"When God Gives You Two Tenths of a Second and the 'Mhm,' Then You Can Change the World." Stephan Wolff in Conversation With René Salomon

Abstract

In this interview, Stephan WOLFF describes the development of his own theoretical and methodological approach towards ethnomethodology in sociology. Considering it as a promising, yet flexible attitude allowed WOLFF to integrate other theoretical positions and operationalize them in a way that initiated ethnographic studies in various new fields. With this perspective, he played an important role in establishing the ethnomethodological approach in other academic disciplines in Germany. The interview provides a detailed reconstruction of the German reception of ethnomethodology and a genuine insight into the historical situation of theory building and research within the human sciences in (West) Germany since the 1970s. It thereby exposes how cumbersome German sociology's reaction to ethnomethodology was, and it shows to what extent the success of a field of research can depend on the commitment of individuals.