This volume includes an unpublished manuscript and selected portions of five seminars by Harold Garfinkel the founder of ethnomethodology on the topic of laboratory work in the natural sciences, providing a coherent and sustained account of his program for the study of work in the natural sciences and mathematics.
This volume includes an unpublished manuscript and selected portions of five seminars by Harold Garfinkel the founder of ethnomethodology on the topic of practices in the natural sciences and mathematics. The volume provides a coherent and sustained account of his program for the study of ordinary and specialized social actions. Presenting broader theoretical and methodological initiatives, as well as discussions and summaries of exemplary studies of social phenomena within and beyond the sciences, this work dates to the period in the 1980s during which the field of Science and Technology Studies was taking shape, with ethnomethodological studies of scientific practice forming a major part of its development at the time. Aside from their historical importance, the manuscript and seminars present a distinctive perspective on the natural and social sciences that remains highly original and pertinent to research on science, social science, and everyday life today. Offering critical insights and proposals relating to developments in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, this volume will appeal to scholars of Sociology and Science and Technology Studies with interests in the work of Garfinkel.
Editors Introduction Part I: Respecifying the Natural Sciences as
Discovering Sciences of Practical Action, I & II: Doing so Ethnographically
by Administering a Schedule of Contingencies in Discussions with Laboratory
Scientists and by Hanging Around their Laboratories Editors Introduction to
Part I Part I: Respecifying the Natural Sciences as Discovering Sciences of
Practical Action, I & II: Doing so Ethnographically by Administering a
Schedule of Contingencies in Discussions with Laboratory Scientists and by
Hanging Around their Laboratories Appendix I: Postscript and Preface Appendix
II: Some Notes on the Play of Basketball in its Circumstantial Detail
Appendix III: Detail* Appendix IV: Collections of Studies I-VII Respecifying
The Natural Sciences As Discovering Sciences Of Practical Action
Acknowledgements, Notes and References to Part I Part II: Discovering Work of
the Sciences: Five seminars on the work of the discovering sciences,
Department of Sociology, UCLA. (May - July 1980) Editors Introduction to
Part II Seminar 1 (May 22, 1980), convened by Harold Garfinkel Seminar 2 (May
27, 1980), convened by Harold Garfinkel Seminar 3 (June 3, 1980), convened by
Harold Garfinkel Seminar 4 (June 19, 1980), convened by Harold Garfinkel
Seminar 5 (July 1, 1980), convened by Harold Garfinkel Notes and References
to Part II
Harold Garfinkel (19172011) was a professor of sociology who spent most of his career at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA. He acquired an international reputation as the founder of ethnomethodology, the study of practical actions and reasoning in everyday life and specialized fields of action.
Michael Lynch is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University, USA, and Research Professor in the School of Media and Information, University of Siegen, Germany. He has authored and edited numerous books and has written more than a hundred peer-reviewed articles on practices in science, law, and other fields of action. From 2002 to 2012, he was editor of Social Studies of Science, a leading journal in the field of Science and Technology Studies.
