rules and information processing surrenders any notion of ‘the social;’ Indeed such work has placed sociology as weak sisters of Cognitive and Social Psychology, but without their experimental rigor.
To study the social requires one to stand within the impermeability of Harold’s practices as group members conduct work; these practices are indestructible and will impose its will wherever people attempt to do work in concert.
Although we had not seen each other in many years, our lunches in the UCLA faculty lounge were filled with spirited debate. Harold encouraged my work more than anyone else and was a wonderful friend. He stands alone in the 20th century — even above Durkheim, Levy-Strauss, Foucault — in his cogent ideas and program. My hope is that the younger generation will ignore their elder’s work and forge ahead with Harold’s program, which, to date, only has a beginning.
The rats have wasted little time ransacking the bins waving a note, mentioning a conversation and claiming to have an unpublished document. All those voices were washed up 20-30 years ago.
Marshall Shumsky
Houston Texas
ms@shumsky.net