People are rational and they use practical reasoning, not formal logic, in their daily life. Discuss the perspective of ethnomethodology as a study of people's life.

1. Ethnomethodology contests the Positivists & Interpretivists in their use & reliance on formal logic, rationality & scientific method to analyze common people.

2. Ethnomethodology holds that people use common-sense - typified & organized stocks of TAKEN-FOR-GRANTED knowledge - to make sense of society.

(3) It also contends the structuralist school who believed that people merely responded to societal impulses. ↳ Garfinkel held that people were rational & not CULTURAL DOPES.

Methodology of ethnomethodologists

(1) Techniques utilized by ethnomethodologists ↳ Reflexivity: based on the idea that people are rational. People establish social order through their own thought - even where there was no order or objective reality. [diagram] Eg: Garfinkel conducted a psychologist study on college students. A lay-man was sat behind a curtain & asked to repond randomly 'YES-NO' responses to questions by students. The students were told that they were meeting a sociolog psychologist. At the end students were able to make sense of random responses & felt better (REFLEXIVITY in action) [/diagram]

↳ Indexicality: means that people categorize & INDEX their own & others' experiences & utilize it in their interactions with others - in negotiating a social order. [diagram] e.g. people interacting after COVID-19 sharing their indexed experiences of pandemic -> belief that world is better now [SOCIAL ORDER] [/diagram]

(2) strategies of Research

Thus, the ethnomethodologists apply study the ACCOUNTS of people to study their practice of REFLEXIVITY & INDEXICALITY. They utilize content analysis & word counting to study the accounts of people.

Critique of the perspective ① Is held as pure RELATIVISM by sociologists without any substance. ② Giddens contends that they 'seem to have no goals'. ③ Reliability & testability of their research is near impossible to obtain.