Sormani2025
| Sormani2025 | |
|---|---|
| BibType | INCOLLECTION |
| Key | Sormani2025 |
| Author(s) | Philippe Sormani |
| Title | Respecification: Of Epistopics, Epistemics, the Particle “Oh”, and/ or Other Puzzles |
| Editor(s) | Andrew P. Carlin, Alex Dennis, K. Neil Jenkings, Oskar Lindwall, Michael Mair |
| Tag(s) | EMCA, Epistemics, Epistopics, Respecification |
| Publisher | Routledge |
| Year | 2025 |
| Language | English |
| City | Abingdon, UK |
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| Pages | 142–152 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.4324/9780429323904-14 |
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| Howpublished | |
| Book title | The Routledge International Handbook of Ethnomethodology |
| Chapter | 12 |
Abstract
In the early 1990s, Harold Garfinkel used the term “respecification” to mark the relation that any ethnomethodological study arguably establishes with sociological inquiry in academia. Put simply, an ethnomethodological study respecifies a sociological inquiry, whenever it treats the inquiry’s methodological problems (regarding relevance, accuracy, objectivity, rationality, etc.) and their actual treatment in the inquiry’s course as a phenomenon to be described in situ, instead of casting those problems as epistemological, ontological, and/or ethical obstacles to be overcome in principle. This chapter addresses three aspects of respecification as an ethnomethodological research strategy. First, it charts the fate of the notion of respecification in ethnomethodology, from its initial formulation by Garfinkel and early uptake by M. Lynch to current criticism of the latter’s interest in “epistopics,” if not the former’s programme as such. Second, the chapter probes the framing of the charting exercise itself by inviting the reader to reconsider its provisional conclusion, not in the light of an alternative scholarly narrative, but in terms of a mundane practical reenactment, the replaying of a Go move, albeit a stunning computer Go move. Third, the chapter reflects upon whether reminding oneself of the irreducible character of everyday practice to conceptual abstraction entails dismissing respecification as an ethnomethodological pursuit, and what the implications of such a dismissal are (or should or should not be) with respect to current debates in ethnomethodology/conversation analysis, notably but not exclusively regarding “epistemics”.
Notes
