Lynch2017
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| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Lynch2017 |
| Author(s) | Michael Lynch |
| Title | Garfinkel, Sacks and formal structures: Collaborative origins, divergences and the vexed unity of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis |
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| Tag(s) | EMCA, Garfinkel, Harvey Sacks, Ethnomethodology and conversation analysis |
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| Year | 2017 |
| Language | English |
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| URL | Link |
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| Howpublished | Keynote address, IIEMCA 2017: A Half-Century of Studies, International Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (IIEMCA), Otterbein College, Westerville, OH, USA, July 10-13, 2017 |
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Abstract
It is widely recognized that ethnomethodology (EM) and conversation analysis (CA) share a common origin. It also is widely recognized that in the past half-century they have developed along different trajectories, with CA establishing itself as a compact but robust science of talk-in-interaction and ethnomethodology remaining geographically scattered and epistemologically anarchic. In this presentation, I discuss the historical relationship between these two lines of research, with a focus on the collaboration between Harold Garfinkel and Harvey Sacks that culminated in the publication in 1970 of the paper “On Formal Structures of Practical Actions.” From an examination of the paper and relevant archival materials, I argue that, contrary to what others have written, it was a genuine collaboration with lasting importance for both ethnomethodology and CA. I also argue that Garfinkel and Sacks’ paper exhibits divergent conceptions of ethnomethodology’s relation to “formal structures” as well as a remarkable and original effort to subordinate the privileges of academic analysis to an effort to describe and elucidate the critical implications of “members’ methods of sociological inquiry.”
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