Harold Garfinkel's "Studies in Ethnomethodology"—An Interview Project

Abstract

In the following text we introduce the special issue "Harold Garfinkel's 'Studies in Ethnomethodology'—An Interview Project." This special issue assembles eight interviews with scientists from ethnomethodology and adjacent disciplines who speak about the book "Studies in Ethnomethodology" (GARFINKEL 1967) und ethnomethodology in general. Bringing together different perspectives on GARFINKEL's groundbreaking study, the interviews show the multivocality of this controversial and at the same time powerful text. In this introduction we reconstruct the historical context in which the book originally appeared and give a brief outline of its content. Moreover, we introduce the main aim and idea behind the interview project and provide a short preview of the interviews themselves. In the end we identify two themes that can be found across all contributions and which indicate possible ways of reading: 1. the relation between ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, and 2. the understanding of ethnomethodology as a unique attitude of conducting research.