NCJ Number
84232
Date Published
1981
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This essay traces the theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions of ethnomethodology to criminology, contrasts it with the more familiar prescriptions of the labeling-factors approach, and suggests its affinity with the concerns of an historically grounded, critical criminological perspective.
Abstract
Human reality is a product of concrete social interaction. There is no reality independent of what people do to make interpretive sense of life in the here and now. These are fundamental principles of ethnomethodology. Ethnomethodology has contributed to several advances in the methods of criminological inquiry. First, it has questioned the uncritical use of official statistics on crime and deviance as accurately reflecting crime itself. Secondly, ethnomethodology has urged that conceptions of what is criminal or deviant be examined in specific historical circumstances, and third, ethnomethodology has made two recommendations to aid researchers in approximating objectivity: (1) attempt at least partial replications of one's work; and (2) display as much as possible the verbal or nonverbal actions of those about whose activities one makes interpretive judgments. The ethnomethodological perspective is more radically interpretive than labeling theory, since its concern is not with the correctness but with the success of labeling. It discards the implicit assumption of normativity found in the labeling-factors tradition. While as charged by its critics, ethnomethodology has made little explicit or systematic reference to problems of power, self-identity, and history, each is implied, if not explicitly developed, within its central theoretical imagery. A total of 36 notes are listed.