Ethnomethodology

. At this point, it is useful to give a brief explanation of ethnomethodology as a key principle influencing Smith’s work.

Ethnomethodology was founded by Harold Garfinkel and is the term used to study the methods people use to make sense of their everyday world.

1

At first glance there are similarities between Smith’s work and the work of Bourdieu. They are both fundamentally influenced by similar thinkers, both question and problematise the social relations within which sociology has developed and is practised, and both insist on the researchers’ position being subject to critical analysis (Widerberg 2008). However, Bourdieu’s notion of field is that of “a separate social universe having its own laws of functioning independent of those of politics and the economy (1993:162). Although the concept of ‘field’ is potentially useful for thinking about violence prevention and its organisation, the previous quote suggests field comprises a theoretical concept borne from the social relations within definite conditions, and thus reflects social relations. To avoid theoretical confusion, this thesis does not use this concept, instead referring to the organisation of ‘domestic violence’ as sector or area.

Garfinkel was heavily influenced by Alfred Schütz and his ideas of phenomenological research, and was interested in the minutiae of everyday life, as opposed to ‘great events’. For Garfinkel, there was no society or social order over and above people, and neither did society consist of phenomenon to be studied. People were not cultural dopes with their behaviour subject to the dictates of social facts, but rather they made sense of their own everyday lives via language and words. Garfinkel argued that words are not merely symbols but are used as active devices to aid people to create (and resist) their own social world. Classical sociology, especially in the Durkheimian tradition, tends to investigate ‘social facts’; however Garfinkel turned this tradition on its head by investigating how facts are accomplished (ten Have 2004).

Central to ethnomethodology is the concept of ‘indexicality’: that is the different situated and specific perspectives that people employ, through their own biography and experience when making sense of events and situations. Everyday life is based on shared norms, values and assumptions, which can be exposed when challenged. For example, Durkheim investigated suicide rates through different types and levels of social integration; however, ethnomethodology is more interested in how sudden deaths are constituted as suicides, or how any set of statistics are used to explain social phenomenon or social facts (ten Have 2004). Because talk is ‘active’, some social research scholars, such as Bryman (2004), also argue that ethnomethodology constitutes the theoretical foundations of conversation analysis methods. Indeed, a similar approach can be seen in Smith’s 1978 article ‘K is Mentally Ill’ the Anatomy of a Factual Account. Here Smith analyses an interview that describes how K’s friends came to define her as mentally ill, and identifies within the interview dialogue the organising text, which includes instructions for interpretation and also the authorization of its facticity.

All the above influences constitute a wealth of social theory from key sociological thinkers, and neither time nor space allow for a detailed analysis of them all. What is important to know is that Smith’s IE is a culmination of her life’s work and contains varying developments and aspects of her thinking. For the purposes of this research, I am particularly interested in identifying ideological methods of reasoning, the reconceptualisation of social relations

and ‘ideology in practice’: in other words, ideologies that stand over and above people’s practices, the ways in which it can then be expressed through discourses, how it is worked into consciousness, and then how it is practiced. Thus, I have been selective in the aspects of Smith’s influences that I want to expand on and have limited them to those that directly relate to this research. As such, the next section discusses in more detail ideology, discourse, Marx’s materialist method of investigation, and the way in which Smith utilises them in her thinking.

2.4 Ideology

For the purposes of this research, and in order to identify ideologies in practice, it is necessary to define the way in which I understand ideology. The terms ‘ideology’ and ‘discourse’ are often understood synonymously when social theorists attempt to describe the way the social world operates. In particular, ‘ideology’ and ‘discourse’ can be, and often are, used interchangeably. Added to this, ‘ideology’ itself is a concept subject to major contention within the social sciences. There exists a huge body of social theory and knowledge that has contributed to the conceptualisation and critique of ideology both previous to Marx and subsequently. In order to make sense of the confusions surrounding these terms, this section sketches out a brief history of ‘ideology’, and sets out some contemporary critiques. It then discusses how Smith employs ideology in concrete ways, as well as how she synthesises Foucault’s work on objectification and discourse.