Ethnomethodological Indifference: Just a Passing Phase?

Abstract

This paper examines whether social workers and other direct service practitioners can find utility in ethnomethodology despite or even because of the policy of ''indifference''. Garfinkel, the father of ethnomethodology (EM), sets out ''ethnomethodological indifference'' (EM-I) to insist that EM studies do not supplement, formulate remedies, develop humanistic arguments, or encourage discussions of theory. While at first blush such limits on EM might appear to be a barrier for most social workers this paper argues against first impressions. It is argued that EM provides an important redirection for social work practice and research. Additionally, it is proposed that by approaching EM through Dorothy Smith's Institutional Ethnography social workers can bridge Garfinkel's quest for haeccities (''just thisness; just here, just now'') with extended social relations and actual courses of actions to find congruence between EM and accomplished professional practice.

Working the Project: Research Proposals and Everyday Practices for Emerging Feminist Researchers

“…Yet, working together, and against this, we have found more collaborative ways of writing, working, and contributing to collective feminist projects that reveal and transform how social relations manifest in everyday life. Not only does our research begin from the standpoint of people's lives, examine their ordinary work and relations, and open up how social organizations operate (de Montigny 2017; Smith 2005), we also apply our situated, relational materialist approach to our utterly ordinary, mundane, taken‐for‐granted, everyday work in academe.…”

“…As a materialist approach, the goal of institutional ethnography is to figure out “how it works” or how social relations operate—which helps researchers move beyond “what works” questions—or questions that begin with conceptual puzzles or research gaps. For example, rather than applying concepts such as “homophobia” or “the patriarchy” to understand social struggles and oppression, researchers explore people's everyday material circumstances and how things actually work (Smith 1990), or how social practices and relations deeply shape people's lives (de Montigny 2017; Smith 2005).…”

Engaging ethnomethodology for social work

“…Any give now is not just accountable and consequential here and now, but manifestly so as an element of a person’s, and multiple other person’s life course. There are extended courses of action that reach from one scene to another, as we arise from our beds in the morning, plod to the shower, slump at a kitchen table, queue for a bus, arrive at an office, dash to a meeting, lunch with a friend, meet a client, write a report, and so on (de Montigny, 2016). The progression from one social space to another occurs through a motivated movement of people living in place after place.…”

“… 2 This is an early formulation of ethnomethodological indifference, which, while important, will not be addressed further in this paper. See de Montigny (2016) for detailed attention to the implications of indifference for social work and EM.…”