Ethnomethodological and Ethnographic Research Analysis
Question: Compare and contrast the purpose of ethnomethodological and ethnographic research analysis.
Please use the following as one of the sources: The Practice of Research in Criminology and Criminal Justice
Ronet D. Bachman & Russell K. Schutt, 2020
SAGE
ISBN.13: 978-1-544-33912-2
Purpose of Ethnomethodological and Ethnographic Research Analysis.
Ethnographic research is when the analysis happens throughout a particular research project. It is usually tightly connected with interpretation. Therefore, while the research process is taking place, the empirical data collected by the researcher will Help them in continuously analyzing, interpreting, and learning. Ethnomethodology is a research method usually devoted to learning the practical methods of common sense reasoning normally used by the society members in daily activities. In other words, ethnomethodology happens to be the study of social order production in and through social interaction processes. It gives an alternative to mainstream sociological approaches.
There are various comparisons made between ethnographic and ethnomethodological research analysis. Ethnography is basically associated with the prolonged study of a group of individuals. As stated above, it generally involves immersion and participation in their daily activities while trying to discover who they are or rather who they think they are. They also try to discover what they are doing, and in the end, why they are doing it. Ethnography most likely involves various methodologies in accomplishing that. On the other hand, ethnomethodology involves studying group members’ activities in discovering how they view or make sense of their environment or surroundings.
It is the study of how a group of individuals tries to give sense to their daily activities and accomplish it. Unlike ethnography, ethnomethodology is not so much concerned with what the people are doing but rather how they make sense of their surroundings (Bachman & Schutt, 2013). Both ethnography and ethnomethodology are methods of research that are normally found in the sociological and anthropological fields of study. Generally, ethnomethodology is a subdivision of sociology that focuses on how human beings construct their social orders in different societies, while ethnography is a research method.
Ethnomethodology method can be used when undertaking ethnography because ethnography is the study of the shared social relations and cultural constructions found in people. As mentioned earlier, it is how people build and understand their world, while ethnomethodology is the approach used to understand the culture by analyzing how people use various languages to divide up and create a sense of their world. The people who conduct ethnomethodology are known as ethnomethodologists. They look at how people’s utterances, conversations, and gestures of everyday Help them in constructing their world.
A perfect example of ethnomethodology is recording the homeless people in a large town or city discussing the advantages and disadvantages of various places where they could spend their nights. Listening to these people talk about the different issues concerned in different places with each other gives the ethnographer a room to understand how they present their world to each other in each individual’s words, how they create their world and come up with words in a meaningful way, without inserting terminologies that are not known to them on their world. Ethnography involves the study of a group of people in a long winding text full of anecdotes and references, while ethnomethodology is how a person studies that group using their methods.
In conclusion, ethnography is a research method that uses an observational approach that examines work as it is being exercised in a very naturalistic setting. At the same time, ethnomethodology is a method of research that uses an analytical approach that provides precedence to the actors their ways of work construction rather than trying to make an analysis by the use of some theoretical framework. The only similarity involved is that both are methods of research found in sociology and anthropological fields of study. Ethnology is broader in terminology, while ethnography is limited to accounts that are specific to a particular society or people.
Reference
Bachman, R., & Schutt, R. K. (2013). The practice of research in criminology and criminal justice. Sage.
McCallum, K., & Wasielewski, M. (2020). Ethnographic and Ethnomethodological Approaches to Research in Science Education. In Research in Science Education (pp. 287-307). Springer.
Silverman, D. (2020). Qualitative research: Issues of theory, method and practice. Sage.
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
