By the late 1960s, Harold Garfinkel had coined the term “ethnomethodology” as a neologism for the field of study, the study of “people’s methods,” that his seminal collection of pioneering studies – Studies in Ethnomethodology (Garfinkel 1967) – was to make public. Up to the present day, the field has developed, both diversifying and deepening its research interests.

The Anthem Companion to Harold Garfinkel brings together leading scholars and upcoming researchers in contemporary ethnomethodology to bring out the experimental character of Garfinkel’s legacy in the social sciences and beyond. Therefore, the Companion takes its cue from Garfinkel’s noted “breaching experiments,” enabling the reflexive investigation of “trust conditions” in situ, and asks how this research interest has been productively pursued and distinctively rearticulated, both within and beyond Garfinkel’s oeuvre. Whilst Garfinkel’s experimental legacy is often acknowledged, no systematic introduction to its distinctive outlook, tension-riddled diversification, and heuristic interest(s) is available to date. The Anthem Companion to Harold Garfinkel both fills and reflects upon that “gap in the literature,” thereby articulating ethnomethodology’s experimental outlook, if not recasting its current research directions. The Editors’ Introduction charts the experimental outlook of ethnomethodology, spanning Garfinkel’s early experiments with “trust” and his later experimental interventions (e.g., via “tutorial problems”). The Companion’s Contributions range from exegetical to experimental studies and spell out Garfinkel’s experimental legacy in depth and detail, whilst showcasing its multifaceted development in and beyond ethnomethodology.

Philippe Sormani is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He is the author of Respecifying Lab Ethnography: An Ethnomethodological Study of Experimental Physics.

Dirk vom Lehn is Professor of Organisation and Practice at King’s Business School, King’s College London, UK. He is the author of Harold Garfinkel: The Creation and Development of Ethnomethodology.

Anthem Companions to Sociology

Editors’ Introduction; “‘Normalizing Garfinkel’? From ‘Experiment’ to Exegesis and Back Again,” by Philippe Sormani (University of Lausanne) and Dirk vom Lehn (Kings’ College, London); Part I: Exegesis; Chapter 1 – “How to Become an Ethnomethodologist,” by Andrea Ploder (Konstanz); Chapter 2 – “Garfinkel’s Praxiological Experiments,” by Michael Lynch (Cornell); Part II: Experiments; Chapter 3 – “Lay and Professional Competencies,” by Stacy L. Burns (Loyola Marymount); Chapter 4 – “Probing ‘Trust Conditions’ in Interaction,” by D. vom Lehn (King’s College); Chapter 5 – “Galileo’s Pendulum,” by Dušan I. Bjelić (University of Southern Maine); Chapter 6 – “A Natural Breaching Experiment?” by L. Mondada and H. Svensson (Basel); Chapter 7 – “From Agnes to Drag Kings: Towards Queer Ethno,” by Luca Greco (Nancy); Chapter 8 – “Troubling Technology,” by Keiichi Yamazaki and Yusuke Arano (Tokyo); Chapter 9 – “In Light of Diagnostic Failure,” by Jonas Ivarsson (Gothenburg); Part III: Implications; Chapter 10 – “Tutorial Problems and Embodied Practices,” by Clemens Eisenmann (Siegen) and Anne Warfield Rawls (Bentley and Siegen); Chapter 11 – “Experimenting with the Archive?” by Yaël Kreplak (EHESS, Paris) et al.; Postface: “Experiments: What Are We Talking About? For a Defense of ‘Conceptual Investigations’,” by Wes Sharrock (University of Manchester)