Terra sebv s acta mvsei sabesiensi s

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 

 

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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. 

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