Directions in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis
About the Book Series
Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis are cognate approaches to the study of social action that together comprise a major perspective within the contemporary human sciences. Ethnomethodology focuses upon the production of situated and ordered social action of all kinds, whilst Conversation Analysis has a more specific focus on the production and organisation of talk-in-interaction. Of course, given that so much social action is conducted in and through talk, there are substantive as well theoretical continuities between the two approaches. Focusing on social activities as situated human productions, these approaches seek to analyse the intelligibility and accountability of social activities ‘from within’ those activities themselves, using methods that can be analysed and described. Such methods amount to aptitudes, skills, knowledge and competencies that members of society use, rely upon and take for granted in conducting their affairs across the whole range of social life.
As a result of the methodological rewards consequent upon their unique analytic approach and attention to the detailed orderliness of social life, Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis have ramified across a wide range of human science disciplines throughout the world, including anthropology, social psychology, linguistics, communication studies and social studies of science and technology.
This series is dedicated to publishing the latest work in these two fields, including research monographs, edited collections and theoretical treatises. As such, its volumes are essential reading for those concerned with the study of human conduct and aptitudes, the (re)production of social orderliness and the methods and aspirations of the social sciences.
Follow the link below for the series ‘freebook’ of Taylor & Francis / Routledge Content, Ethnomethodological and Conversation Analytic Studies of Race and Racism in Everyday Interaction: https://www.routledge.com/go/black-lives-matter-an-ethnomethodology-freebook
Harvey Sacks and Ethnomethodology: The Prospect of an Alternate and Adequate Sociology
1st Edition
By Graham Button
October 09, 2025
Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis have made major inroads into the disciplines that make up the social sciences. Although commonly run together under the title of EMCA, what their relationship is to one another remains as elusive as the relationship between their respective founders, ...
Aerial Targeting and the Laws of War: A Socio-Legal Study of the Achievement of Compliance
1st Edition
By Alexander P. Holder
September 30, 2025
A ground-breaking socio-legal investigation of the in-situ legal considerations involved in targeting and the use of force, Aerial Targeting and the Laws of War develops a new kind of evidence base for international action relating to the protection of civilians. Investigating the materials ...
Instructed and Instructive Actions: The Situated Production, Reproduction, and Subversion of Social Order
1st Edition
Edited
By Michael Lynch, Oskar Lindwall
May 06, 2025
The contributors to this volume take up the theme of instructed and instructive actions. Harold Garfinkel, the founder of ethnomethodology, initiated the study of instructed actions as a way to elucidate the embodied production of social order in real time. Studies of instructions and the actions ...
Medical and Healthcare Interactions: Members' Competence and Socialization
1st Edition
Edited
By Sara Keel
May 06, 2025
Presenting a series of empirical studies by scholars working with approaches from ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, Medical and Healthcare Interactions studies real-life work and training encounters among medical and healthcare professionals and trainees or between professionals and ...
The Practical Accomplishment of Everyday Activities Without Sight
1st Edition
Edited
By Brian L. Due
May 06, 2025
This book is about the everyday life of people with visual impairment or blindness. Using video ethnographic methods and ethnomethodological conversation analysis, it unpacks the practical accomplishments of everyday activities such as navigating in public space, identifying objects and obstacles, ...
The Body of Knowledge: Fieldwork and Conceptualization in Social Inquiry
1st Edition
By Kornelia Engert
September 25, 2023
This book presents a vivid and close-up view of social science researchers engaged in fieldwork, in discussions with colleagues, and in writing. Adopting an ethnographic approach inspired by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, the author pursues a praxeological analysis of social inquiry in...
Ethnomethodology, Conversation Analysis and Constructive Analysis: On Formal Structures of Practical Action
1st Edition
By Graham Button, Michael Lynch, W.W. Sharrock
September 23, 2022
This book revisits the arguments by which Harvey Sacks and Harold Garfinkel opposed the widespread attempt in the social sciences to construct disciplinary theories and methods in place of common-sense knowledge of human action, and proposed instead an alternative that would investigate the ...
On Sacks: Methodology, Materials, and Inspirations
1st Edition
Edited
By Robin James Smith, Richard Fitzgerald, William Housley
August 01, 2022
This book is devoted to the reintroduction of the remarkable approach to sociological inquiry developed by Harvey Sacks. Sacks’s original analyses – concerned with the lived detail of action and language-in-interaction, discoverable in members’ actual activities – demonstrated a means of doing ...
Harold Garfinkel: Studies of Work in the Sciences
1st Edition
Edited
By Michael Lynch, Harold Garfinkel
April 26, 2022
This volume includes an unpublished manuscript and selected portions of five seminars by Harold Garfinkel – the founder of ethnomethodology – on the topic of practices in the natural sciences and mathematics. The volume provides a coherent and sustained account of his program for the study of ...
Establishing Shared Knowledge in Political Meetings: Repairing and Correcting in Public
1st Edition
By Hanna Svensson
April 01, 2022
This book investigates the ways in which participants in political activities use micro-practices for solving issues of speaking, hearing and understanding as fundamental for the activities they engage in. Based on extensive video recordings of public meetings within a political grassroots project ...
Routledge Revivals: Understanding Interaction in Central Australia (1985): An Ethnomethodological Study of Australian Aboriginal People
1st Edition
By Kenneth B Liberman
March 31, 2021
First published in 1985, this book gives an intimate account of the cultural-political conflict between Australian Aboriginal people and Anglo-Australians, presenting the Australian social world from the perspective of the Aboriginal person. Adopting a rigorous ethnomethodological analysis and the ...
Routledge Revivals: Art and Artifact in Laboratory Science (1985): A study of shop work and shop talk in a research laboratory
1st Edition
By Michael Lynch
October 21, 2019
First published in 1985, this book provides a descriptive study of social activities in a neurosciences laboratory. Based on fieldwork conducted by the author in the laboratory during 1975 and 1976, and taking an ethnomethodological approach, it focuses on the phenomenon of the social ...