Georg Simmel, despite being a founding father of sociology, is often excluded from the list of the discipline’s principal founders. This neglect of Simmel’s work was perpetuated in ethnomethodology even though, like ethnomethodology, Simmel’s work concerns the minute organization of everyday interaction. It can, therefore, be of considerable importance for ethnomethodological inquiries. A group of ethnomethodologists devoted two years to reviewing Simmel’s corpus to identify and reveal resources that are useful for contemporary sociologists at large. What we discovered exceeded our expectations, and this article discusses some of these conceptual tools and theoretical resources, including praxis as the object of sociological investigations, objectivation practices, membership as degrees of commonness-and-strangeness, and the individual-“unity” relationship. We also review connections between Simmel, Husserl, Garfinkel and other scholars. Both Simmel and Garfinkel were relentless in their refusal to replace the dynamic character of social life with static theoretical constructs. We argue that thinking through their theories together fruitfully impedes sociologists in pursuing dualistic reasoning and re-orients them towards phenomena and issues of great sociological import that have remained largely overlooked, or have receded from view, in current sociology. We conclude that Simmel’s notion of “purely sociological” forms is perfectly consonant with the motivating interest of ethnomethodological researchers, who might employ his conceptual insights to address the lived objectivity of social phenomena empirically. At the same time, this also shows how ethnomethodology is concerned with foundational sociological issues. And, finally, it illuminates Simmel’s textured heritage beyond set, traditional readings of sociological thought and its history.

The most fruitful use of Simmel’s seminal notion of Wechselwirkung may be the way he applied it to explain the generation of social formations that continuously facilitate interaction in society. Objective forms are necessary for people to share a life together, to think clearly, and to help them render their lives orderly; however, these forms necessarily become alien to those who develop them. Simmel sought to establish sociological inquiries that were based solidly upon a clear grasp of the dynamic and interconnected nature of life and that avoid reifying the phenomena they study. Ethnomethodology, with its attention to the ongoing, contingent details that compose ordinary life has followed a similar aim

Two seminal notions of Harold Garfinkel have endured despite some uncertainty and indeterminacy that accompany them: “autochthonous” and “tendentious”. These terms, which respect the dynamic and evolving nature of social interaction, describe how local parties discover, come upon, or develop coherent accounts that can assist them to lay hold of a local orderliness that is governing some mundane interaction. This paper illuminates these two notions, first theoretically and then empirically. Drawing upon the reflections of Garfinkel, Sacks, Schegloff, Mead, Husserl, Schutz, Gurwitsch, and others, the radical consequences of these two notions are elucidated and then applied to two perspicuous conversations where it is possible to witness autochthony and tendentiousness in action. This provides a clearer understanding of the importance that these features of social interaction can play in our everyday lives. The two illustrations reveal occasions where a local orderliness appears on its own, autochthonously, without requiring a heavy dose of deliberate conceptual control by parties.

Conversations among Italians often entail many-at-a-time rather than one-at-a-time speaking. This “talking together” is a deliberate aim of parties and a relevant aspect of their social life. It is a variant system for organizing ordinary talk. We describe how simultaneity is organized, how participants collaborate to maintain the orderliness of their interaction, and how, to do so, they listen to each other and continuously monitor talk for its content and its form. Following Simmel, we see this as a classic example of sociability, a play-form of sociation.

To sustain the energy of social occasions, Italians often engage in a form of casual conversation that prioritizes sociability and the production of cheerful and vociferous 'talking together'. This form of mundane talking (chiacchierare) features much simultaneous speaking and no competition for turns at talk, hence differs significantly from common conversational practices in many Anglo-American societies, demonstrating how the rules for conversation are far from universal. Conversational techniques used to accomplish talking together are described, including vocal gestures, repetition, prosody, rhythmic speaking, crescendos, and celebrations. Alongside voicing, listening is considered, and shown to be a critical component of sociable simultaneous talk.

When lay coffee drinkers taste the coffee in their cups, the flavors they note are shaped by the local interaction that provides the context for the occasion. Three methods they use for identifying flavors are examined and described: clustering, or how flavor descriptors are articulated in ensembles during a collaborative process; objectivating, the concerted work of transforming tentative suggestions into objective findings; and calibrating, how drinkers align their practice of tasting in order to conform with-and make meaningful-the objectivated accounts. These microsocial practices continuously intrude upon tasting, and a serendipitously developed local order guides their taste identification. This does not mean that there is no real taste, only that the taste never stands apart from the social contingencies and the discursive practices that are developed to describe it.

By using the context of explaining hermeneutics to a class of senior monks studying to be translators at a 600-year-old Tibetan monastic university, practical scope is given to many intriguing, profound, and intractable problems of doing translation. Central issues in the hermeneutics of translation are reviewed while specifying shortcomings of doing word-for-word translation. Concrete illustrations taken from Tibetan philosophical culture supply clarity to the suggestive but occasionally elusive thinking of Walter Benjamin in his "The Task of the Translator," augmented by the commentaries of Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, John Sallis, and others. Additional specification is achieved by identifying and describing fundamental aspects of the semiotics that are operative in translation work.

Se realiza la traducción del Capítulo Seis de El Programa de la Etbometodología por Harold Garfinkel.

Traffic's order exceeds what traffic signs and laws are capable of regulating, and local collaborative work by motorists resolves many problems. A videotaped study of traffic flow at a busy intersection controlled by four-way stop signs revealed that when strict adherence to rules and signs impedes traffic flow, regulations may be ignored. Some ethnomethods that drivers used to maintain efficient order are identified and described, and the contrast between ethnomethodological analysis and formal analyses of order is illustrated. After a review of sociological thinking about social solidarity, the notions of the “production” of order and “structure” in social affairs are given new specifications.

Linkages between the early interactionist sociology of Simmel and Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology are explored, using illustrations drawn from the author’s research on coffee tasting, the debates of Tibetan scholar-monks, and players of board games. Garfinkel’s inquiries into the neglected objectivity of social facts are specified with concrete illustrations, and a model is developed to guide the investigation of some seminal topics in ethnomethodology. Discounting rational choice theory, voluntarism, and individualist models, this study offers an account of the objectivation practices that parties routinely employ when they collaborate in setting up an orderliness for their local affairs.

espanolLa etnometodologia retrata los acontecimientos habituales y permite que conserven su naturaleza dinamica y colaborativa. Los etnometodologos identifican los metodos empleados por la gente para elaborar una objetividad practica que proporcione significado y orden a lo que ocurre localmente, examinando en detalle los aspectos locales de acontecimientos cotidianos para detallar como un sequito local de colaboradores cooperan para brindar inteligibilidad a su interaccion social, una tarea local que se produce naturalmente y que depende del caracter reflexivo de cualquier significado emergente. EnglishEthnomethodology portrays common events, allowing them to keep their dynamic and collaborative nature. Ethnomethodologists identify the methods that were employed to elaborate a practical objectivity that provides meaning and order to what occurs locally, examining closely the local aspects of every-day events with the objective of detailing the way in which a local entourage of collaborators cooperate to provide intelligibility to their social interaction, a local task that happens naturally and that depends on the reflexive nature of any emerging meaning.

Ethnomethodology portrays common events, allowing them to keep their dynamic and collaborative nature. Ethnomethodologists identify the methods that were employed to elaborate a practical objectivity that provides meaning and order to what occurs locally, examining closely the local aspects of every-day events with the objective of detailing the way in which a local entourage of collaborators cooperate to provide intelligibility to their social interaction, a local task that happens naturally and that depends on the reflexive nature of any emerging meaning.