Endometho-ethnomentho-ethnomethodethdeth-whatever!
Anyway, Garfinkel is the
genius behind this breathtaking concept. Since I know you’re probably dying to
know what it means, I’ll spell it out for you. Garfinkel believed that all
social interaction is held together by certain ‘rules’. These rules act as a
script to how we are allowed react in particular situations. The reading, which
thoroughly unpacks the whole social exchange blow-by-blow, calls these rules “contextualization
cues”. In other words, in every social encounter we are presented with, our
mind automatically deciphers it and spits out an appropriate response.
An example of this is the
idea of politeness. It is a general rule that we are polite to those around us.
I found an interesting article on the need for politeness in society, and how
it makes up the scaffolding for our whole culture (Brunet et al. 2010). Without
manners, social settings would be absolute mayhem. Here’s a link to this scholarly reference, but I’ll reference
it at the bottom just in case:
Even though everyone knows
these rules, there isn’t an actual rulebook that we can follow. But here’s a
video to help illustrate some of these unspoken rules and attempt to put a
couple on rules record:
Now Garfinkel was especially
interested in situations when these rules are broken or violated. He conducted “breaching
experiments” to find out how people react when others don’t follow the rules.
A classic example of this is
when Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift at the 2009 VMAs (which is what I
based my data discussion presentation on). Kanye obviously was not following
the rules, and the response went from utter shock to complete outrage, demonstrating
that the general population don’t like it when you break the rules.
Brunet, P, Cowie, R, Donnan, H & Douglas-Cowie, E
2010, ‘Politeness and social signals’, Cognitive
Processing.
Like you, I too mentioned contextualization cues within my blog. I found that this concept by Garfinkel's to be quite interesting as you are completely unaware that with every social interaction that you have- your are actually doing this.
ReplyDeleteYour example of the 2009 VMA awards is really great. I think the reason that it caused so much media controversy also is because Kayne West is such a public figure (which then places him immediately under the idea that he needs to set an example and be a role model for the younger generations). When he breaks these rules- he is breaking the idealistic idea that he has to be a role model however, he can't through his violation of these social rules.