scholarly journals The Influence of Felix Kaufmann’s Methodology on Harold Garfinkel’s Ethnomethodology

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-44
Author(s):  
Martyn Hammersley

This paper examines the “methodology,” or philosophy of social science, developed by Felix Kaufmann in the second quarter of the 20th century, with the aim of determining its influence on the early work of the sociologist Harold Garfinkel. Kaufmann’s two methodology books are discussed, one written before, the other after, his migration from Austria to the United States. It is argued that Garfinkel took over Kaufmann’s conception of scientific practice: as a set of procedural rules or methods that determine whether or not new propositions will be accepted into the corpus of scientific knowledge, and whether previously accepted propositions should be retained or abandoned. However, Garfinkel deployed this methodology not so much as a model for sociological inquiry, but rather for the processes by which the lifeworld is constituted—an area of investigation that is epistemologically prior to the focus of most social science, and one which had been opened up in the writings of Edmund Husserl and (especially) Alfred Schutz. It is suggested that Kaufmann’s “methodology” was an important complement to the work of these other two philosophers in their influence on Garfinkel.

2001 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-109
Author(s):  
Juliane Hammer

How do Arab travelers view the US? Much has been written about how westerntravelers and scholars have seen and described the Orient, thereby not onlycreating an image but also transforming the reality of it. Looking at this anthologyone is reminded of Said's book Orienta/ism and inspired to ask whether asimilar process takes place in reverse. Not in terms of change but certainly increating an image of the unfamiliar as the other simultaneously admired andrejected.Kamal Abdel-Malek has collected and edited texts of twenty-seven Arab visitorsto the United States. Some came as students, others as accomplished scholars orcurious visitors. Each text is an excerpt of a longer text, usually a book, and allbooks were originally published in Arabic and have not been translated intoEnglish before. Also, as Abdel-Malek points out in his preface, the collectionrepresents most of the travel literature he was able to locate in Arabic and iscompleted by a list of all Arabic sources. Thus, this collection allows the readeraccess to a genre of Arabic literature otherwise not available.The travel accounts are organized in five sections and chronologically by year ofpublication within each section.The ftrst section is titled America in the Eyes of a Nineteenth-Century Amb andcontains one account of an Arab traveler to the US published in I 895. The authorpresents the reader with a comparison of what Arabs and Americans findimportant and how these preferences are diametrically opposed in most cases.In the second section Abdel-Malek has gathered a variety of accounts under thetitle The Making of an Image: America as the Unchanged Other, Ame1ica as theSeductive Female. The most interesting piece of this section is probably that ofSayyid Qutb, who studied in the US between 1948 and 1950 and published hisaccount under the title The America I have seen. Much of what he noted about theUS ln the first half of the 20th century, in my opinion, still holds true today. Qutbconcludes: "All that requires mind power and muscle are where American geniusshines, and all that requires spirit and emotion are where American naivete andprimitiveness become apparent .... All this does not mean that Americans are anation devoid of virtue, or else, what would have enabled them to live? Rather, itmeans that America's virtues are the virtues of production and organization, andnot those of human and social morals." (p. 26f.) ...


2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirk Hazen ◽  
Sarah Hamilton ◽  
Sarah Vacovsky

The varieties of English in the United States’ Appalachian region have undergone changes throughout the 20th century. This paper examines a change to one of the more stereotyped of vernacular dialect features, the use of them in a demonstrative determiner construction: them apples are the best. Although this dialect feature is found in English varieties around the world, this study is the first to take up a quantitative assessment of it as a sociolinguistic variable. In this paper, we discuss the historical background for demonstrative them, its current distribution in a corpus of modern Appalachian speech, and its relations to the other modern plural demonstratives, these and those. The data reveal that them functions primarily as an alternate to those, but the use of demonstrative them is sharply in decline across apparent time. As a stereotype of Appalachian speech, demonstrative them still remains, but younger Appalachian speakers have largely abandoned this stigmatized form.


Author(s):  
Alex Sackey-Ansah

The United States has dealt with issues on immigration for over a century. The largest wave of immigration before the late 20th century began in the 1870s and peaked in 1910 (Foley & Hoge, 2007). In the past few decades, the United States has dealt overwhelmingly with the issue of undocumented immigrants. This challenge has led to different approaches to immigration reform and to help regulate the influx of immigrants across its borders. Generally, however, there have been two major sets of voices indicative of the opinion of the American populace. One group has called for tighter immigration rules to prevent the easy entry of undocumented immigrants who have been branded as criminals. The other group has taken a moral and ethical stance to permit the entry of immigrants and to formulate a process for their legal residency. These two opposing views have triggered an ongoing discussion on undocumented immigrants.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (16) ◽  
pp. 15-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henriette W. Langdon ◽  
Terry Irvine Saenz

The number of English Language Learners (ELL) is increasing in all regions of the United States. Although the majority (71%) speak Spanish as their first language, the other 29% may speak one of as many as 100 or more different languages. In spite of an increasing number of speech-language pathologists (SLPs) who can provide bilingual services, the likelihood of a match between a given student's primary language and an SLP's is rather minimal. The second best option is to work with a trained language interpreter in the student's language. However, very frequently, this interpreter may be bilingual but not trained to do the job.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 237
Author(s):  
Laith Mzahim Khudair Kazem

The armed violence of many radical Islamic movements is one of the most important means to achieve the goals and objectives of these movements. These movements have legitimized and legitimized these violent practices and constructed justification ideologies in order to justify their use for them both at home against governments or against the other Religiously, intellectually and even culturally, or abroad against countries that call them the term "unbelievers", especially the United States of America.


Author(s):  
Jonathan Holslag

The chapter argues that India has a strong interest to balance China and that the two Asian giants will not be able grow together without conflict. However, India will not be able to balance China’s rise. The chapter argues that India remains stuck between nonalignment and nonperformance. On the one hand, it resists the prospect of a new coalition that balances China from the maritime fringes of Eurasia, especially if that coalition is led by the United States. On the other hand, it has failed to strengthen its own capabilities. Its military power lags behind China’s, its efforts to reach out to both East and Central Asia have ended in disappointment, and its economic reforms have gone nowhere. As a result of that economic underachievement, India finds itself also torn between emotional nationalism and paralyzing political fragmentation, which, in turn, will further complicate its role as a regional power.


Author(s):  
Celine Parreñas Shimizu

Transnational films representing intimacy and inequality disrupt and disgust Western spectators. When wounded bodies within poverty entangle with healthy wealthy bodies in sex, romance and care, fear and hatred combine with desire and fetishism. Works from the Philippines, South Korea, and independents from the United States and France may not be made for the West and may not make use of Hollywood traditions. Rather, they demand recognition for the knowledge they produce beyond our existing frames. They challenge us to go beyond passive consumption, or introspection of ourselves as spectators, for they represent new ways of world-making we cannot unsee, unhear, or unfeel. The spectator is redirected to go beyond the rapture of consuming the other to the rupture that arises from witnessing pain and suffering. Self-displacement is what proximity to intimate inequality in cinema ultimately compels and demands so as to establish an ethical way of relating to others. In undoing the spectator, the voice of the transnational filmmaker emerges. Not only do we need to listen to filmmakers from outside Hollywood who unflinchingly engage the inexpressibility of difference, we need to make room for critics and theorists who prioritize the subjectivities of others. When the demographics of filmmakers and film scholars are not as diverse as its spectators, films narrow our worldviews. To recognize our culpability in the denigration of others unleashes the power of cinema. The unbearability of stories we don’t want to watch and don’t want to feel must be borne.


Author(s):  
M. John Plodinec

Abstract Over the last decade, communities have become increasingly aware of the risks they face. They are threatened by natural disasters, which may be exacerbated by climate change and the movement of land masses. Growing globalization has made a pandemic due to the rapid spread of highly infectious diseases ever more likely. Societal discord breeds its own threats, not the least of which is the spread of radical ideologies giving rise to terrorism. The accelerating rate of technological change has bred its own social and economic risks. This widening spectrum of risk poses a difficult question to every community – how resilient will the community be to the extreme events it faces. In this paper, we present a new approach to answering that question. It is based on the stress testing of financial institutions required by regulators in the United States and elsewhere. It generalizes stress testing by expanding the concept of “capital” beyond finance to include the other “capitals” (e.g., human, social) possessed by a community. Through use of this approach, communities can determine which investments of its capitals are most likely to improve its resilience. We provide an example of using the approach, and discuss its potential benefits.


Author(s):  
SABURO OKITA

The Asia-Pacific countries achieved rapid economic growth with the flying-goose model in the 1980s, growth buttressed by export-oriented development strategies and the policy culture in these countries. While Japan and the other Asia-Pacific countries still have strong growth potential, many problems remain, including trade imbalances with the United States and the rise of protectionism there, the Asia-Pacific economies' vulnerability, and the need to consolidate the infrastructure for growth. It is imperative that Japan contribute to the development of the region by responding effectively to these issues and that it strengthen the international trading arrangements by promoting Asia-Pacific cooperation premised on openness. Given the region's great internal diversity, Asia-Pacific economic cooperation can well serve as a model for international economic coordination.


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