Ethnomethodology and the production of history: studying ‘history-in-action’

Abstract

According to Lynch, in his article Ethnomethodology and History, ethnomethodology offers a rich and valuable resource for studying the in situ production of history. In this article, we seek to lay out a research agenda for a ‘new business history’ that uses ethnomethodology to study ‘history-in-action’. Our aim is to show how an ethnomethodological history can be used to study the practical work of those tasked with ‘making history’. We discuss the value of ethnomethodology for core business history methods, including the production and use of historical archives and written records, the treatment of witness memories, (auto)-biographies and testimonies, and the production of official versions of past events from diverse historical sources of evidence. We conclude by outlining the potential of ethnomethodology as a distinct paradigm of enquiry, which marks it out from conventional social scientific approaches to the relationship between empirical evidence and theory-building, by discussing: (1) the value of studying the practical reasoning procedures used for generating and interpreting historical evidence; and (2) the value of opening up new forms of reflective practice for practitioners within the field.

Keywords::

• ethnomethodology
• Garfinkel
• documents
• memory
• testimony
• reflective practice

Notes

^1.Kobrak and Wilkins, “The 2008 Crisis”; Chandler, Scale and Scope; Capie and Collins, “Banks, Industry and Finance.”

^2.Clark and Rowlinson, “The Treatment”; Kieser and Üsdiken, “Introduction”; Jacques, “History.”

^3. de Jong, Higgins and van Driel, “New Business History?”

^4.Button, Ethnomethodology.

^5.Lynch, “Ethnomethodology and History.”

^6. We use the term ‘ethnomethodological history’ rather than ‘ethnohistory’ to differentiate between the use of the latter term as an established sub-discipline for the anthropological study of culture from a historical perspective, as found in established journals such as Ethnohistory and American Society for Ethnohistory (see Lynch, “Ethnomethodology and History,” 88 for a discussion).

^7.Garfinkel, Studiesin Ethnomethodology.

^8.Zimmerman, “Record-keeping.”

^9.Lynch, Art and Artifact.

^10.Rouncefield and Tolmie, Ethnomethodology.

^11. Garfinkel, Studiesin Ethnomethodology.

^12.Lynch and Bogen, TheSpectacleof History, 7.

^13.Molotch and Boden, “Talking Social Structure.”

^14. Source: Potter, RepresentingReality, 57.

^15.Tosh, The Pursuit of History; see also Hansen, “Making Sense.”

^16. Cf. Draper's 1991 monograph A Very Thin Line, the Congress report (published 18/11/87), the 1987 U.S. News & World Report, and the Tower Commission Report (published 02/12/87).

^17.Cox, “Business on Trial.”

^18.Pollner, MundaneReason.

^19.Gubrium and Holstein, “Don't Argue.”

^20. Interestingly enough, this latter version is found in the Wikipedia history of the affair, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair.

^21.Schneider and Woolgar, “Technologies of Ironic Revelation.”

^22. See e.g. Peci and Vieira, “The Discursive Formation.”

^23. See Edwards and Potter, Discursive Psychology, 118, 158.

^24.de Jong et al., “New Business History?”

^25. Lynch and Bogen, TheSpectacleof History, 23.

^26.Taylor, Bell, and Cooke, “Business History,” 156.

^27.Brown, Postmodernism.

^28. Lynch and Bogen, TheSpectacleof History, 14.

^29.Popp and Holt, “The Presence” and “Entrepreneurship and Being.”

^30.Llewellyn and Hindmarsh, “The Order Problem.”

^31. Popp and Holt, “The Presence,” 11.

^32. Op cit.

^33. Lynch & Bogen, The Spectacle of History, see in particular 79–88.

^35. Hansen, “Making Sense.”

^36. Hansen, “Making Sense.”

^37. Lynch and Bogen, TheSpectacleof History, 23.

^38. Cox, “Business on Trial.”

^39. Cox, “Business on Trial,” 828.

^40. Cox, “Business on Trial,” 827, 828.

^41.Mills, “Situated Action” ; see also Whittle and Mueller, “The Language.”

^42. Tosh, The Pursuit of History.

^43. Garfinkel, Studiesin Ethnomethodology, chapter 6.

^44. See e.g. Foster, Coraiola, Suddaby, and Weibe, “Giving Voice.”

^45.Meehan, “Record-keeping Practices.”

^46.Ezzamel, “Order and Accounting”; Lampland, “False Numbers”.

^47.Garfinkel, Studiesin Ethnomethodology and Ethnomethodology's Program.

^48.Gephart, “Ethnostatistics.”

^49. See e.g. Garfinkel, Studiesin Ethnomethodology; Pollner, MundaneReason;Sudnow, “Normal Crimes”; Meehan, “Record-keeping Practices.”

^50. Pollner, MundaneReason.

^51. Lynch and Bogen, TheSpectacleof History; Hansen, “Making Sense.”

^52.Harrison, “Forging Success.”

^53.Davies and Bourn, “Lord Kylsant.”

^54.Cicourel, Method and Measurement.

^55. Sudnow, “Normal Crimes.”

^56. We use the term ‘reflective’ rather than ‘reflexive’, following Housley and Fitzgerald, “Conversation Analysis,” given the specific meaning of the latter term in ethnomethodology.

^57.Heath and Luff, “Documents and Professional Practice.”

^58. Meehan, “Record-keeping Practices.”

^59. Zimmerman, “Record-keeping.”

^60.White, Metahistory.

^61. Popp and Holt, “The Presence,” 11.

^62. See Cicourel, Method and Measurement; Button, Ethnomethodology.

^63.Coulon, Ethnomethodology.

^64. See e.g. Hansen, “Making Sense”; Rowlinson, Booth, Clark, Delahaye, and Procter, “Social Remembering”; Rowlinson and Delahaye, “The Cultural Turn”; Delahaye, Booth, Clark, Procter, and Rowlinson, “The Genre”; Suddaby, Foster, and Trank “Rhetorical history.”

^65.Delahaye et al., “The Genre.”

^66.Foster et al., “Giving Voice”; Suddaby, “Institutions and History.”

^67.Ybema, “The Invention.”

^68. Suddaby, Foster, and Mills, “Historical Institutionalism.”

^69. Suddaby et al., “Rhetorical History.”

^70. Suddaby et al., “Rhetorical History” 147.

^71. MacKensie, An Engine; Lampland, “False Numbers”; Peci and Vieira, “The Discursive Formation.”

^72. Mueller, Whittle, Gilchrist, and Lenney, “Politics and Strategy Practice.”

^73. For example, Ezzamel, “Order and Accounting.”

^74. MacKensie, An Engine and “Opening the Black Boxes of Global Finance.”

^75.Boden, The Business of Talk.

^76. For an overview of narrative and sensemaking see Hansen, “Making Sense.”

^77. See e.g. Mueller et al., “Politics and Strategy Practice”; Bolander and Sandberg, “How Employee Selection.”

^78.Randall and Rouncefield, “Ethnography.”

^79.Schultz and Hernes, “A Temporal Perspective”; Ybema, “The Invention.”

^80. Suddaby et al., “Rhetorical History”; Foster et al., “Giving Voice.”

^81. Pollner, MundaneReason; see also Schneider and Woolgar, “Technologies of Ironic Revelation.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrea Whittle

Andrea Whittle is Professor of Management at Newcastle University Business School. Her research is driven by a passion for understanding the role of language in management settings and is informed by theories and methodologies from the fields of discourse analysis, narrative, discursive psychology, ethnography, ethnomethodology and conversation analysis.

John Wilson

Professor John Wilson is Director of Newcastle University Business School, where he is also professor of strategy. He has worked in several universities, including Manchester, Leeds, Queens Belfast, Nottingham and Liverpool. His research covers the last 200 years of international business history, focusing mainly on Britain, but including Japan, Germany and the USA. This has resulted in the publication of fifteen books and over fifty journal articles and book chapters.