Where is the bakery? : The ethnomethodological conception of social order

Abstract: The fundamental sociological problem of social order finds a somewhat ”unorthodox” solution in the ethnomethodological program, the main responsibility of which is ascribed to Harold Garfinkel. The current thesis rests on the view that the program offers insights that have not been sufficiently recognized, and that it bears a message to sociology that has been somewhat lost. The study aims to investigate and uncover the ethnomethodological conception of social order in a comprehensible way. Comparisons are made to “formal analytical” perspectives, notably that advocated by Talcott Parsons. The result suggests that the ethnomethodological conception of order is closer related to intersubjectivity than to action theory, and that the ethnomethodological view completes rather than opposes that of formal analysis. The deeper ontological and epistemological implications of ethnomethodology are discussed, partly by invocation of the notion of radical reflexivity.