UNSW Garfinkel Sociology Discussion

My workbook is to record my reflection on readings.

This week’s reading will be on Garfinkel

I will have to write a before and after class entry. I have attached the class ppt and notes to let have an insight on finishing the after class entry.

****Please choose a particular passage to analyse, explore, understand the meaning of and think of examples and application for. Then to work more closely with your before class entry and assess it to see if your interpretation of the passage you’ve selected still holds or if there is any change in your assessment.***

-Use personal experience to elaborate on the theories

I have attached the reading, the detailed requirements for the assignments and the marking rubrics, I am aiming for high distinction?.

ARTS1870 – Week 4 Lecture
Contributions
Week 4
Moral Conduct & Everyday
Life
Checking in…
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Well done on your workbook submission!
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Feedback for Week 1 online activity is available
COMING UP!
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We’ll return your workbook entries to you in W6
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Remember: W6 is ‘flexibility week’, so no lectures or tutorials
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And the last (required) online activity will be available in W6 in
addition to another (optional, but possibility the best) online
activity
Durkheim – Moral Obligations
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Shared ways of acting, thinking and feeling bind us together;
they shape our moral obligations to each another
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Express a compelling and coercive power that binds us to one
another (e.g., sibling, spouse, citizen, student)
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We may not feel this as ‘coercion’ or ‘power’ – in fact we
might entirely agree or conform to it
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But once we try to resist, we experience
i)
An internal feeling (anxiety, guilt, conscience)
ii)
And possibly, some form of punishment whether formal or
informal
Emile Durkheim
Week 3
C. Wright Mills
Week 2
What is a Social Fact?
Emile Durkheim
Week 3
C. Wright Mills
Week 2
Today’s Plan
1.
Continue our discussion of Duneier’s ‘Sidewalk’ in relation to
Durkheim, with specific attention to the presence of social
facts.
2.
And then shift our focus to Garfinkel to consider how we
might determine our values (or norms, morals, expectations
in the first instance).
‘Sidewalk’ Film by Mitchell Duneier & Barry Brown
uAs
you watch the film, try to identify the presence of
‘Social Facts’….
1)
Experience of constraint
2)
External to the individual
3)
General across a population
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B
v4civR8mSI&index=1&list=PLVwkZygy4o
Xk9spZ26WLnVHWwEzHJg5pS
Durkheim – Social Facts
u‘Here,
then, is a category of facts which present very
special characteristics: they consist of manners of acting,
thinking and feeling external to the individual, which are
invested with a coercive power by virtue of which they
exercise control over him.’ (Durkheim 1982:52)
Durkheim – What is a Social Fact?
u‘Not
only are these types of behavior and thinking external to the
individual, but they are endued with a compelling and coercive power
by virtue of which, whether he wishes it or not, they impose themselves
upon him. Undoubtedly when I conform to them of my own free will, this
coercion is not felt or hardly felt at all, since it is unnecessary. None the
less it is intrinsically a characteristic of these facts; the proof of this is that
it asserts itself as soon as I try to resist. If I attempt to violate the rules of
law they react against me so as to forestall my action, if there is still time.
Alternatively, they annul it or make my action conform to the norm if it is
already accomplished but capable of being reversed; or they cause me
to pay the penalty for it if it is irreparable. (Durkheim 1982:51-52)
Harold Garfinkel (1917-2011)
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Professor, University of California, Los
Angeles
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Ethnomethodology – study of everyday
activities as the ground of social life
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Breaching Experiments – seek to violate
‘social reality’ in order to study how people
respond to the break in expectation
•
‘Background expectancies’ – (e.g.,
Boarder or Lodger)
•
‘Misunderstanding’ – e.g., What do you
mean?
The Problem
uFor
Kant the moral order ‘within’ was an awesome mystery; for
sociologists the moral order ‘without’ is a technical mystery. From the
point of view of sociological theory the moral order consists of the rule
governed activities of everyday life. A society’s members encounter and
know the moral order as perceivedly normal courses of action – familiar
scenes of everyday affairs, the world of daily life known in common with
others and with others taken for granted. (Garfinkel 1967: 35)
Background expectancies
uThe
member of the society uses background expectancies
as a scheme of interpretation. With their use actual
appearances are for him recognizable and intelligible as the
appearances of familiar events. Demonstrably he is
responsive to this background, while at the same time he is at
a loss to tell us specifically of what the expectancies consist.
When we ask him about them he has little or nothing to say.
(Garfinkel 1967:36)
Bringing it right down to basics…
Eating chips and salsa as a ‘social fact’
Hmmm….To dip or not to dip?
And that’s George…
uhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLOyChP2AWA
Making Trouble
•
‘Procedurally it is my preference to start with familiar scenes and
ask what can be done to make trouble. The operations that one
would have to perform in order to multiply the senseless features of
perceived environments; to produce and sustain bewilderment,
consternation, and confusion; to produce the socially structured
affects of anxiety, shame, guilt, and indignation; and to produce
disorganized interaction should tell us something about how the
structures of everyday activities are ordinarily and routinely
produced and maintained’ (Garfinkel 1967:38)
•
‘Procedurally it is my
preference to start with
familiar scenes and ask
what can be done to
make trouble. The
operations that one
would have to perform
in order to multiply the
senseless features of
perceived
environments; to
produce and sustain
bewilderment,
consternation, and
confusion; to produce
the socially structured
affects of anxiety,
shame, guilt, and
indignation; and to
produce disorganized
interaction should tell us
something about how
the structures of
everyday activities are
ordinarily and routinely
produced and
maintained’ (Garfinkel
1967:38)
Making Trouble
Another
example
of breaching
social
expectations
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNtrk
bgYgGs
Become a stranger
uFor
these background expectancies to come into view one must
either be a stranger to the ‘life as usual’ character of everyday
scenes, or become estranged from them. (Garfinkel 1967:37)
Or become estranged…
And so, we return to Duneier’s Sidewalk
study…
Q – What background expectancies does
‘Sidewalk’ reveal?
Moral Conduct and Everyday
Life
Week 4 Garfinkel
Workbook feedback
 Here are some common elements that came up while I was going
over the workbooks. Consider those that may apply to you in order to
improve you next entries.
 Avoid summarizing/reporting what was said – instead, focus on the key
passage of your choice and deploy your close reading skills
 Make sure you’re clear about why you are focussing on the passage,
and don’t use it to do your talking. Instead, try to explore the key
words, think about their meaning, how they can be applied, what
examples relate to them, what the broader implications of them are,
how they link with key concepts of the course as you progress.
 It’s great to raise speculative questions. Try to answer some of them
instead of just making a list of questions. Use what you are learning to
try to answer them
 Be concise, specific and more focused. Don’t ramble with fluffy
statements
 Make sure you have a pre-lecture and post-lecture and tutorial
section. Use the the second section to explain what has changed from
the first section and demonstrate your progressive building of
understanding.
Garfinkel’s conception of
the moral order:
 From the point of view of sociological theory the
moral order consists of the rule governed activities of
everyday life. A society’s members encounter and
know the moral order as perceivedly normal courses
of action – familiar scenes of everyday affairs, the
world of daily life known in common with others and
with others taken for granted. (Garfinkel 1967:35)
 What does a ‘moral order’ involve?
 Discuss:
 What did Garfinkel want to do?
What Garfinkel he want to do?
 Make the ‘rules’ of commonplace scenes visible;
 Focus on ‘stable features’ of everyday activities and the
variables that contribute to their stable features
 Highlight society’s use of ‘background expectancies’ as a
scheme of interpretation
 ‘…one set of considerations are unexamined: the socially
standardized and standardizing, “seen but unnoticed,”
expected, background features of everyday scenes. The
member of the society uses background expectancies as
a scheme of interpretation’ (Garfinkel 1967:36)
 What do you think he means here?
 How did he do it? Read Garfinkel 1967:38
How did Garfinkel do this?
 ‘Procedurally it is my preference to start with familiar
scenes and ask what can be done to make trouble.
The operations that one would have to perform in
order to multiply the senseless features of perceived
environments; to produce and sustain bewilderment,
consternation, and confusion; to produce the socially
structured affects of anxiety, shame, guilt, and
indignation; and to produce disorganized interaction
should tell us something about how the structures of
everyday activities are ordinarily and routinely
produced and maintained’ (Garfinkel 1967:38)
 What kind of relation with background expectancies
does it reveal? A f______ relation
 What do the ‘experiments’ in the reading show?
Making trouble
Consider this breaching experiment

1. Were there ‘rules’ about personal space that the
individuals (subjects of the experiment) were using to
decide how to act? Identify the ‘background
expectancies’ that are at work in this example.
2. What emotions does this particular breaching
experiment produce?
3. What does the presence of these emotions in this
context tell us about social life?
Group Activity:
 In groups, take 5-10 minutes to come up with a couple of
breaching experiments (experiments designed to break the
rules of unstated social roles as a way of studying them)
 Indicate what values or social rules are being broken in the
domain you are talking about – home, university, work, gym,
church, supermarket, politics/activism
 E.g. Taking groceries from from other people’s trolleys rather
than from the shelves – don’t interfere with other’s
space/choices/freedom, respect, regard for others generally
 Eating with your hands in a fancy restaurant – ‘civilised’ people
don’t use hands, it’s ‘rude’, it’s ‘dirty’, it’s disgusting etc.
 Standing very close to someone you are speaking with – zones
of intimacy according to familiarity
 Saying hello at the end of a conversation – hey, that’s the
wrong word, we say goodbye, not hello!
 CAMERAS ON PLEASE! (UNLESS YOU HAVE EXTENUATING
CIRCUMSTANCES)
Returning to Sidewalk or
Corey
 What parts of Sidewalk would Garfinkel find
interesting? Why?
 Which actions in the Corey news story would
Garfinkel find interesting? Why?
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm61svN4U
5g
Constant process of social construction
 How do you use your phone?)
 New technology prompts us to construct new
background expectancies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUP5kJPbS
24 (US, from second 12)
 How does what you learnt apply to this situation?
Is it the same in every country?
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtdpJlZ07u4
(Curb your enthusiasm – restaurant scene)
TWO
Studies of the routine grounds
of everyday activities
The problem
(Week 4) 21
For Kant the moral order “within” was an awesome mystery;
for sociologists the moral order “without” is a technical mystery.
From the point of view of sociological theory the moral order consists of the rule governed activities of everyday life. A society’s
members encounter and know the moral order as perceivedly normal courses of action-familiar scenes of everyday affairs, the
world of daily life known in common with others and with others
taken for granted.
They refer to this world as the “natural facts of life” which, for
members, are through and through moral facts of life. For members not only are matters so about familiar scenes, but they are so
because it is morally right or wrong that they are so. Familiar
scenes of everyday activities, treated by members as the “natural
facts of life,” are massive facts of the members’ daily existence
both as a real world and as the product of activities in a real world.
They furnish the “fix,” the “this is it” to which the waking state returns one, and are the points of departure and return for every
modification of the world of daily life that is achieved in play,
dreaming, trance, theater, scientific theorizing, or high ceremony.
35
36
STUDIES IN ETHNOMElliODOLOGY
37
In every discipline, humanistic or scientific, the familiar common
sense world of everyday life is a matter of abiding interest. In
the social sciences, and in sociology particularly, it is a matter of
essential preoccupation. It makes up sociology’s problematic subject matter, enters the very constitution of the sociological attitude,
and exercises an odd and obstinate sovereignty over sociologists’
claims to adequate explanation.
Despite the topic’s centrality, an immense literature contains
little data and few methods with which the essential features of
socially recognized “familiar scenes” may be detected and related
to dimensions of social organization. Although sociologists take
socially structured scenes of everyday life as a point of departure
they rarely see,1 as a task of sociological inquiry in its own right,
the general question of how any such common sense world is possible. Instead, the possibility of the everyday world is either settled by theoretical representation or merely assumed. As a topic
and methodological ground for sociological inquiries, the definition
of the common sense world of everyday life, though it is appropriately a project of sociological inquiry, has been neglected. My
purposes in this paper are to demonstrate the essential relevance,
to sociological inquiries, of a concern for common sense activities
as a topic of inquiry in its own right and, by reporting a series of
studies, to urge its “rediscovery.”
while at the same time he is at a loss to tell us specifically of what
the expectancies consist. When we ask him about them he has
little or nothing to say.
For these background expectancies to come into view one must
either be a stranger to the “life as usual” character of everyday
scenes, or become estranged from them. As AHred Schutz pointed
out, a “special motive” is required to make them problematic. In
the sociologists’ case this “special motive” consists in the programmatic task of treating a societal member’s practical circumstances,
which include from the member’s point of view the morally necessary ~haracter of many of its background features, as matters of
theoretic interest. The seen but unnoticed backgrounds of everyday activities are made visible and are described from a perspective in which persons live out the lives they do, have the children
they do, feel the feelings, think the thoughts, enter the relationships they do, all in order to permit the sociologist to solve his
theoretical problems.
Almost alone among sociological theorists, the late AHred
Schutz, in a series of classical studies 2 of the constitutive phenomenQlogy of the world of everyday life, described many of these seen
but unnoticed background expectancies. He called them the “attitude of daily life.” He referred to their scenic attributions as the
“world known in common and taken for granted.” Schutz’ fundamental work makes it possible to pursue further the tasks of clarifying their nature and operation, of relating them to the processes of
concerted actions, and assigning them their place in an empirically
imaginable society.
The studies reported in this paper attempt to detect some expectancies that lend commonplace scenes their familiar, life-asusual character, and to relate these to the stable social structures
of eyeryday activities. Procedurally it is my preference to start with
familiar scenes and ask what can be done to make trouble. The
operations that one would have to perform in order to multiply
the senseless features of perceived environments; to produce and
Making commonplace scene, visible
(Week 4) 22
In accounting for the stable features of everyday activities sociologists commonly select familiar settings such as familial households or work places and ask for the variables that contribute to
their stable features. Just as commonly, one set of considerations
are unexamined: the socially standardized and standardizing, “seen
but unnoticed,” expected, background features of everyday scenes.
The member of the society uses background expectancies as a
scheme of interpretation. With their use actual appearances are
for him recognizable and intelligible as the appearances-of-familiar-events. Demonstrably he is responsive to this background,
1 The work of Al&ed Schutz, cited in footnote 2, is a magnificent exception. Readers who are acquainted with his writings will recognize how heavily
this paper is indebted to him.
2 Al&ed Schutz, Der Slnnha/te Aufbau Der Sozlalen Welt (Wein: Verlag
von Julius Springer, 1932); Collected Papers I: The Problem of Social Realitv,
ed. Maurice Natanson (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962); Collected Papers
II: Studies In Social TheOf’IJ, ed. Arvid Broderson (The Hague: Martinus
Nlfhofl. 1964); Collected Papers Ill: Studle.t in Phenomerwlogical Phllosophv,
ed. I. Schutz (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966).
STUDIES IN ETHNOMETHOOOlOOY
31
sustain bewilderment, consternation, and confusion; to produce
the socially structured affects of anxiety, shame, guilt, and indignation; and to produce disorganized interaction should tell us something about how the structures of everyday activities are ordinarily
and routinely produced and maintained.8
A word of reservation. Despite their procedural emphasis, my
studies are not properly speaking experimental. They are demonstrations, designed, in Herbert Spiegelberg’s phrase, as “aids to a
sluggish imagination.” I have found that they produce reflections
through which the strangeness of an obstinately familiar world
can be detected.
39
WIFE:
Did you take him to
the record store?
Since he put a penny in a meter
that means that you stopped
while he was with you. I know
that you stopped at the record
store either on the way to
get him or on the way back. Was
it on the way back, so that he
was with you or did you stop
there on the way to get him and
somewhere else on the way
back?
,
HUSBAND:
No, to the shoe
repair shop.
No, I stopped at the record store
on the way to get him and
stopped at the shoe repair shop
on the way home when he was
with me.
WIFE:
What for?
I know of one reason why you
Some e1Nntlal features of common understanding•
Various considerations dictate that common understandings cannot possibly consist of a measured amount of shared agreement
among persons on certain topics. Even if the topics are limited in
number and scope and every practical difficulty of assessment is
forgiven, the notion that we are dealing with an amount of shared
agreement remains essentially incorrect. This may be demonstrated as follows.
Students were asked to report common conversatit>ns by writing on the left side of a sheet what the parties actually said and
on the right side what they and their partners understood that
they were talking about. A student reported the following colloquy
between himself and his wife.
HUSBAND:
Dana succeeded in
putting a penny in a
parking meter today
without being picked
up.
(Week 4) 23
This afternoon as I was bringing
Dana, our four-year-old son,
home from the nursery school,
he succeeded in reaching high
enough to put a penny in a
parking meter when we parked
in a meter parking zone,
whereas before he has always
had to be picked up to reach
that high.
a Obversely, a knowledge of how the structures of everyday activities are
routinely produced should permit us to tell how we might proceed for tb.e
effective production of desired disturbances.
might have stopped at the
shoe repair shop. Why did you
in fact?
HUSBAND:
I got some new
shoe laces for my
shoes.
As you will remember I broke a
shoe lace on one of my brown
oxfords the other day so I
stopped to get some new laces.
WIFE:
Your loafers need
new heels badly.
Something else you could have
gotten that I was thinking of.
You could have taken in your
black loafers which need
heels badly. You’d better get
them taken care of pretty soon.
An examination of the colloquy reveals the following. (a) There
were many matters that the partners understood they were talking about that they did not mention. ( b) Many matters that the
partners understood were understood on the basis not only of what
was actually said but what was left unspoke.n. ( c) Many matters
were understood through a process of attending to the temporal
series of utterances as documentary evidences of a developing conversation rather than as a string of terms. ( d) Matters that the
two understood in common were understood only in and through
40
(Week 4) 24
STUDIES IN ETHNOMETHODOLOGY
41
a course of understanding work that consisted of treating an actual
linguistic event as “the document of,” as “pointing to,” as standing
on behalf of an underlying pattern of matters that each already
supposed to be the matters that the person, by his speaking, could
be telling the other about. The underlying pattern was not only
derived from a course of individual documentary evidences but
the documentary evidences in their tum were interpreted on the
basis of “what was known” and anticipatorily knowable about the
underlying patterns.• Each was used to elaborate the other. ( e) In
attending to the utterances as events-in-the-conversation each party
made references to the biography and prospects of the present
interaction which each used and attributed to the other as a common scheme of interpretation and expression. ( f) Each waited for
something more to be said in order to hear what had previously
been talked about, and each seemed willing to wait.
Common understandings would consist of a measured amount
of shared agreement if the common understandings consisted of
events coordinated with the successive positions of the hands of
the clock, i.e., of events in standard time. The foregoing results,
because they deal with the exchanges of the colloquy as events-ina-conversation, urge that one more time parameter, at least, is
required : the role of time as it is constitutive of “the matter talked
about” as a developing and developed event over the course of
action that produced it, as both the process and product were
known from within this development by both parties, each for
himself as well as on behalf of the other.
The colloquy reveals additional .features. ( 1) Many of its expressions are such that their sense cannot be decided by an auditor
unless he knows or assumes something about the biography and
the purposes of the speaker, the circumstances of the utterance,
the previous course of the conversation, or the particular relationship of actual or potential interaction that exists between user and
auditor. The expressions do not have a sense that remains identical
through the changing occasions of their use. ( 2) The events that
were talked about were specifically vague. Not only do they not
frame a clearly restricted set of possible determinations but the
depicted events include as their essentially intended and sanctioned features an accompanying “fringe” of determinations that
are open with respect to internal relationships, relationships to
other events, and relationships to retrospective and prospective
possibilities. ( 3) For the sensible character of an expression, upon
its occurrence each of the conversationalists as auditor of his own
as well as the other’s productions had to assume as of any present
accomplished point in the exchange that by waiting for what he
or the other person might have said at a later time the present
signi.6cance of what had already been said would have been clarified. Thus many expressions had the property of being progressively realized and realizable through the further course of the
conversation. ( 4) It hardly needs to be pointed out that the sense
of the expressions depended upon where the expression occurred
in serial order, the expressive character of the terms that comprised
it, and the importance to the conversationalists of the events
depicted.
These properties of common understandings stand in contr~t
to the features they would have if we disregarded their temporally
constituted character and treated them instead as precoded entries
on a memory drum, to be consulted as a definite set of alternative
meanings from among which one was to select, under predecided
conditions that speci6ed in which of some set of alternative ways
one was to understand the situation upon the occasion that the
necessity for a decision arose. The latter properties are those of
strict rational discourse as these are idealized in the rules that de6ne an adequate logical proof.
For the purposes of conducting their everyday affairs persons
refuse to permit each other to understand “what they are really
talking about” in this way. The anticipation that persons will understand, the occasionality of expressions, the specific vagueness of
references, the retrospective-prospective sense of a present occurrence, waiting for something later in order to see what was meant
before, are sanctioned properties of common discourse. They furnish a background of seen but unnoticed features of common discourse whereby actual utterances are recognized as events of common, reasonable, understandable, plain talk. Persons require these
properties of discourse as conditions under which they are them-
• Karl Mannheim, in his essay “On the Interpretation of ‘Weltanschauung’ ”
( in E=ys on the Sociology of Knowledge, trans. and ed. Pllul Kecskemeti [New
York: Oxford University Press, 19521, pp. 33-83 ), referred to this work as the
“documentary method of interpretation.” Its features are detailed in Chapter
Three.
STUDIES IN ETHHOMETHOOOLOOY
42
selves entitled and entitle others to claim that they know what
they are talking about, and that what they are saying is understandable and ought to be understood. In short, their seen but
unnoticed presence is used to entitle persons to conduct their common conversational aJfairs without interference. Departures from
such usages call forth immediate attempts to restore a right state
of aJfairs.
The sanctioned character of these properties is demonstrable as
follows. Students were instructed to engage an acquaintance or a
friend in an ordinary conversation and, without indicating that
what the experimenter was asking was in any way unusual, to insist that the person clarify the sense of his commonplace remarks.
Twenty-three students reported twenty-five instances of such encounters. The following are typical excerpts from their accounts.
CASE 1
The subject was telling the experimenter, a member of the subject’s car pool, about having had a flat tire while going to work the
previous day.
(S) I had a Bat tire.
( E) What do you mean, you had a flat tire?
She appeared momentarily stunned. Then she answered in a
hostile way: “What do you mean, ‘What do you mean?’ A Bat tire
is a flat tire. That is w,hat I meant. Nothing special. What a crazy
question!”
CASE 2
(Week 4) 25
( S) Hi, Ray. How is your girl friend feeling?
( E) What do you mean, “How is she feeling?” Do you mean
physical or mental?
( S) I mean how is she feeling? What’s the matter with you?
( He looked peeved.)
( E) Nothing. Just explain a little clearer what do you mean?
( S) Skip it. How are your Med School applications coming?
( E) What do you mean, “How are theyr’
( S) You know what I mean.
(E) I really don’t.
(S) What’s the matter with you? Are you sick?
CASE 3
“On Friday night my husband and I were watching television.
My husband remarked that he was tired. I asked, ‘How are you
tired? Physically, mentally, or just bored?'”
(S) I don’t know, I guess physically, mainly.
(E) You mean that your muscles ache or your bones?
( S ) I guess so. Don’t be so technical.
( After more watching)
( S) All these old movies have the same kind of old iron bedstead in them.
( E) What do you mean? Do you mean all old movies, or some
of them, or just the ones you hav~ seen?
(S) What’s the matter with you? You know what I mean.
( E) I wish you would be more specific.
(S) You know what I mean! Drop deadl
CASE 4
During a conversation ( with the E’s female fiancee) the E
questioned the meaning of various words used by the subject . . .
For the 6rst minute and a half the subject responded to the
questions as if they were legitimate inquiries. Then she responded with “Why are you asking me those questions?” and
repeated this two or three times after each question. She became nervous and jittery, her face and hand movements . . .
uncontrolled. She appeared bewildered and complained that
I was making her nervous and demanded that I “Stop it”.. . .
The subject picked up a magazine and covered her face. She
put down the magazine and pretended to be engrossed. When
asked why she was looking at the magazine she closed her
mouth and refused any further remarks.
CASE 5
My friend said to me, “Hurry or we will be late.” I asked him
what did he mean by late and from what point of view did it have
STUDIES IN ETHNOMETHODOLOGY
45
reference. There was a look of perplexity and cynicism on his face.
“Why are you asking me such silly questions? Surely I don’t have
to explain such a statement. What is wrong with you today? Why
should I have to stop to analyze such a statement? Everyone understands my statements and you should be no exception!”
Undergraduate students were assigned the task of spending from
fifteen minutes to an hour in their homes viewing its activities
while assuming that they were boarders in the household. They
were instructed not to act out the assumption. Thirty-three students reported their experiences.
In their written reports students ‘behaviorized” the household
scenes. Here is an excerpt from one account to illustrate my
meaning.
44
CASE 6
The victim waved his hand cheerily.
( S) How are you?
( E) How am I in regard to what? My health, my finances, my
school work, my peace of mind, my . . . ?
( S) ( Red in the face and suddenly out of control.) Look! I
was just trying to be polite. Frankly, I don’t give a damn
how you are.
CASE 7
My friend and I were talking about a man whose overbearing
attitude annoyed us. My friend expressed his feeling.
( S) I’m sick of him.
( E) Would you explain what is wrong with you that you are
sick?
( S) Axe you kidding me? You know what I mean.
( E) Please explain your aihnent.
( S) ( He listened to me with a. p~led look.) What came over
you? We never talk this way, do we?
Background understandings and “adequate”
recognition of commonplace events
(Week 4) 26
What kinds of expectancies make up a “seen but unnoticed”
background of common understandings, and how are they related
to persons’ recognition of stable courses of interpersonal transactions? Some information can be obtained if we first ask how a person will look at an ordinary and familiar scene and what will he
see in it if we require of him that he do no more than look at it as
something that for him it “obviously” and “really” is not.
A short, stout man entered the house, kissed me on the
cheek and asked, “How was school?” I answered politely. He
walked into the kitchen, kissed the younger of the two
women, and said hello to the othe.r. The younger woman
asked me, “What do you want for dinner, honey?” I answered.
“Nothing.” She shrugged her shoulders and said no more.
The older woman shuffled around the kitchen muttering. The
man washed his hands, sat down at the table, and picked up
the paper. He read until the two women had finished putting
the food on the table. The three sat down. They exchanged
idle chatter about the day’s events. The older woman said
something in a foreign language which made the others laugh.
Persons, relationships, and activities were described without respect for their history, for the place of the scene in a set of developing life circumstances, or for the scenes as texture of relevant
events for the parties themselves. References to motives, propriety,
subjectivity generally, and the socially standardized character of
the events were omitted. Descriptions might be thought of as those
of a keyhole observer who puts aside much of what he knows in
common with subjects about the scenes he is looking at, as if the
writer had witnessed the scenes under a mild amnesia for his common sense knowledge of social structures.
Students were surprised to see the ways in which members’
treatments of each other were personal. The business of one was
treated as the business of the others. A person being criticized was
unable to stand on dignity and was prevented by the others from
taking offense. One student reported her surprise at how freely
she had the run of the house. Displays of conduct and feeling
occurred without apparent concern for the management of impressions. Table manners were bad, and family members showed
46
STUDIES IN ETHHOMETHODOlOOY
(Week 4) 27
each other little politeness. An early casualty in the scene was the
family news of the day which turned into trivial talk.
Students reported that this way of looking was difficult to sustain. Familiar objects- persons obviously, but furniture and room
arrangements as well-resisted students’ efforts to think of themselves as strangers. Many became uncomfortably aware of how
habitual movements were being made; of how one was handling
the silverware, or how one opened a door or greeted another member. Many reported that the attitude was difficult to sustain because
with it quarreling, bickering, and hostile motivations became disoom6tingly visible. Frequently an account that recited newly visible troubles was accompanied by the student’s assertion that his
account of family problems was not a ..true” picture; the family was
really a very happy one. Several students reported a mildly oppressive feeling of “conforming to a part.” Several students attempted
to formulate the “real me” as activities governed by rules of conduct but gave it up as a bad job. They found it more convincing
to think of themselves in “usual” circumstances as oeing one’s real
self.” Nevertheless one student was intrigued with how deliberately and successfully he could predict the other’s responses to
his actions. He was not troubled by this feeling.
Many accounts reported a variation on the theme: “I was glad
when the hour was up and I oould return to the real me.”
Students were convinced that the view from the boarder’s attitude was not their real home environment. The boarder’s attitude
produced appearances which they discounted as interesting incongruities of little and misleading practical import. How had the
familiar ways of looking at their home environments been altered?
How did their looking differ from usual?
Several oontrasts to the “usual” and “required” way of looking
are detectable from their accounts. ( l) In looking at their homes
as boarders they replaced the mutually reoognized texture of events
with a rule of interpretation which required that this mutual texture be temporarily disregarded. ( 2) The mutually recognized
texture was brought under the jurisdiction of the new attitude as
a definition of the essential structures of this textu.re. ( 3) This was
done by engaging in interaction with others with an attitude whose
nature and purpose only the user knew about, that remained undisclosed, that could be either adopted or put aside at a time of the
47
user’s own choosing, and was a matter of willful election. ( 4) The
attitude as an intention was sustained as a matter of personal and
willed compliance with an explicit and single rule, ( 5) in which,
like a game, the goal of the intention was identical with looking
at things under the auspices of the single rule itself. ( 6) Above
all. looking was not bound by any necessity for gearing one’s interests within the attitude to the actions of others. These were the
matters that students found strange.
When students used these background expectancies not only
as ways of looking at familial scenes but as grounds for acting in
them, the scenes exploded with the bewilderment and anger of
family members.
In another procedure students were asked to spend from fifteen
minutes to an hour in their homes imagining that they were boarders and acting out this assumption. They were instructed to conduct
themselves in a circumspect a.n d polite fashion. They were to avoid
getting personal, to use formal address, to speak only when
spoken to.
In nine of forty-nine cases students either refused to do the
assignment ( five cases) or the try was “unsuccessful” ( four cases).
Four of the “no try” students said they” were afraid to do it; a filth
said she preferred to avoid the risk of exciting her mother who
had a heart condition. In two of the “unsuccessful” cases the family
treated it as a joke from the beginning and refused despite the continuing actions of the student to change. A third family took the
view that something undisclosed was the matter, but what it might
be was of no concern to them. In the fourth family the father and
mother remarked that the daughter was being “extra nice” and
undoubtedly wanted something that she would shortly reveal.
In the remaining four-fifths of the cases family members were
stupefied. They vigorously sought to make the strange actions intelligible and to restore the situation to normal appearances. Reports were filled with accounts of astonishment, bewilderment,
shock, anxiety, embarrassment, and anger, and with charges by
various family members that the student was mean, inconsiderate,
selfish, nasty, or impolite. Family members demanded explanations: What’s the matter? What’s gotten into you? Did you get
fired? Are you sick? What are you being so superior about? Why
are you mad? Are you out of your mind or are you just stupid? One
48
STUDIES IN ETHNOMETHODOLOGY
(Week 4) 28
student acutely embarrassed his mother in front of her friends by
asking if she minded if he had a snack from the refrigerator. “Mind
if you have a little snack? You’ve been eating little snacks around
here for years without asking me. What’s gotten into you?” One
mother, infuriated when her daughter spoke to her only when she
was spoken to, began to ·shriek in angry denunciation of the daughter for her disrespect and insubordination and refused to be
calmed by the student’s sister. A father berated his daughter for
being insufficiently concerned for the welfare of others and of
acting like a spoiled child.
Occasionally family members would first treat the student’s action as a cue for a joint comedy routine which was soon replaced
by irritation and exasperated anger at the student for not knowing
when enough was enough. Family members mocked the “politeness” of the studcnts-“Certainly Mr. Herzbergl”-or charged the
student with acting like a wise guy and generally reproved the
“politeness” with sarcasm.
Explanations were sought in previous, understandable motives
of the student: the student was “working too hard” in school; the
student was “ill”; there had been “another fight” with a fiancee.
When offered explanations by family members went unacknowledged, there followed withdrawal by the offended member, attempted isolation of the culprit, retaliation, and denunciation.
“Don’t bother with him, he’s in one of his moods again”; “Pay no
attention but just wait until he asks me for something”; “You’re
cutting me, okay I’ll cut you and then some”; “Why must you
always create friction in our family harmony?” Many accounts reported versions of the following confrontation. A father followed
his son into the bedroom. “Your Mother is right. You don’t look
well and you’re not talking sense. You had better get another job
that doesn’t require such late hours.” To this the student replied
that he appreciated the consideration, but that he felt fine and
only wanted a little privacy. The father responded in a high rage,
“I don’t want any more of that out of you and if you can’t treat
your mother decently you’d better move out!”
There were no cases in which the situation was not restorable
upon the student’s explanation. Nevertheless, for the most part
family members were not amused and only rarely did they find the
experience instructive as the student argued that it was supposed
49
to have been. After hearing the explanation a sister replied coldly
on b£’:ialf of a family of four, “Please, no more of these experiments.
We’re not rats, you know.” Occasionally an explanation was accepted but stilJ it added offense. In several cases students reported
that the explanations left them, their families, ,or both wondering
how much of what the student had said was “in character” and
how much the student “really meant.”
Students found the assignment difficult to complete. But in
contrast with on-lookers’ accounts students were likely to report
that difficulties consisted in not being treated as if they were in~the
role that they were attempting to play, and of being confronted
with situations but not knowing how a boarder would respond.
There were several entirely .unexpected findings. ( 1) Although
many students reported extensive rehearsals in imagination, very
few mentioned anticipatory fears or embarrassment. ( 2) On the
other hand, although unanticipated and nasty developments frequently occurred, in only one case did a student report serious
regrets. ( 3) Very few students reported heartfelt relief when the
hour was over. They were much more likely to report partial relief.
They freque~tly reported that in response to the anger of others
they became angry in return and slipped easily into subjectively
recognizable feelings and actions.
In contrast to the reports of the on-looking “boarders” very few
reports “behaviorized” the scene.
Background understandings and social affects
Despite the interest in social affects that prevails in the social
sciences, and despite the extensive concern that clinical psychiatry
pays them, surprisingly little has been written on the socially structured conditions for their production. The role that a background
of common understandings plays in their production, control, and
recognition is, however, almost terra incognita. This lack of attention from experimental investigators is all the more remarkable if
one considers that it is precisely this relationship that persons are
concerned with in their common sense portrayals of how to conduct one’s daily affairs so as to solicit enthusiasm and friendliness
or avoid anxiety, guilt, shame, or boredom. The relationship between the common understandings and social affects may be
STUDIES IN ETHNOMETHOOOLOGY
illustrated by thinking of the acting out student-bo arders’ procedure as one that involved the production of bewilderm ent and
anger by treating an important state of affairs as something that it
“obviously,” “naturally ,” and “really,” is not.
The existence of a definite and strong relationsh ip between common understan dings and social affects can be demonstra ted and
some of its features explored by the deliberate display of distrust,
a procedure that for us produced highly standardiz ed effects. The
·
rationale was as follows:
One of the backgroun d expectanc ies Schutz described concerns
the sanctioned use of doubt as a constituen t feature of a world
that is being understoo d in common. Schutz proposed that for the
conduct of his everyday affairs the person assumes, assumes the
other person assumes as well, and assumes that as he assumes it of
the other person, the other person assumes it of him, that a relationship of undoubted correspon dence is the sanctioned relationship between the actual appearanc es of an object and the intended
object that appears in a particular way. For the person conductin g
his everyday affairs, objects, for him as he expects for others, are
as they appear to be. To treat this relationsh ip under a rule of
doubt requires that the necessity and motivation for such a rule
be justified.
We anticipate d that because of the differing relationsh ip of an
exhibited rule of doubt (distrust) $ that the other person was as
he appeared to be to the legitimate texture of common expectancies, there should be different aJlective states for the doubter and
the doubted. On the part of the person distrusted there should be
concepts of “trust” and Mdistrust” are elaborated in my paper, “A
Conception of and Experiments with ‘Trust’ as a Condition of Stable Concerted Actions,” in Motwation and Social Interaction, ed. 0. J. Harvey (New
York: The Ronald Press Company, 1963, pp. 187-238). The term “trust” is
used there to refer to a person’s compliance with the expectancies of the attitude of daily life as a morality. Acting In accordance with a rule of doubt
directed to the correspondence between appearances and the objects that appearances are appearances of is only one way of specifying “distrust.” Modifications of each of the other expectancies that make up the attitude of everyday
Ufe, as well as their various sub-sets, furnish variations on the central theme
of treating a world that one b required to know in common and take for
granted as a problematic matter. See footnote 2 for references to Schutz’ di5cussion of the attitude of daily life. The attitude’s constituent expectancies are
briefly enumerated on pages 55-56.
Cl The
51
(Week 4) 29
the demand for justification, and when it was not forthcoming, as
“anyone could see” it could not be, anger. For the experimen ter we
expected embarrass ment to result from the disparity, under the
gaze of bis victim, between the lesser thing that the experimen ter’s
challenges of “what anyone could see” made ,him out to be and
the competen t person he with others knew himself “after all” to
be but which the procedure required that he could not claim.
Like Santayana ‘s clock, this formulatio n was neither right nor
wrong. Although the procedure produced what we anticipate d, it
also furnished us and the experimenters with more than we had
bargained for.
Students were instructed to engage someone in conversati on and
to imagine and act on the assumptio n that what the other person
was saying was directed by hidden motives which were his real
ones. They were to assume that the other person was trying to
trick them or mislead them.
In only two of thirty-6ve accounts did students attempt the
assignment with strangers. Most students were afraid that such a
situation would get out of hand so they selected friends, roommates, and family members. Even so they reported considerab le
rehearsal in imagination, much review of possible consequences,
and deliberate selections among persons.
The attitude was difficult to sustain and carry through. Students
reported acute awareness of being “in an artificial game,” of being
unable “to live the part,” and of frequently being “at a loss as to
what _to do next.” In the course of listening to the other person,
expenmen ters would lose sight of the assignment. One student
spoke for several when she. said she was unable to get any results
because so much of her eHort was directed to maintainin g an attitude of distrust that she was unable to follow the conversation.
She said she was unable to imagine how her fellow conversationalists might be deceiving her because they were tallcing about such
inconsequential matters.
With many students the assumptio n that the other person was
not what he appeared to be and was to be distrusted was the same
as the attribution that the other person was angry with them and
bated them. On the other hand many victims, although they complained that the student had no reason to be angry with them,
52
STUDIES IN ETHNOMETHODOLOGY
(Week 4) 30
offered unsolicited attempts at explanation and conciliation. When
this was of no avail there followed frank displays of anger and
“disgust.”
Anticipated and acute embarrassment swiftly materialized for
the two students who attempted the procedure with strangers.
After badgering a bus driver for assurances that the bus would
pass the street that she wanted and receiving several assurances in
return that indeed the bus did pass the street, the exasperated bus
driver shouted so that all passengers overheard, “Look lady, I told
you once, didn’t I? How many times do I have to tell you!” She
reported, “I shrank to the back of the bus to sink as low as I could
in the seat. I had gotten a good case of cold feet, a flaming face,
and a strong dislike for my assignment.”
There were very few reports of shame or embarrassment from
students who tried it with friends and family. Instead they were
surprised, and so were we, to find as one student reported that
“once I started acting the role of a hated person I actually came to
feel somewhat hated and by the time I left the table I was quite
angry.” Even more surprising to us, many reported that they found
the procedure enjoyable and this included the real anger not only
of others but their own.
Although students’ explanations easily restored most situations,
some episodes “turned serious” and left a residue of disturbance
for one or both parties that offered explanation did not resolve.
This can be illustrated in the report of a student housewife who,
at the conclusion of dinner, and with some trepidation, questioned
her husband about having worked late the night before and raised
a question about his actually having played poker as he claimed
on an evening of the week before. Without asking him what he had
actually done she indicated an explanation was called for. He re­
plied sarcastically, “You seem to be uneasy about something. Do
you know what it might be? This conversation would no doubt
make more sense if I knew too.” She accused him of deliberately
avoiding the subject, although the subject had not been mentioned.
He insisted that she tell him what the subject was. When she did
not say, he asked directly, “Okay, what’s the joke?” Instead of re­
plying, “I gave him a long, hurt look.” He became visibly upset,
became very solicitous, gentle, and persuasive. In response she
53
acknowledged the experiment. He stalked off obviously unhappy
and for the remainder of the evening was sullen and suspicious.
She, in the meanwhile, remained at the table piqued and unsettled
about the remarks that her statements had drawn forth about his
not being bored at work “with all the insinqations it might or
could mean,” particularly the insinuation that he was not bored
at work but he was bored with her and at home. She wrote, “I
was actually bothered by his remarks. . . . I felt more upset and
worried than he did throughout the experiment . . . about how
imperturbable he seemed to be.” Neither one attempted �nor
wanted to discuss the matter further. The following day the bus·
band confessed that he had been considerably disturbed and had
the following reactions in this order: determination to remain
calm; shock at his wife’s “suspicious nature”; surprise to find that
cheating on her was liable to be hard; a determination to make
her figure out her own answers to her questions without any denial
or help from him; extreme relief when the encounter was revealed
to have been experimentally contrived; but finally a residue of
uneasy feelings which he characterized as “his shaken ideas of my
(the wife’s) nature which remained for the rest of the evening.”
Background understandings and bewilderment
Earlier the argument was made that the possibility of common
understanding does not consist in demonstrated measures of shared
knowledge of social structure, but consists instead and entirely in
the enforceable character of actions in compliance with the ex­
pectancies of everyday life as a morality. Common sense knowl­
edge of the facts of social life for the members of the society is
institutionalized knowledge of the real world. Not only does com­
mon sense knowledge portray a real society for members, but in
the manner of a self fulfilling prophecy the features of the real
society are produced by persons’ motivated compliance with these
background expectancies.
ARTS1870 Workbook Performance Standards
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appreciate that specific
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P (50-64)
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attempt to appreciate
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effectively consider the
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consider the
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ARTS1870 Workbook Performance Standards
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reflect on how
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actively and effectively
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understanding of the
text have changed from
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class.
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contain consistent
reflections on the
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consistently connect
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reflect on the overall
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course. Workbook
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attempt to reference
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