SOAN 2120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Ethnomethodology

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Sociology and Anthropology
• Course: SOAN 2120
• Professor: D Walters

Document Summary

Field research provides a thorough account of social behaviour of a group of people or social environment. Naturalism: observe people in small social settings over a small or large period of time. No statistics/mathematics/face-to-face social interactions with people in their home environment. Much less structured - social environment and interactions guide the study. Ethnography: describing a culture and understanding another way of life from your own perspective (interpretive school of thought) Displays of behaviour do not give meaning - instead someone tries to figure out what is meant by behaviour. The reality of the members (meant or implied) Ethnomethodology: (theory, philosophy & method) findings are the result of the method used as from the social life or environment. Social interaction is a process of reality construction. Specialized and highly detailed analysis of micro-situations (transcripts, conversations, videotape) Researchers can be very involved or uninvolved in what they study.