Ethnomethodology: A Guide to Studying Everyday Social Life
Learn about ethnomethodology, the sociological approach to studying how people create social order in everyday life. Explore key concepts, methods, and practical applications for research.
Introduction: What Is Ethnomethodology?
Ethnomethodology is a distinctive branch of sociology that examines how ordinary people construct and maintain a sense of social order in their everyday lives. Rather than treating social structures as fixed, external forces that act upon individuals, ethnomethodology turns the lens inward, asking: how do people themselves produce the stable, recognizable patterns of social life that we tend to take for granted?
The term "ethnomethodology" was coined by the American sociologist Harold Garfinkel in the 1960s. The word itself offers a clue to its meaning: ethno refers to people or folk, and methodology refers to methods or practices. Put together, ethnomethodology is the study of the methods that ordinary people use to make sense of their social world and to produce mutually recognizable social actions.
Why Ethnomethodology Matters
Most sociological traditions begin with the assumption that social order exists and then set about explaining how it functions or why it persists. Ethnomethodology takes a fundamentally different starting point. It asks how social order is accomplished in the first place. This shift in perspective has profound implications:
It reveals hidden work. The seamless quality of everyday interactions—greetings, conversations, queuing, navigating a crosswalk—conceals an enormous amount of interpretive labor. Ethnomethodology makes that labor visible.
It challenges taken-for-granted assumptions. By examining the micro-mechanics of social life, ethnomethodology exposes the fragile foundations on which apparently solid social structures rest.
It bridges theory and practice. Because ethnomethodology focuses on what people actually do rather than what abstract theories predict they should do, its findings are directly applicable to fields like user experience research, organizational design, and technology development.
A Brief History
Ethnomethodology emerged from the intellectual ferment of mid-twentieth-century American sociology. Garfinkel, who studied under Talcott Parsons at Harvard, was deeply influenced by the phenomenological philosophy of Alfred Schutz, who had himself drawn on the work of Edmund Husserl. Schutz argued that the social world is constituted through the interpretive activities of its members—an idea that became the cornerstone of Garfinkel's project.
Garfinkel's landmark publication, Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967), laid out the theoretical foundations and presented a series of now-famous empirical studies. The book was deliberately provocative, challenging the dominant structural-functionalist paradigm associated with Parsons. Over the following decades, ethnomethodology gave rise to conversation analysis (developed by Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson), workplace studies, and a range of applied research programs that continue to thrive today.
In the sections that follow, we will explore ethnomethodology's core concepts, trace its origins in Garfinkel's groundbreaking work, compare it with other sociological approaches, survey its research methods, and examine how it is being applied in contemporary research and business contexts.
10x your insights without 10x'ing your workload
Innerview helps you quickly understand your customers and build products people love.
Ethnomethodology rests on a set of interrelated concepts that, taken together, offer a distinctive framework for understanding social life. Grasping these concepts is essential for anyone who wants to apply ethnomethodological thinking to research or practice.
Indexicality
Indexicality refers to the fact that the meaning of any word, gesture, or action depends on the context in which it occurs. Consider the sentence, "I'll meet you there tomorrow." To understand it, you need to know who "I" is, who "you" is, where "there" refers to, and when "tomorrow" falls. In everyday life, people resolve these ambiguities effortlessly, drawing on shared background knowledge and the immediate situation.
Ethnomethodology insists that all expressions are indexical. Even seemingly precise scientific or legal language depends on background assumptions and contextual interpretation for its meaning. This insight has far-reaching consequences: it means that social order is not maintained by rules that can be stated once and for all, but by the ongoing interpretive work of participants who must continuously figure out what actions and utterances mean in specific, concrete situations.
Reflexivity
In ethnomethodology, reflexivity does not refer to self-reflection in the colloquial sense. Instead, it describes the way in which accounts of the social world are simultaneously descriptions of that world and constitutive parts of it. When a person describes what is happening in a meeting, for example, that description is not merely a neutral report—it actively shapes the meeting itself, influencing how other participants understand the situation and what they do next.
Reflexivity means that social practices and accounts of those practices are inseparable. Describing a social setting is always, at the same time, a way of producing that setting. This concept underscores the active, constructive role that ordinary language plays in creating and sustaining social reality.
Accountability
Accountability, in the ethnomethodological sense, refers to the observable-and-reportable character of social actions. People design their conduct so that it is recognizable to others as a particular kind of action. When you raise your hand in a classroom, you are not merely lifting your arm—you are performing a socially accountable action (requesting permission to speak) that is intelligible to the teacher and other students.
The concept of accountability highlights the fact that social actors are always oriented to making their actions interpretable. They expect others to be able to see what they are doing and to hold them accountable for it. This mutual accountability is what makes coordinated social life possible.
Garfinkel borrowed this concept from the sociologist Karl Mannheim. The documentary method of interpretation describes the process by which people treat specific appearances or events as "documents" (evidence or expressions) of an underlying pattern, and then use the assumed pattern to interpret further appearances. In other words, people move back and forth between particular instances and general patterns, using each to make sense of the other.
For example, a job interviewer might interpret a candidate's firm handshake as a "document" of confidence. That assumed confidence then colors the interpretation of subsequent actions—perhaps the candidate's direct eye contact is read as further evidence of assertiveness. The documentary method is a fundamental mechanism through which people construct coherent narratives out of the flux of everyday experience.
Breaching Experiments
Breaching experiments are perhaps the most widely known contribution of ethnomethodology. Garfinkel designed these experiments to reveal the taken-for-granted background expectancies that sustain everyday social interaction. The logic is straightforward: by deliberately violating ordinary social conventions, the researcher can make visible the normally invisible rules that govern interaction.
In one classic breaching experiment, Garfinkel instructed his students to behave as boarders in their own homes—acting politely but distantly, as though they were guests rather than family members. The reactions were dramatic: family members became confused, upset, and sometimes angry. These strong emotional responses demonstrated just how deeply embedded and consequential the unspoken expectations of everyday life really are.
Breaching experiments remain a powerful pedagogical tool for illustrating ethnomethodological principles, and they have inspired a wide range of research designs aimed at uncovering the normative structures of everyday settings.
Harold Garfinkel and the Origins of Ethnomethodology
Harold Garfinkel (1917–2011) is universally recognized as the founder of ethnomethodology. His intellectual trajectory, from doctoral student under Talcott Parsons to iconoclastic sociologist, shaped the development of a research tradition that would challenge mainstream sociology and influence fields as diverse as linguistics, computer science, and organizational studies.
Intellectual Formation
Garfinkel's early academic work was steeped in the structural-functionalist tradition that dominated American sociology in the mid-twentieth century. Parsons, his doctoral advisor at Harvard, argued that social order is maintained through shared norms and values that are internalized by individuals during socialization. Garfinkel accepted the centrality of the problem of social order but rejected the Parsonian solution. Drawing on Alfred Schutz's phenomenological sociology, Garfinkel argued that social order is not a product of internalized norms but an ongoing, practical accomplishment of social actors.
Schutz had emphasized the role of the "natural attitude"—the common-sense orientation that ordinary people adopt toward the social world, in which they take for granted that the world is shared, stable, and meaningful. Garfinkel took this idea and transformed it into an empirical research program, asking: how, exactly, do people produce and sustain the natural attitude in their everyday activities?
Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967)
Garfinkel's magnum opus, Studies in Ethnomethodology, brought together a collection of empirical investigations that demonstrated the principles of his approach. Among the most influential studies were:
The Breaching Experiments. As described above, these experiments involved deliberate violations of ordinary social expectations. In addition to the "boarder" experiment, Garfinkel had students engage acquaintances in conversation and insist that the other person clarify the meaning of commonplace remarks. ("What do you mean, 'How are you?' Do you mean physically, mentally, financially?") The resulting confusion and irritation revealed the depth of people's reliance on unstated background assumptions.
The Agnes Study. One of Garfinkel's most celebrated case studies involved a young transgender woman he called Agnes, who had been assigned male at birth and was seeking gender reassignment surgery. Garfinkel used Agnes's experience to explore how gender identity is not simply a biological given or a fixed social role but a continuous practical accomplishment. Agnes had to learn and perform the everyday practices of femininity in a way that was accountable to others as "natural." This study was groundbreaking in demonstrating that even something as fundamental as gender is produced through ongoing interactional work.
Jury Deliberations. Garfinkel also studied how jurors made decisions, showing that their reasoning processes were not applications of formal legal rules but practical, situated judgments shaped by common-sense reasoning. Jurors used the documentary method of interpretation, treating particular pieces of evidence as documents of broader narratives and reaching verdicts through an iterative process of pattern construction.
The Trust Experiments
Another important strand of Garfinkel's early research involved what might be called trust experiments. Garfinkel was interested in the basic trust that social actors place in the stability and predictability of the social world. He demonstrated that this trust is not a passive psychological state but an active orientation that must be continually maintained. When the expected grounds for trust are disrupted—as in the breaching experiments—people experience profound disorientation, illustrating the extent to which everyday social life depends on a tacit mutual agreement to sustain certain background assumptions.
Legacy
Garfinkel's work was polarizing within sociology. Critics charged that ethnomethodology was solipsistic, trivial, or impossible to reconcile with macro-sociological concerns. Supporters countered that it opened up an entirely new domain of inquiry and provided tools for studying social phenomena that other approaches simply could not reach. Whatever one's position, there is no denying that Garfinkel's insights have had a lasting impact on how we understand the relationship between social structure and everyday practice.
Ethnomethodology vs Other Sociological Approaches
To appreciate what makes ethnomethodology distinctive, it is helpful to compare it with several other major sociological traditions. Each of these approaches addresses the problem of social order, but they do so from different starting points and with different analytical tools.
Ethnomethodology vs Structural Functionalism
Structural functionalism, associated with Talcott Parsons and Robert Merton, views society as a system of interconnected parts that work together to maintain stability. Social order is explained by shared norms and values that are internalized through socialization. Deviance is treated as a failure of socialization or a dysfunction in the system.
Ethnomethodology departs from this view in several key ways:
Agency vs structure. Structural functionalism emphasizes the power of social structures to shape individual behavior. Ethnomethodology foregrounds the agency of individuals who actively produce social order through their practical activities.
Process vs product. Where structural functionalism treats social order as an existing state of affairs to be explained, ethnomethodology treats it as an ongoing process to be described.
Description vs explanation. Structural functionalism seeks causal explanations for social phenomena. Ethnomethodology focuses on describing how social phenomena are accomplished by participants.
Ethnomethodology vs Symbolic Interactionism
Symbolic interactionism, rooted in the work of George Herbert Mead and developed by Herbert Blumer, shares several features with ethnomethodology. Both traditions emphasize the importance of meaning, interpretation, and interaction in social life. However, there are significant differences:
Meaning construction. Symbolic interactionism sees meaning as emerging through interaction, but tends to treat it as relatively stable once established. Ethnomethodology emphasizes the ongoing, moment-by-moment work required to sustain meaning.
Self and identity. Symbolic interactionism places considerable emphasis on the self as a social product, developed through taking the role of the other. Ethnomethodology is less concerned with the self as such and more interested in the practical methods people use to accomplish recognizable social actions.
Scope. Symbolic interactionism tends to focus on the content of interactions—what people think, feel, and communicate. Ethnomethodology focuses on the form and structure of interactions—how people organize their conduct so that it is recognizable and accountable.
Ethnomethodology vs Phenomenological Sociology
Ethnomethodology has deep roots in phenomenological philosophy, particularly the work of Alfred Schutz. Both approaches are concerned with the constitution of the social world through the interpretive activities of its members. However, ethnomethodology diverges from classical phenomenological sociology in important respects:
Empirical vs philosophical. Schutz's work was primarily philosophical, analyzing the structures of the life-world through conceptual reflection. Garfinkel transformed these insights into an empirical research program, studying actual instances of social practice.
Constitutive practices. While Schutz emphasized the cognitive structures (typifications, relevances) through which people make sense of the world, ethnomethodology emphasizes the embodied, situated practices through which social order is produced.
Summary Comparison Table
Feature
Structural Functionalism
Symbolic Interactionism
Phenomenological Sociology
Ethnomethodology
Key question
How do social structures maintain stability?
How do people create meaning through interaction?
How is the social world constituted through consciousness?
How do people produce social order in everyday practice?
Ethnomethodology has given rise to a distinctive set of research methods, each designed to make visible the practical reasoning and interactional work that sustain social order. These methods have been refined over decades of empirical research and are now applied across a wide range of settings.
Conversation Analysis (CA)
Conversation analysis is the most influential methodological offspring of ethnomethodology. Developed in the late 1960s and 1970s by Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson, CA studies the organization of talk-in-interaction. Its core insight is that conversation is not a random or chaotic activity but a highly structured, orderly phenomenon.
Key features of conversation analysis include:
Turn-taking. CA has identified a systematic turn-taking mechanism that governs who speaks, when, and for how long. Speakers orient to transition-relevance places—points in the conversation where a change of speaker becomes possible.
Sequence organization. Conversational actions are organized into sequences, such as adjacency pairs (question-answer, greeting-greeting, invitation-acceptance/rejection). CA examines how these sequences are initiated, maintained, and closed.
Repair. When misunderstandings or errors occur in conversation, participants use systematic repair mechanisms to restore mutual understanding.
Preference organization. Certain responses to conversational actions are "preferred" (e.g., accepting an invitation) while others are "dispreferred" (e.g., declining). Dispreferred responses tend to be delayed, hedged, and accompanied by accounts.
Conversation analysis uses detailed transcripts of naturally occurring talk, often employing the Jefferson transcription system, which captures not only words but also pauses, overlaps, intonation, and other features of speech production.
Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA)
Membership categorization analysis, also originating in the work of Harvey Sacks, examines how people use social categories ("mother," "doctor," "teenager") to organize their understanding of the social world. MCA investigates:
Category-bound activities. Certain activities are conventionally associated with particular categories (e.g., "crying" with "baby"). People use these associations to make inferences about the social world.
Categorization devices. Categories are organized into collections ("family" = mother, father, child; "stage of life" = baby, teenager, adult) that provide frameworks for interpretation.
Inferential richness. A single category can generate a wealth of inferences about a person's likely knowledge, responsibilities, and behavior.
MCA is particularly useful for studying how identity, social roles, and moral judgments are constructed in and through language.
Breaching Experiments
As discussed earlier, breaching experiments involve the deliberate disruption of taken-for-granted social norms to reveal the background expectancies on which everyday interaction depends. While breaching experiments are less commonly used in contemporary research due to ethical concerns, they remain a powerful conceptual tool and are still employed in pedagogical settings.
Workplace Studies
Workplace studies represent one of the most productive areas of applied ethnomethodological research. Drawing on conversation analysis and ethnographic observation, workplace studies examine how people coordinate their activities in occupational settings such as:
Medical settings (operating theaters, consultations, ward rounds)
Technology-mediated work (collaborative software use, video-mediated communication)
Workplace studies focus on the situated, embodied practices through which professionals accomplish their work. They examine how people use tools, technologies, documents, and the physical environment as resources for coordinating action. This line of research has had a significant impact on the design of collaborative technologies and computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW).
Ethnographic Observation
While ethnomethodology is not identical to ethnography, ethnomethodological studies often involve extended periods of observation in natural settings. The goal is not to impose the researcher's categories on the data but to discover the categories and methods that participants themselves use to organize their activities. This requires a disciplined commitment to describing phenomena in terms that are faithful to participants' own orientations.
Applications in Modern Research and Business
Ethnomethodology's focus on how people actually accomplish their everyday activities has made it remarkably relevant to contemporary research and business practice. Its insights are being applied in fields that range from user experience design to artificial intelligence.
UX Research and Design
Ethnomethodology has had a profound influence on user experience research. The core ethnomethodological commitment—understanding what people actually do rather than what they say they do or what designers assume they do—aligns naturally with the goals of UX research. Specific applications include:
Contextual inquiry. This UX research method, which involves observing and interviewing users in their natural work environments, draws directly on ethnomethodological principles. Researchers seek to understand the practical, situated methods that users employ to accomplish their tasks.
Interaction design. Conversation analysis has informed the design of conversational interfaces, chatbots, and voice assistants. By understanding the sequential organization of natural conversation, designers can create more intuitive and effective interactive systems.
Usability testing. Ethnomethodological sensitivity to the details of practical action helps researchers identify subtle usability issues that might be missed by more structured evaluation methods.
Customer Experience and Market Research
In the business world, ethnomethodological approaches are increasingly valued for their ability to reveal the lived experience of customers:
Customer journey analysis. Rather than relying solely on predefined journey maps, ethnomethodological approaches encourage researchers to study how customers actually navigate touchpoints, make decisions, and construct their experience of a brand or service.
Service design. Understanding the interactional work involved in service encounters—how baristas, bank tellers, or customer support agents coordinate with customers—can inform the design of more effective and satisfying service processes.
Voice of the customer programs. Ethnomethodological attention to the details of language and interaction can enrich the analysis of customer feedback, interview transcripts, and support conversations.
Organizational Studies
Ethnomethodology offers powerful tools for studying how organizations actually work, as opposed to how organizational charts and formal procedures say they should work:
Meeting analysis. Conversation analysis has been applied extensively to the study of meetings, revealing how agendas are managed, decisions are made, and institutional roles are enacted through talk.
Knowledge management. Ethnomethodological research has shown that much organizational knowledge is tacit, embodied, and situated—not easily captured in databases or manuals. This insight has implications for how organizations approach knowledge sharing and training.
Change management. Understanding the practical methods through which organizational routines are sustained can help change managers identify the points of resistance and the levers of transformation.
Technology Design and AI
Ethnomethodology has made significant contributions to the design of technology, particularly in the field of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW):
Collaborative systems. Workplace studies have informed the design of shared workspaces, collaborative editing tools, and communication platforms by revealing how people coordinate their activities in practice.
AI and automation. As artificial intelligence systems take on more complex tasks, ethnomethodological research can help designers understand the practical reasoning that these systems need to support or replicate. Conversation analysis, for instance, is being used to improve the naturalness of AI-driven dialogue systems.
Leveraging Technology for Ethnomethodological Research
Modern qualitative research tools can significantly enhance the practice of ethnomethodological research. When conducting detailed analyses of interviews, focus groups, or naturally occurring interactions, researchers benefit from tools that support accurate transcription and systematic coding. Platforms like Innerview can assist with the transcription and analysis of qualitative research interviews, helping research teams identify patterns across multiple conversations more efficiently while preserving the rich detail that ethnomethodological analysis demands.
The enduring relevance of ethnomethodology lies in its commitment to studying what people actually do. In a world increasingly shaped by technology, data, and abstraction, this commitment to the concrete, practical, and observable dimensions of social life is more valuable than ever.
Conclusion and FAQs
Ethnomethodology offers a uniquely powerful lens for understanding social life. By shifting the focus from abstract social structures to the practical, everyday methods through which people produce and maintain social order, it opens up a domain of inquiry that other sociological traditions tend to overlook. From Garfinkel's pioneering breaching experiments to contemporary applications in UX design and AI development, ethnomethodology continues to generate insights that are both intellectually compelling and practically useful.
For researchers in sociology, UX, market research, and organizational studies, ethnomethodological thinking provides a valuable corrective to approaches that rely too heavily on predefined categories, self-reported data, or theoretical abstractions. By attending to what people actually do—in all its messy, situated, contextual detail—ethnomethodology helps us see the social world with fresh eyes.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is ethnomethodology in simple terms?
Ethnomethodology is the study of how ordinary people create and maintain social order in their everyday lives. It examines the common-sense methods, practices, and reasoning that people use to navigate social situations, from conversations and workplace routines to institutional interactions. Rather than looking at society from the top down, ethnomethodology studies it from the ground up, focusing on what people actually do.
Who founded ethnomethodology?
Ethnomethodology was founded by the American sociologist Harold Garfinkel (1917–2011). Garfinkel developed ethnomethodology while working at the University of California, Los Angeles, and published his foundational work, Studies in Ethnomethodology, in 1967. His ideas were strongly influenced by the phenomenological philosophy of Alfred Schutz and the sociological tradition of Talcott Parsons, against which he reacted.
What is a breaching experiment?
A breaching experiment is a research technique in which the researcher deliberately violates taken-for-granted social norms or expectations to make visible the unspoken rules that govern everyday interaction. For example, Garfinkel had students act as polite strangers in their own homes, provoking confusion and anger that revealed the depth of family members' reliance on unstated expectations. Breaching experiments are primarily used as a teaching and analytical tool rather than a routine research method.
How is ethnomethodology different from ethnography?
While both ethnomethodology and ethnography involve close observation of social life, they have different goals. Ethnography aims to describe and interpret the culture, practices, and beliefs of a particular social group. Ethnomethodology is more narrowly focused on the methods that people use to produce social order—it is less interested in cultural meanings and more interested in the procedural mechanics of social interaction. Ethnomethodological studies often use ethnographic techniques, but the analytical focus is distinct.
What is conversation analysis, and how does it relate to ethnomethodology?
Conversation analysis (CA) is a research method that grew directly out of ethnomethodology. Developed by Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson, CA studies the organization of talk-in-interaction. It examines how people take turns speaking, organize sequences of action, repair misunderstandings, and manage conversational flow. CA is one of the most widely used and productive methods to emerge from the ethnomethodological tradition.
Can ethnomethodology be used in UX and market research?
Absolutely. Ethnomethodology's focus on what people actually do—rather than what they say they do—makes it highly relevant to UX and market research. Its methods, including contextual observation, conversation analysis, and detailed analysis of naturally occurring interactions, can reveal insights into user behavior, customer experience, and organizational practices that other methods might miss. Many contemporary UX research practices, such as contextual inquiry, are directly informed by ethnomethodological principles.
What are the main criticisms of ethnomethodology?
Critics have raised several objections to ethnomethodology. Some argue that its focus on micro-level interaction neglects broader social structures like class, race, and gender. Others contend that its findings are difficult to generalize beyond specific settings. The approach has also been criticized for its dense, sometimes inaccessible writing style, and for what some perceive as a reluctance to engage with questions of power and inequality. Defenders of ethnomethodology counter that it provides an indispensable complement to macro-sociological approaches and that its empirical rigor more than compensates for its narrow scope.
How can I start learning ethnomethodology?
Begin with Garfinkel's Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967), which remains the foundational text. For a more accessible introduction, consider Ethnomethodology at Work by Peter Tolmie and Mark Rouncefield, or Doing Conversation Analysis by Paul ten Have. Taking a course in conversation analysis is another excellent way to develop practical skills. Finally, try conducting a small-scale observational study of an everyday setting—paying close attention to how participants organize their activities and make their actions recognizable to one another.
