SY242 Study Guide - Final Guide: Ethnomethodology, Sensemaking, Symbolic Interactionism
Document Summary
Ethnomethodologists are interested in common sense cultural procedures. How is this information used to determine allocation of blame, guilt, and responsibility? . Discovered the importance of membership categorization: used to recognize the identification of, or reference to, crime: this device is used to refer to collections of categories for referring to persons. When a suspect is interrogated, they use membership catogizations to shift the blame from themselves (eg. individual , or loner , opposed to a gang member ) Watson suggested that interrogation is a distinctive speech exchange system which contains the features of ordinary conversation, such as question answer sequences, single utterances, and specific voice controls. Determination of a suspicious person is done through the police organizing their field of operation as a territory of normal appearances. Police fieldwork provides the connection between citizens and the legal system. Every day activities of the police include: watching, waiting, stopping, checking, questioning, warning, searching, ignoring and arresting.
