Answer to Question #211474 in Sociology for Esko

Question

What is the importance of ethnomethodology?

Answer 1

Ethnomethodology is concerned with characteristics of the social world that are taken for granted. It focuses on how people make meaning of their daily lives and how they hold their social environments responsible to themselves. Ethnomethodology provides a set of techniques that have been employed in ethnographic investigations to create narratives of people's coping strategies in everyday situations. It is mostly a descriptive discipline that does not attempt to explain or evaluate the social structure under consideration. This sociological perspective examines how people make sense of their daily lives. People are viewed as rational actors, yet they make sense of and function in society through practical reasoning rather than formal logic. For example, it enables people to look at one other, nod in agreement, and ask and answer questions. The breaching experiment, which aims to study people's reactions to infractions of universally accepted social standards or norms, is validated by ethnomethodology. It does not, however, mention anything particularly significant. The great political and social challenges of the day are beyond its scope, because the focus is on how we create this world, not what we create it to be.