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Translations
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3–25
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In this article, which comprises the first chapter of Studies in Ethnomethodology, Harold Garfinkel considers the basic research principles and policies of ethnomethodology. According to Garfinkel, ethnomethodology starts from the fact that activities whereby members produce and manage settings of organized everyday affairs are identical with members’ procedures for making those settings “accountable”. By “accountable” he means observable-and-reportable, i.e. available to members as situated practices of looking-and-telling. Garfinkel suggests that professional sociology sets as its programmatical task a correction and replacement of indexical (situated) everyday descriptions and actions with “objective” ones, but this task is impossible, since any attempt to “objectify” ordinary actions is itself based on everyday ways to make what happens “accountable”. Citing as an example three ethnomethodological studies (of the activities of Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center, of the work of sociological coders, and of ordinary conversation), Garfinkel shows that incorrigible indexicality of everyday action is reflective and rational, and therefore can be analyzed on its own as substantive sociological phenomenon. Thus, ethnomethodology is the investigation of the rational properties of indexical expressions and other practical actions as contingent ongoing accomplishments of organized artful practices of everyday life. |
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26–41
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The author considers one of the key points of "subjective theory" - "conditions of objective knowledge are within the knowing subject; there is no knowledge that is independent of the subject, for all the known first be analyzed in terms that make up its meaning. "This thesis the author presents a historical perspective (from Husserl to Luckman), in the process of constitution and intersubjectivity, in the context of the study of the life-world and relate the "natural attitude" with "theoretical" one. |
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42–56
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The article considers the significance of norms in human action. It discusses such issues as the range of normative action and the relationship between normative and non-normative action and tries to answer the following question: when do norms govern actors and their actions? How are norms patterned? What is the dynamics of norms? Why and how do norms change? What governs the strengthening or weakening, the diffusion or the contraction of normative action in relation to instrumental or teleological action? What is conducive to changes in the form or content of a norm, and to the substitution of new norms for old ones? A norm is described as a whole spectrum of mechanisms for its maintenance, from legal norms backed up by a special apparatus of adjudication and sanctioning, to moral norms, located only in the conscience of the individual. The article shows that norms do not only constitute an analytical crossroads of disciplines - norms are also central normative issues in today’s world. In front of these concerns and interests, the tasks of science and scholarship with regard to the establishment of functioning norms, the operation of norm conformity, and to the dynamics of norm change seem to surpass the capacity, not only of the individual scholar but also that of the individual discipline. Interdisciplinary analyses fulfill a function even if they only make scholars aware of approaches in other disciplines. |
Summaries
Book reviews
Review essays
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69–103
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This paper outlines the most essential aspects of anthropological activity, such as its subject and its interest. In this case we will focus on the category of Other, which distance researcher from his subject. In this article we will analyze some anthropological & philosophical approaches connected with understanding of Other category, such as Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism and Pierre Bourdieu’s critical approach. Anthropology always touches on the problem of politicization, when it shows the difference between cultures. During this research we will try to understand, which transformations occurs in the modern anthropology and which role the problem of politicization plays in this process. |
Papers and essays
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104–118
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This article deals with the paradox of Erving Goffman’s social dramaturgy interpretations. Works of “early” Goffman are often mistakenly considered as a part of symbolic interactionist theory; probably because H. Blumer (the father of symbolic interactionism) was an influential figure in Goffman’s student times at Chicago University. However Goffman himself rigorously denied any connections between social dramaturgical analysis and symbolic interactionism. This denial seems doubtful especially when we see strong correlation between Goffman’s and Blumer’s theories in their devotion to axiomatics of American pragmatism. In 1970s Goffman’s works were reinterpreted (both by allies and by critics) as “structuralist” ones (F. Jameson, J. Gonos, N. Denzin). Further reinterpretation provoked a long discussion about dualism of structure and interaction in dramaturgical analysis. In this article author is trying to trace evolution of Goffman’s works as a transposition of analytical tools from interactionist to structuralist theoretical framework. The author also argues that this transposition became possible as a result of Goffman’s revision of William James philosophy. |
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