ABSTRACT
Garfinkel’s remarkably innovative vision of a mode of sociological analysis he termed ‘ethnomethodology’1 has in recent years become detached from its historical relationship to key issues in social theory, in large measure due to the success of the technical field of ‘conversation analysis’ which owes its genesis to many of his theoretical contributions. However, an abiding issue within ethnomethodology broadly conceived has been the nature of social order and social organization and the appropriate methods for investigating the properties of these phenomena. Among the primary problems confronted by contemporary social theorists has been the development of an adequate conceptual framework for the depiction of the nature of ‘macro-social’ phenomena. I submit in this essay that various theses advanced within ethnomethodology permit us to cast this issue in a novel fashion and enable us to approach some viable solutions to the problems which are generated by contemplations of the nature of macrosocial phenomena and their relationship(s) to quotidian human conduct.
