Introduction
A Brief State of Research on the Relationship Between Schütz and Garfinkel
The meaning of signs or communicative acts is thus established in relation to the whole “message,” while simultaneously co-constituting the message as it unfolds. This may be understood as an early version of ethnomethodological “reflexivity,” in the sense that “the next thing being said reflects on the last thing being said and has the potential to show it in a new light” (Rawls, 2006: 34). Anticipating a further central theme of ethnomethodology, Garfinkel presents practices of sequencing in interaction as a core feature of establishing “mutual understanding” and “order”:the actor may attend in simultaneity to the communicating actions as they proceed, found, for example, in two persons engrossed in conversation. In this latter type the signs are conveyed piecemeal, portion by portion […]. While the one actor conveys his thought through this sequential order of actions, the interpreter follows with interpreting actions. The listener experiences the occurrences of the other’s action as events occurring in outer time and space, while at the same time he experiences his interpretive actions as a series of retentions and anticipations happening in his inner time and connected by the intention to understand the other’s ‘message’ as a meaningful unit. […] The communicator’s speech, while it goes on, is an element common to his as well as the listener’s vivid present. Both vivid presents occur simultaneously. A new time dimension is therefore established, namely, that of a common vivid present. Both can say later, ‘We experienced this occurrence together’ (Garfinkel, 2006: 181)
The question of how closely Seeing Sociologically (2006) corresponds to ethnomethodology, specifically to Garfinkel’s later works, is a matter of perspective. On the one hand, Garfinkel would later significantly revise if not reject numerous themes of the manuscript. For example, Garfinkel would come to criticize the analytical distinction of “meanings” being assigned to or bestowed upon “signs” by processes of interpretation (Garfinkel, 2021: 25, Eisenmann & Lynch, 2021: 11; see also Coulter, 1971). Instead, he would be inspired by Gurwitsch’s notion of “functional significance” within “gestalt coherence” which “emphasizes the autonomy and self-regulation of meaning structures” (Meyer, 2022: 116). Likewise, themes such as indexicality, reflexivity or sequentiality would evolve into more differentiated forms (Garfinkel, 1967, 2002). On the other hand, similar to the way “early glimmers” (Koschmann, 2012) of ethnomethodology have been identified in Garfinkel’s dissertation (1952), it is indeed possible to recognize notions within the manuscript which foreshadow fundamental themes of ethnomethodology (Rawls, 2006; vom Lehn 2019). Amongst them, one that stands out is a basic form of the notion of ‘sequentiality’ in interaction: the sense that actions and utterances acquire their meaning by virtue of their sequential placement, the idea of a temporally developing and mutually constitutive relationship of actions and context and of a ‘next turn’ displaying the practical understanding of a ‘prior turn’ in interaction. On this basis, it has been argued that Garfinkel elaborates “a sequential relationship between actors in a vivid interactional present that provides a unique theoretical foundation for his later empirical studies of situated practice” (Rawls, 2006: 3) and that the difference between the manuscript and Garfinkel’s later work is “more a matter of degree […] than of substance” (Rawls, 2006: 11).When we say that A understands B we mean only this: that A detects an orderliness in these signs both with regard to sequence and meanings. The orderliness is assigned to B’s activities by A. The ‘validity’ of A’s conception of the signs generated by B are given in accordance with some regulative principle established for A when his return action evokes a counter action that somehow ‘fits’ A’s anticipations. Understanding means a mode of treatment of B by A that operates, as far as A sees it, under constant confirmation of A’s anticipations of treatment from B. Understanding is not referred for its ‘truth’ or ‘falsity’ to what the other ‘really’ intended; […]. (Garfinkel, 2006: 184)
Schütz on Time and Sequentiality: From the “Solitary Ego” to “Vivid Present”
Experiencing and Reflecting
The Ongoing Process of Acting and the Accomplished Action
“Understanding” as a Pragmatic Attribution of Meaning
Communication as Sign-Using Acts and Developing Contexts of Meaning
In understanding someone who is speaking, I interpret not only his individual words but his total articulated sequence of syntactically connected words – in short, “what he is saying”. In this sequence every word retains its own individual meaning in the midst of the surrounding words and throughout the total context of what is being said. Still, I cannot really say that I understand the word until I have grasped the meaning of the whole statement. […] As the statement proceeds, a synthesis is built up step by step, from the point of view of which one can see the individual acts of meaning-interpretation and meaning-establishment. Discourse is, therefore, itself a kind of meaning-context. For both the speaker and the interpreter, the structure of the discourse emerges gradually. (Schütz, 1967: 125, emphasis added)
The Interlocking of Motives in Interaction and Interactive Feedback
“Social interaction is, accordingly, a motivational context and, in fact, an intersubjective motivational context” (Schütz, 1967: 159, emphasis i.o.). […] What is essential is that the person who is interacting with another should anticipate the in-order-to motives of his own action as the genuine because-motives of the expected behavior of his partner and, conversely, that he should be prepared to regard the in-order-to motives of his partner as the genuine because motives of his own behavior. This insight is of great importance, for it indicates the methods which are used in both everyday life and interpretive sociology to disclose the motives of the other person. (Schütz, 1967: 162)
The “We-Relationship” in “Vivid Present”
We can thus simultaneously live in intentionality and engage in the cooperative act of meaning interpretation and establishment. In this “shared vivid present” (Schütz, 1945; see also Garfinkel, 2006: 181), the interactional partners partake in a “community of time and space” (Schütz, 1967: 111) and experience each other in a maximum degree of detail (Schütz 1967: 192), providing the conditions for the most immediate and intimate “understanding” of one another.This interlocking of glances, this thousand-faceted mirroring of each other, is one of the unique features of the face-to-face situation. We may say that it is a constitutive characteristic of this particular social relationship. However, we must remember that the pure We-relationship […] is not itself grasped reflectively within the face-to-face situation. […] Within the unity of this experience I can be aware simultaneously of what is going on in my mind and in yours, living through the two series of experiences as one series – what we are experiencing together. (Schütz, 1967: 170, emphasis i.o.)
Implications for Garfinkel’s Ethnomethodology
From Private Meaning to Public Order
The Temporality of Social Order
Despite this indeed “entirely different basis,” it is interesting to consider the historical relations and the gradual and complex transitions between notions of “streams of consciousness” to the investigation of “streams of embodied action”. Of course, there are further authors with closely related conceptions of time to consider, most notably Husserl himself (2019, 1970 [1936]) and Gurwitsch (1964). Further inspirations include Merleau-Ponty’s (1962; 1968) investigations on the body and “intertwining” and Heidegger’s (1996) notion of “equipment” and “availability” (Garfinkel et al., 1981). These authors were similarly inspiring to ethnomethodology and, more so than Schütz, to the ‘studies of work and science’ (Garfinkel, 2007; Wiley, 2019; Eisenmann & Lynch, 2021). Nevertheless, although Schütz is no longer a central reference, he did lay contributing groundwork by the specific way he extended phenomenological notions of temporality to the study of interaction, allowing ‘situations’ to come into view as a flux of mutually oriented and interweaving actions. At the same time, as the quote indicates, an important point of distinction in contrast to all the aforementioned precursors including Schütz is ethnomethodology’s commitment to the “empirical examination of actual lived activity” (Lynch et al., 1983: 133, FN10). This leads to the final topic of the discussion, namely the methodological implications of Schütz’s and Garfinkel’s respective approaches.[o]ne is confronted with streams of embodied action simultaneously identified with ‘material’ arrangements and rearrangements accomplished by one or more parties to the respective discipline. This provides an entirely different basis for analytically elucidating reasoning practices than would be the case when reasoning is conceived as a stream of consciousness in exclusively ‘private experience’. (Lynch et al., 1983:206)