The Possibilities of Ethnomethodology
in Modern Art Studies
193
specific social and cultural practices. There are a large number of general-
theoretical monographs in the field of ethnomethodology, including: G.
Psathas, Interaction Competence,
20
P. Have and G. Psathas, Situated Order: Studies
in the Social Organisation of Talk and Embodied Activities,
21
S. Hester and P.
Eglin,
Culture in Action: Studies in Membership Categorisation Analysis,
22
P.
Jalbert,
Media Studies: Ethnomethodological Approaches
23
and E. Livingstone,
Ethnographies of Reason.
24
The International Institute for Ethnomethodology
and Conversation
Analysis, founded in 1989, is an example of the disciplinary organisation of
ethnomethodology as a academic direction. The genesis of the organisation
dates back to 1975 when lectures were given by H. Garfinkel at Boston
University as part of the summer school programme. This was the first
international conference on ethnomethodology. M. Atkinson, R. Watson, C.
Goodwin and M. Fishman took part in the conference. The results of the
studies presented there were published in the collection Everyday Language:
Studies in Ethnomethodology.
25
In 1987, an International consortium of scholars
and academic educational
institutions was convened, with the intention of
furthering the acceptance of ethnomethodology through the development
of academic questions and new educational programmes. The establishment
of the journal Mundane Behaviour, Mind and Society represented unifying
beginning.
The theoretical assumptions of ethnomethodology in Russian
academia are based on the ideas of V. Voloshinov (1895-1936) regarding
language interaction, P. Medvedev (1891-1938) and M. Bakhtin (1895-1975).
These researchers, building on the phenomenological theories of Husserl
and Schyuts, further developed the socio-anthropological approach,
specifically bringing about a shift of accent from the cognition of objective
reality to the cognition of an individual’s subjectivity, his reactions to
everyday life. The philosophy of language in these scholars’ works is based
on the premise that language is real only in an actual dialogue, in which the
statements are loaded with meaning and are addressed to interlocutors.
In Russia, the term ethnomethodology was used for the first time by
the Russian academic L. G. Ionin in his work Understanding Sociology (1979).
A. P. Ogurtsov, in the work Ethnomethodology and Ethnographic Research of
Science
26
(1988), describes the advantages of applying the methods of
20
Psathas 1990.
21
Ten Have, Psathas 1995.
22
Hester 1997.
23
Jalbert 1999.
24
Livingstone 2008.
25
Atkinson 1981, p. 257-286.
26
Ogurtsov 1988, p. 211-216.
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L. I. Nekhvyadovich
194
qualitative description, which include observation, hermeneutic
interpretation of the senses and field interviews, as well as stressing the
importance of the science of ethnography for humanitarian knowledge.
Ethnocultural processes at the turn of the 20
th
-21
st
centuries caused a
revision in thinking around the phenomenon of ethnicity in culture, having
brought about theoretical developments in the field of ethnomethodology.
Ethnomethodology is described as a preliminary academic direction of
activity in the works of scholars of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the
Russian Research Studies Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage, and the
Centre of Fundamental Sociology of NRU HSE.
27
Ethnomethodology: Problems,
Approaches, Concepts is an annual thematic journal in which the results of
studies of Russian scholars in this field are presented. The distinct
characteristics of Russian understanding of ethnomethodology are caused
by the wide range of ethnic problematics, and the formation of new
interdisciplinary academic directions such as ethnopsychology, ethnic and
cultural studies, ethnolinguistics, ethnopolitical-science and
ethnopedagogics. Ethnomethodology acts as a theoretical basis,
transforming the tools of ethnographic research into a general methodology
of the humanities for the study of how everyday human interaction is
formed and realised.
The characteristics of ethnomethodology in the domestic studies of
this period occur in three interconnected aspects:
- Methodological aspect - methodology providing the object, subject,
purpose and characteristics of the main categories;
- Theoretical aspect - theories, conceptions, branches, schools of
sciences and directions;
- Historical aspect - the sequence and logic of the development of
ethnomethodology as an academic discipline (origin, formation,
institutionalisation, current state and prospects of development).
L. G. Ionin’s work Sotsiologiya kak non-fiction outlines the essential
characteristics of ethnomethodology:
- Ethnomethods are the methods applied by ordinary people to have
“things” be described, conceivable and reasonable and these methods
themselves represent the descriptions by means of which “things” are
constituted.
- The definition of non-fiction coincides with the
ethnomethodologists’ definition of the subject of their studies: the practical
actions of people in everyday life are accounts or representations of things,
represented by the authors of accounts as facts.
27
NRU HSE - the National Research University’s Higher School of Economics, Moscow,
Russia.
www.cclbsebes.ro/muzeul-municipal-ioan-raica.html / www.cimec.ro