Winner of the 2015 Distinguished Book Award presented by the Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis Section of the American Sociological Association

Winner of the 2015 Distinguished Book Award presented by the Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis Section of the American Sociological Association

Pioneered by Harold Garfinkel in the 1950s and '60s, ethnomethodology is a sociological approach rooted in phenomenology that is concerned with investigating the unspoken rules according to which people understand and create order in unstructured situations. Based on more than thirty years of teaching ethnomethodology, Kenneth Liberman—himself a student of Garfinkel's—provides an up-to-date introduction through a series of classroom-based studies. Each chapter focuses on a routine experience in which people collaborate to make sense of and coordinate an unscripted activity: organizing the coherence of the rules of a game, describing the objective taste of a cup of gourmet coffee, making sense of intercultural conversation, reading a vague map, and finding order amidst chaotic traffic flow. Detailed descriptions of the kinds of ironies that naturally arise in these and other ordinary affairs breathe new life into phenomenological theorizing and sociological understanding.

Acknowledgment
Foreword by Harold Garfinkel
Introduction

1. The Local Orderliness of Crossing Kincaid

2. Following Sketched Maps

3. The Reflexivity of Rules in Games

4. Communicating Meanings

5. Some Local Strategies for Surviving Intercultural Conversations

6. “There is a Gap” in the Tibetological Literature

7. Choreographing the Orderliness of Tibetan Philosophical Debates

8. The Phenomenology of Coffee Tasting: Lessons in Practical Objectivity

Conclusion: Respecifying the Husserl’s Phenomenology as Situated Worldly Inquiries

Notes
Bibliography
Index