Gordon1976
| Gordon1976 | |
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| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Gordon1976 |
| Author(s) | Raymond Gordon |
| Title | Ethnomethodology: a radical critique |
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| Tag(s) | ethnomethodology, phenomenology, marxism |
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| Year | 1976 |
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| Journal | Human Relations |
| Volume | 29 |
| Number | 2 |
| Pages | 193–202 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.1177/001872677602900208 |
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Abstract
This article argues that ethnomethodology is subjectivist and psychologically reductionist. It neglects the importance of social structure, and collective realities in its methodology and its findings are not subject to confirmation. Ethnomethodologists put a mistaken reliance upon phenomenology, whereas a more heuristic means of understanding would be gained by employing a dialectical and materialist method, which would link modes of consciousness with existential conditions. Such a link would facilitate an appreciation of the reality of social facts, their impingement upon human social consciousness, and the ways in which consciousness modifies reality. The essential difference between this approach and that adopted in ethnomethodology is that the dialectical method recognises that knowledge grows out of the conflict between "being" and "consciousness, " and in the contradictions between conditions of life and perceptions of its alternatives. For the ethnomethodologist, knowledge is a taken-for-granted condition. This approach makes for a microfunctionalist conception of social order, ultimately based on consensus and recipelike persistence in human processes.
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