Harold Garfinkel The Creation and Development of Ethnomethodology [Hardcover]

This book is a concise intellectual biography of Harold Garfinkel, a key figure in 20th-century social science. Garfinkel is practically synonymous with ethnomethodology, an approach that since the 1960s has led to major analytic and methodological developments in sociology and other disciplines. This introduction to Garfinkel explores how he developed ethnomethodology under the influence of Talcott Parsons and Alfred Schutz, situates it within sociology generally, and demonstrates its important influence on recent developments in the discipline, particularly the sociology of science and technology, gender studies, organization studies, and the computer sciences. The book will be of wide interest in the social sciences and a useful supplement to courses on intellectual history and methodology.

This book is a concise intellectual biography of Harold Garfinkel, a key figure in 20th-century social science, and a basic description of ethnomethodology, a research tradition that he created.

Dirk vom Lehn has performed a vital service to the whole sociological community . . . The whole body of Garfinkels writing is explored, from early career writings which have only been published in recent years to the re-energized intellectual radicalism of his late works, where he located ethnomethodologys concern for orderliness as an authentic tradition in sociology. This book explains key elements of Garfinkels thinking in more accessible language and smoothes the way to reading the originals.

From the Foreword by Robert Dingwall

"This is an extremely lucid and likeable book, which I found a pleasure to read: vom Lehn’s writing style is light and he brings a sense of fun to engaging with conceptual work…Its readability will be popular with students, as it is a very clear introduction to ways of looking at social and sociological phenomena that are at variance with the rest of their course. Its popularity with studenlƒ&