ABSTRACT
Ethnomethodology is accused of a range of supposed failings, many of which are so basic and profound that they would spell the death of the ethnomethodological programme if they were correct. Criticisms of one kind of sociology by another kind, and certainly criticisms of ethnomethodology by other sociologists, is normally a matter of condemning someone for taking the wrong approach, an error which is easily corrected by converting to the right approach. However, the pivotal assumption here is that the observation that power is pervasive but unevenly distributed requires some professional sociological scheme to provide its availability. Sociological definitions of power typically involve the idea that power is the exercise of constraints on people's action, often associated with the relative positions people occupy within a social structure with regard to money, position, status, a deity, authority and suchlike matters. The actual difference between ethnomethodology and the rest of sociology concerns the way in which 'the member of society' is conceived.
