Ethnomethodology And Interactionism
Ehnomethododolgy and interactionism have been two of the most emerging social theorys to come up from the 20th century. Interactionism was the one that initially started it with the emergence of Meade in the 1920s who emerged with a style of being pragmatism as its main core argument as well as analysis how we socially act with teaches other. Herbet blumer worked on Meade theory and he created symbolic interactionism through it. With their main aim of it being what is behind the subjective theory of humans, the social process and being pragmatic, this theory has then led to several divisions created throughout they include Phenomenology, Social Action, and Ethnomethodology. The view of ethno has created the biggest difference and has been viewed as analysis people everyday life and how people act which defines there social order and therefore it will be used to document to how the world works and operate unlike many other theory’s not interested in putting people in separate reality of using extreme types of cases. In addition the Ethnomethodology can be viewed as “members of society must have some shared methods that they use to mutually construct the meaningful orderliness of social situations” and that it differs from normal sociology as viewed what is important is the procedures over which social society is created
One of the things that interactionist sociologists are different to macro sociologist such as functionalist and Marxist conflict theories. This can be viewed as the way they look at how the individuals act in situations instead of just analysing how they react to a social stimulant. In addition they tend to look at how different social actors understand the behaviour of theirs is significant as a way of understanding in the way social world constructed.
One of these differences can be shown in the difference where etnomethodologist tend to be highly indifferent to subjective methods of research as not really thinking that they correctly define human behaviour in the manner they like.
In terms of contrast to the normal style of sociology the ethno view doesn’t attempt to make an theory or methodological appeal In addition does not view its subjective states as an individual or group of individual as well will refuse to use concept view such as “value states, “sentiments” , ” goal-orientations” as a way of referring to any types of actor or other actors. Therefore for an ethnomethodologists’s the way in which you can fully realise social scenes is when the actual location would be under inspection. Therefore the role is to describe the personality of these activities not just accounting as just a person in a particular location but instead look at what happens , how it happens and why these moment tends be different .
A difference between the two would be the use of symbols whereby interactionist tend to assume that the truth of symbols are then interpreted by various actor in social while ethno deliberately avoids these assumption to describe social scene and do not think symbol are necessarily used as constants in social scenes.
One of the things that make ethnomethodology unique is the method behind its research is different as it tends to look at practical reasons and how that is different compared to the domain of talking interaction or other constituent activity system which believe are very limited and only get a small amounts of research through it . In addition they look in methodological research and how tends be viewed through either ethno-graphic or quasi-experiment which are different to the usual analysis of conversation and look at audio and video recording of on-going interaction. They believe methods of interviews are fake and don’t really give the most fairest way of analysis human behaviour as also think can be based on false assumption such as camaridie in the interview which be viewed differently by the parties but it could lead to giving less accurate results.
In addition one of the most important thing for the Interactions is how they analyse peoples social life , instead of the functional objective macro-organised structure of the social system where everyone has a place and just a certain role. This is important as it fits in with the interactionist philosophy of their theoretical perspective on the image of humans instead of just analysing society and viewing how that defines. Instead human are pragmatic actors who must continually change their behaviour to be able to respond to other actor and that the only way they we can adjust is because we have the power to interpret them either through symbolic ways or could be linguistic methods through those abilities able to adjust to respond accordingly. This is then enhanced by the way we can imaginatively rehearse other ways of action before to attempt to act. This is then aided by the ability to think and then react to our actions even viewing are selves at times as the symbolic objects. Therefore the interactionist theorist would view human as active, creative participants, who define and make the social world not just conformist passive players in this social world.
One of the major differences would be how they both tend to view the difference in role taking It tends to be a key role in the method of interaction whereby it allows take other people views and how their actions lead us to interact in a certain way. Furthermore in other times interactions tend to look at improvisational use of rules where the social situation isn’t working well which means then human change their role to try and improve the experience. However a ethno view is that they would prefer to go analyse their research through looking at different ways that people express themselves in conversation and the way that these methods are managed.
In addition the way interactionist seem to learn is through participant observation whereby instead of just looking at survey and interview instead they will view that what makes it important is looking how they act in there day to day life and how being immersed in the live is the best way of being able to understand why people commit their action and how the process of the situation is communicated through the interaction. Therefor while they will be very close in terms of contact as a consequence they are explicit over how what they learned from the person can alter their views and thinking but will be objective when it comes to conducting the research
One of the criticisms ethnomethodologists’s have over the interactionist approach is that they believed that there tends to be an over reliance on the cognitive system approach . There logic is that normal people tend to grasp just normal situations and that is all they process, however when there is a specific event with horrific sequence they start thinking about their pre-conscious state which leads them to disrupt there normal pattern of social interaction in addition the ethno group believe that this only a temporary problem and very quickly will be to allowed to enable normal social interaction again with just a bit of work
However in certain methods there tends to be certain similar aspects if you look at how they tend to be linked to a certain degree over the interactionist concern with the role of abnormality within the studies of social group and social relationships. Usually interactionist tend to look at the method of organization which stresses how positions in place work tend to be defined by its inherent informal structure. Therefore this had led to a view created by (Hughes, 1956) ” that beside every task division of labor rests a moral hierarchy of positions which dictate how per-sons are to relate”. Therefore when usually this a study into the social organisations the interactionist will tend to look at how the social organization start with a formal structure and how that progress through a variety of different views and ideas which then as a consequence redefine those initial structures . These view on the structure complement the ethnomethodologists’s which also emphasis that a formal structure can’t be ignored and they are vital fundamental for social relationships. Furthermore ethnomethodologists’s major view in this regard in this topic is that the “productions of sociologist are similar to those in everyday life.” They get to there point through a couple of ways, one of those tends to be tend that sociologists main concern is the affairs of the general people in the social order . Therefore when they start with their initial test they create a certain boundaries and certain rules which will define their method however during these test they will find throughout it anomaly’s or that the statistical test is not accurate or that what they observe does not actually fit in with their initial hypothesis or central concept . So therefore when they try to make there concept work with their hypothesis they will tend to rely on the documentary style of analysis whereby they look at there earlier view of daily interaction and look at how to help them reach a hypothesis
The two views can also have fault lines in what they necessarily try to find as an interactionist are far more concerned with normal common sense question about how we live our lives , while the ethnomethodologists’s tries to analysis on the meaning of the social and look at what behind what we all do .
One of the major differences can be viewed between how language is differently viewed between the two ideologies as for the interactions language can be viewed as submitting signs of the person that represent the central aspect of the social life; while for the ethnomethodologists’s it can be pointed to the person as a way of being the standard reality and how it is explained
A criticism that has been used towards interactionism from the ehthno has come towards the Blumer approach and their assessment over how they failed to accurate describe how the social process in the vein that there was a total gloss on the usual human social interaction especially demanding that there should be a place for the minute description of behaviour especially language behaviour instead of the constant reference to ” mind ” or “self” , ” society” which where conceptual goals coming from which then used the prepared account of the social life in the method of Blumer.
Therefore it while there are similarities between interactionist and the ethnomethodologists especially as ethnomethodology would not be able to exist without interactionism as that is what started this brand of sociology which went against the functional sociologist style of before such as structuralism , functionalism , Marxism it started then as a new breed of sociology and ethnomethodology became a branch of it like Phenomenology did as well . Therefore whatever the difference will be there central point will always be very similar to each other .
