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Meaning, Context and Situation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Bill McSweeney
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European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , June 1973 , pp. 137 - 153
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Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1973

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References

(1) Weber, Max, The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation (Glencoe, Free Press, 1964), p. 88Google Scholar.

(2) Parsons, Talcott, Structure of Social Action (Glencoe, Free Press, 1968), p. 731Google Scholar.

(3) Ibid.p. 736.

(4) Parsons, T., Psychoanalysis and Social Structure, in Essays in Sociological Theory (Glencoe, Free Press, 1964)Google Scholar; Personality as a System of Action, in Toward a General Theory of Action (New York, Harper, 1962)Google Scholar.

(5) Mead, George H., Mind, Self and Society (Chicago, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1970). PP. 174ffGoogle Scholar.

(6) A blow-by-blow account of the defects of the “conventional research instruments” seems unnecessary, given the—by now—statutory censure passed on them by writers of all shades of interactionism, including—and above all—ethnomethodology.

(7) Cicourel, Aaron, Method and Measurement (London, Collier-Macmillan, 1964), P. 222Google Scholar.

(8) Tillich, Paul, Systematic Theology (Welwyn, Nisbet, 1957), Vol. II, p. 8Google Scholar; The Courage To Be (London, Fontana, 1962), pp. 176–177Google Scholar. Tillich's disciples, it seems to me, have pressed his ideas towards an inclusive, non-specific conception of God which makes faith redundant but mystifies the secular as a bulwark against atheism. This Honest-to-God stance, adopted for example by John T. Robinson and Gregory Baum, distorts Tillich's work and merit his censure on beliefs which transform “the inaccessibility of God into the sublimity of his moral commands”. See The Shaking of the Foundations (London, Penguin, 1962), p. 95Google Scholar.

(9) Schutz, Alfred, Collected Papers (The Hague, Nijhoff, 1967), Vol. I, p. 59Google Scholar.

(10) Ibid. p. 60.

(11) Douglas, Jack D., Understanding Everyday Life, in Douglas, (ed.), Understanding Everyday Life (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971)Google Scholar.

(12) Silverman, D., Some Neglected Questions About Social Reality, in Filmer, Paul et al. , New Directions in Sociological Theory (London, Collier Macmillan, 1972), p. 82Google Scholar.

(13) Garfinkel, Harold, Studies in Ethnomethodology (New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, 1967), p. 11Google Scholar.

(14) Notably the papers by Silverman and Filmer, op. cit., and several papers in Douglas, op. cit. Readers of Proceedings of the Purdue Symposium on Ethnomethodology (Hill, R. J. and Crittendon, K. S. (eds), Purdue Research Foundation, 1968)Google Scholar and participants at the Edinburgh University Conference on Ethnomethodology (June 1972), cannot have failed to be impressed by the verbal, intellectual, and indeed social chasm separating ethnomethodologists from the rest of the sociological world.

(15) Silverman, Introductory Comments, in Filmer, et al. , op. cit. p. 3Google Scholar.

(16) Hill and Crittendon, op. cit.

(17) Blum, Alan, Theorising, in Douglas, , op. cit. p. 305Google Scholar.

(18) Silverman, , Some Neglected Questions… op. cit. p. 81Google Scholar.

(19) H. Garfinkel and H. Sacks, On Formal Structures of Practical Actions, in McKinney, J. C. and Tiryakian, E. A. (eds), Theoretical Sociology (New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1970)Google Scholar; Garfinkel, , op. cit. (1967), pp. 10ffGoogle Scholar.

(20) Thos. P. Wilson, Normative and Interpretive Paradigms in Sociology, in Douglas, , op. cit. p. 69Google Scholar.

(21) Garfinkel, , op. cit. (1967), pp. 66ffGoogle Scholar.

(22) Coulter, Jeff, Decontextualised Meanings: Current Approaches to Verstehende Investigations, Sociological Review, III (1971), 301–323CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(23) For example, Denzin's misguided attempt to reconcile ethnomethodology with symbolic interactionism has been justly criticised by D. H. Zimmerman and D. Lawrence Wieder in their paper in Douglas, op. cit.; N. Denzin, ibid.

(24) Coulter, , op. cit. p. 309Google Scholar.

(25) Ibid. p. 311 (Coulter's italics).

(26) Garfinkel, , op. cit. (1967), p. 31.Google Scholar

(27) See footnote 39 below.

(28) Coulter, , op. cit. p. 311Google Scholar.

(29) Lindsey Churchill has grouped ethnomethodologists in this manner. His paper, Ethnomethodology and Measurement, in Social Forces, L (1971), 182–191Google Scholar, is an attempt, under the auspices of Prof. Blalock, to reconcile ethnomethodology with quantitative research methods. As such, it seems rather like the official church trying to integrate sectarian heresy by redefining it and placing it in an academic monastery.

(30) D. Lawrence Wieder, On Meaning by Rule, in Douglas, , op. cit. pp. 334–335Google Scholar.

(31) Garfinkel, and Sacks, , op. cit. p. 341Google Scholar.

(32) Ibid. pp. 340, 349.

(33) P. Filmer, On Harold Garfinkel's Ethnomethodology, in Filmer, et al. , op. cit. 210–211Google Scholar.

(34) Ibid. p. 213.

(35) See Wieder, op. cit. and Coulter, , op. cit. p. 313Google Scholar.

(36) Silverman, Some Neglected Questions About Social Reality, in Filmer, et al. , op. cit. p. 77Google Scholar.

(37) Blum, op. cit.

(38) Urmson, J. O. (ed.), The Concise Encyclopaedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers (London, Hutchinson, 1960)Google Scholar.

(39) Coulter, (op.cit.) has a strange passage on p. 312Google Scholar in which he makes a veiled insinuation of nominalism against Weber, Cicourel and Blumer and implies that his own position corrects this! This is a sleigh-of-hand or a misunderstanding. Nominalism is not avoided by exchanging “purely capricious idiosyncracies” for “customary convention” as organising principles. The latter is merely a less vulgar variety than the former.

(40) Coulter, , op. cit. p. 313Google Scholar; Wieder, , op. cit. p. 131Google Scholar.

(41) Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford, Blackwell, 1967), Part I, p. 124Google Scholar.

(42) Gellner, Ernest, Words and Things (London, Penguin, 1968)Google Scholar.

(43) Ibid. pp. 53 ff.

(44) Ibid. p. 58.

(45) Ibid. p. 220. I am indebted to Prof. Gellner for clarification of this section.

(46) Wieder, , op. cit. p. 131Google Scholar.

(47) A point made a long time ago by Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle.

(48) See Schutz, op. cit.: Commonsense and Scientific Interpretation and Conceptand Theory Formation.

(49) Turner, R. H., Role-Taking: process versus conformity, in Rose, Arnold M. (ed.), Human Behaviour and Social Processes (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962)Google Scholar.

(50) Bernstein, Basil, Class, Codes and Control (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the review of Bernstein's work by Mary Douglas in The Listener, 23.3.1972.

(51) Mills, C. Wright, Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive, American Sociological Review, V (1940), 439–452Google Scholar.

(52) Weber, Max, The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation (Glencoe, Free Press, 1964), p. 98Google Scholar.

(53) Mills, , op. cit. p. 442Google Scholar.

(54) Ibid. p. 452.

(55) Mills, , op. cit. p. 448Google Scholar.

(56) Wrong, Dennis, The Over-Socialised Conception of Man, ASR, XXVI (1961), 184–193Google Scholar.

(57) Gouldner, Alvin, The Sociologist as Partisan: Sociology and the Welfare State, The American Sociologist, (1968), 103–116Google Scholar.

(58) Robertson, Roland, The Sociology of Religion: problems and desiderata, Religion (1971), 109–126Google Scholar; Dreitzel, Hans Peter (ed.), Recent Sociology (New York, Macmillan, 1970), No 2Google Scholar, ‘Introduction’.

* An earlier draft of this paper was given at a staff/graduate seminar at the University of York. I acknowledge the help of comments. I am particularly indebted to Professor Ernest Gellner of the LSE for his helpful criticism.

(59) See Berger, P. L. and Luckmann, T., The Social Construction of Reality (London, Allen Lane, 1966)Google Scholar; also the essays by Berger, Kellner and Emerson in Dreitzel, op. cit.

(60) Frederick, Copleston S. J., A History of Philosophy (New York, Image Books, 1965), Vol. VII, Part IIGoogle Scholar.

(62) Gellner, , op. cit. p. 220Google Scholar.