Harold Garfinkel is the main thinker associated with
this perspective, which tends to focus on the minutiae of everyday life – that is, our interactions from moment to moment – to show that there are ‘rules’ that we tend to follow. It asserts there is an ‘order’ in the way we conduct our social relationships that is largely invisible to us and so must be examined. For example, we observe turn-taking in our conversations but we may not be aware of how we do it. We may have no scruples in breaking into what our close friends are saying to give our own views but that seldom happens with our teachers and almost never when speaking with the principal. However, we seldom hold these processes up for scrutiny, we just live them. Ethnomethodologists would say that power and status seem to determine who we allow to interrupt us while we are speaking but we are largely unaware that we follow this ‘order’. This perspective assumes that everyday life has a characteristic order because we all conform and agree about producing that order. We therefore have methods we use in daily interaction to reinforce that order. The work of the ethnomethodologist is to uncover and bring to awareness these shared methods and procedures that we employ as the basis of our interactions.