A.  INTRODUCTION

 1. examines phenomena as they are apprehended in their ‘immediacy’ by the social actor.

 2.  socialization = how to ‘be’ in the world

 3.  question assumptions, assume the role of a stranger,

 4.  Everyday reality is a socially constructed system of ideas that has accumulated over time and is taken for granted by group members.

 5.  Edmund Husserl - "We can not know more about things than what we experience directly through our senses."  Knowledge = acquired through sense, all else is speculation.

 6.  Alfred Schutz - verstehen (Weber, subjective understanding) - definition of the situation, using ideal types passed on through the culture, stock of knowledge = mutual knowledge used automatically, "reciprocity of perspectives" shared meaning.

 7.  Anthony Giddens: routinization - a psychologicallly linked to the minimizing of unconscious sources of anxiety.

 B. HAROLD GARFINKEL  Ethnomethodology

 1.  Parsons - the motivated actor, trust underlies the basis of human behavior.

 2. Ethnomethodology = member’s methods of making sense of their social world.

 3. disagree with Durkheim’s social facts as separate from human beings,  social facts are recognized as part of the situation.  They do not have a reality of their own.  Order is not "out there" but inside the person.

 4. different set of problems = interpretative process is the phenomenon for investigation. E.g. situation of the stranger
 5.  indexical expressions - terms that require mutual understanding.  Identifying what is left out.

 6.  methods = in-depth interviewing, participant observation, documentary method - treat an actual occurance as representative of an underlying pattern.  Breaching experiment = disrupt normal activity or violate the scene.

 7.  Aron Cicourel - ‘structure of the rules of the game," analyse subjects who are making sense of the situation. Definition of the situation is problematic.  How to create order when it has been violated.

C.  PETER BERGER

 1.  Writings

        a.  The Social Construction of Reality, sociology of knowledge approach - reality construction - the process by which any body of knowledge become accepted as "reality."
 reality - objectively factual, subjectively meaningful

         alienation - a loss of meaning.

        b.  The Sacred Canopy - sociology of religion

 2.  subjective experience of reality -

         a.  externalization - by own activity create social worlds

 "society is a human product"

         social order - on-going human production

         b.  objectivation -  reality experienced as ordered, prearranged, imposing itself upon but independent of individuals

"Society is an objective reality"

         c.  internalization - legitimation of the institutional order (what you take in as social reality)

 "Man is a social product"

         reification - a apprehension of human products as if they were something other than human products, facts of nature, results of cosmic laws or divine will.

D.  DOROTHY E. SMITH - FEMINIST STANDPOINT THEORY

  1.  Stand point Theory - focus on the perspective of subordinates.

  2.  Question the social order - uncover taken for granted assumptions

  3.  a disjuncture between experience and official knowledge

  4.  relations of ruling - not only state and government but also institutions, management and professions.

  5.  location of the subject
 

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