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

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This volume includes an unpublished manuscript and selected portions of five seminars by Harold Garfinkel – the founder of ethnomethodology – on the topic of practices in the natural sciences and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,... Read more

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.

“The recently published Harold Garfinkel: Studies of Work in the Sciences invites readers to ‘‘take the leap’’ (p. 132) with Garfinkel and his collaborators in approaching the work of the sciences as a matter of practical action. The collection offers a range of materials that, as a whole, provide a sense of how doing so is more than a straightforwardly empirical matter, and can straightforwardly not be a matter of theorization.” - Robin Smith, Contemporary Sociology