1st Edition

Harold Garfinkel: Studies of Work in the Sciences

Edited By Michael Lynch, Harold Garfinkel Copyright 2022
    218 Pages 4 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    218 Pages 4 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This volume includes an unpublished manuscript and selected portions of five seminars by Harold Garfinkel – the founder of ethnomethodology – on the topic of practices in the natural sciences and mathematics. The volume provides a coherent and sustained account of his program for the study of ordinary and specialized social actions. Presenting broader theoretical and methodological initiatives, as well as discussions and summaries of exemplary studies of social phenomena within and beyond the sciences, this work dates to the period in the 1980s during which the field of Science and Technology Studies was taking shape, with ethnomethodological studies of scientific practice forming a major part of its development at the time. Aside from their historical importance, the manuscript and seminars present a distinctive perspective on the natural and social sciences that remains highly original and pertinent to research on science, social science, and everyday life today. Offering critical insights and proposals relating to developments in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, this volume will appeal to scholars of Sociology and Science and Technology Studies with interests in the work of Garfinkel.

    The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

    Editor’s Introduction

    Michael Lynch

    Part I: Respecifying the Natural Sciences as Discovering Sciences of Practical Action, I & II: Doing so Ethnographically by Administering a Schedule of Contingencies in Discussions with Laboratory Scientists and by Hanging Around their Laboratories

    Editor’s Introduction to Part I

    Michael Lynch

    Part I: Respecifying the Natural Sciences as Discovering Sciences of Practical Action, I & II: Doing so Ethnographically by Administering a Schedule of Contingencies in Discussions with Laboratory Scientists and by Hanging Around their Laboratories

    Harold Garfinkel

    Appendix I: Postscript and Preface

    Harold Garfinkel

    Appendix II: Some Notes on the Play of Basketball in its Circumstantial Detail

    Douglas Macbeth

    Appendix III: Detail*

    Harold Garfinkel

    Appendix IV: Collections of Studies I-VII Respecifying The Natural Sciences As Discovering Sciences Of Practical Action

    Harold Garfinkel

    Acknowledgements, Notes and References to Part I

    Part II: Discovering Work of the Sciences: Five seminars on the work of the discovering sciences, Department of Sociology, UCLA. (May - July 1980)

    Harold Garfinkel

    Editor’s Introduction to Part II

    Michael Lynch

    Seminar 1 (May 22, 1980), convened by Harold Garfinkel

    Seminar 2 (May 27, 1980), convened by Harold Garfinkel

    Seminar 3 (June 3, 1980), convened by Harold Garfinkel

    Seminar 4 (June 19, 1980), convened by Harold Garfinkel

    Seminar 5 (July 1, 1980), convened by Harold Garfinkel

    Notes and References to Part II

    Biography

    Harold Garfinkel (1917–2011) was a professor of sociology who spent most of his career at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA. He acquired an international reputation as the founder of ethnomethodology, the study of practical actions and reasoning in everyday life and specialized fields of action.

    Michael Lynch is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University, USA, and Research Professor in the School of Media and Information, University of Siegen, Germany. He has authored and edited numerous books and has written more than a hundred peer-reviewed articles on practices in science, law, and other fields of action. From 2002 to 2012, he was editor of Social Studies of Science, a leading journal in the field of Science and Technology Studies.