ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that ethnomethodology has come to stay and that Harold Garfinkel has emerged as a provocative and seminal thinker whose ideas have seriously challenged and disturbed many central tenets within social science. Ethnomethodology has even been used by scholars of management and organization to study ritual organizational processes and routine managerial tasks such as hiring, recruitment, and appraisal. The chapter describes ethnomethodology as combining a phenomenological sensibility with a concern for the social practices of reality production. Ethnomethodologists assert that our social order is constructed out of the seemingly disparate range of daily activities through a process referred to as accounting. Ethnomethodologists look at how accounts are offered and whether they are accepted, modified, or rejected by others. A central feature of linguistic ethnomethodology is its view of language as a dynamic process rather than as a static state. Situational ethnomethodology can sometimes combine with elements of linguistic ethnomethodology to offer sharp and radical insights.
