Harold Garfinkel

Harold Garfinkel was an American sociologist best known as the founder of ethnomethodology, a theoretical and methodological approach that examines how individuals produce and maintain social order in everyday life. Garfinkel’s work challenged conventional sociological assumptions by focusing on the taken-for-granted practices through which people make sense of social reality. His ideas marked a decisive shift towards the close analysis of ordinary interactions, language, and practical reasoning.

Background and Intellectual Context

Harold Garfinkel was born in 1917 in the United States and received his academic training in sociology during a period dominated by structural functionalism. He was influenced by the work of Talcott Parsons, under whom he studied, but gradually developed a critical stance towards grand sociological theories that prioritised abstract structures over lived experience.
Garfinkel was also deeply influenced by phenomenological philosophy, particularly the ideas of Edmund Husserl and Alfred Schutz. From phenomenology, he adopted the emphasis on subjective meaning, everyday consciousness, and the ways individuals experience the social world. These influences shaped Garfinkel’s lifelong interest in the practical activities through which social order is achieved.

Ethnomethodology: Core Ideas

Ethnomethodology is concerned with the methods that ordinary people use to produce a sense of order, coherence, and meaning in social life. Rather than treating social order as imposed by institutions or norms, Garfinkel argued that it is actively constructed in moment-to-moment interactions.
A central claim of ethnomethodology is that social reality is indexical, meaning that the sense of words and actions depends heavily on context. Everyday expressions are often vague or incomplete, yet they function effectively because participants share background knowledge and assumptions. Garfinkel referred to this shared understanding as common-sense knowledge, which allows interaction to proceed smoothly without constant clarification.
Ethnomethodology thus shifts sociological analysis away from external explanations and towards the practical reasoning of social actors themselves.

The Taken-for-Granted Nature of Social Life

Garfinkel placed strong emphasis on the taken-for-granted character of everyday social practices. Most social activities proceed without conscious reflection because participants assume a shared understanding of rules, roles, and meanings. These assumptions are rarely articulated but are essential for social interaction.
According to Garfinkel, traditional sociology often overlooks these background assumptions by treating social norms as objective facts. Ethnomethodology, by contrast, seeks to uncover how these norms are continuously produced and sustained through interaction. Social order is therefore fragile and contingent, relying on ongoing cooperation among participants.
This perspective highlights the active role of individuals in maintaining social stability, even in the most routine situations.

Breaching Experiments

One of Garfinkel’s most distinctive methodological contributions is the use of breaching experiments. These experiments deliberately disrupt ordinary social expectations in order to reveal the implicit rules that govern interaction. By violating taken-for-granted norms, researchers can observe how people attempt to restore a sense of order.
Examples of breaching include responding to casual greetings with excessive formality or treating ordinary conversations as if they were formal interviews. Garfinkel found that such disruptions often provoked confusion, anxiety, or irritation, demonstrating how deeply social norms are embedded in everyday life.
Breaching experiments were not intended as practical jokes but as analytical tools to make visible the invisible structures of social interaction.

Accountability and Social Action

A key concept in Garfinkel’s work is accountability, which refers to the idea that social actions are performed in ways that make them understandable and recognisable to others. Individuals design their behaviour so that it can be interpreted as meaningful within a shared social framework.
Actions are not merely private intentions but public performances that invite interpretation. For example, a gesture, statement, or pause in conversation gains significance because it can be accounted for by others as appropriate to the situation. Accountability ensures that social life remains intelligible and coordinated.
This emphasis reinforces Garfinkel’s argument that social order is an ongoing accomplishment rather than a fixed structure.

Language, Conversation, and Practical Reasoning

Language plays a central role in ethnomethodology. Garfinkel argued that everyday speech is not simply a vehicle for transmitting information but a practical activity through which social reality is constructed. Meaning emerges through use, context, and shared understanding rather than through formal definitions.
His work strongly influenced the development of conversation analysis, which systematically examines the organisation of talk-in-interaction, including turn-taking, pauses, and repairs. Although conversation analysis later developed into a distinct approach, it retains Garfinkel’s commitment to detailed empirical study of everyday interaction.
Garfinkel’s focus on practical reasoning demonstrated that ordinary people possess sophisticated skills for managing social situations, even if they cannot explicitly describe the rules they follow.

Ethnomethodology and Traditional Sociology

Garfinkel was highly critical of mainstream sociology for imposing theoretical explanations that ignore the perspectives of social actors. He argued that sociologists often treat social facts as external objects, rather than as products of human activity.
Ethnomethodology does not seek to replace traditional sociology but to respecify its concerns by grounding analysis in the methods people actually use. This stance led to debates about whether ethnomethodology constitutes a theory, a method, or a radical critique of sociology itself.
Despite these controversies, Garfinkel’s work expanded the scope of sociological inquiry by legitimising the close study of everyday practices.

Criticism and Evaluation

Garfinkel’s approach has been criticised for its apparent lack of concern with large-scale social structures such as class, power, and inequality. Critics argue that by focusing on micro-level interaction, ethnomethodology neglects broader social forces.
Supporters respond that Garfinkel did not deny the existence of structures but sought to show how they are enacted and sustained in everyday life. From this perspective, macro-level phenomena depend on micro-level practices for their continued existence.
Garfinkel’s work has also been described as methodologically demanding, requiring careful observation and analysis of naturally occurring interaction.