Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology

When looking at Goffman's Dramaturgical Metaphor, I thought it was a pretty great way of looking at how everyday interaction works. Looking at the social front and how collectively there are scripts for how we go about interacting with other human beings.

But when hearing the lecture on Ethnomethodology, I did start getting convinced too by the idea that in the course of everyday interaction that we have this ability to make large scale practical interpretations. Through which we ascribe meaning to interactions which might otherwise live us in a continious state of confusion and nervousness.

So this seems to conflict with Goffman in that to say there is a script is to say that what is going to happen is predicted and planned out and therefore a script can be applied – but we’re not in a fat moment, everything is intermittently happening – where as if you look at it like Garfinkel, that we go by codes that have process as these sense making devices that we use to interact with the world and other beings, there not outside of where we are telling us what to do like a script would or how Goffman would look at everyday symbolic interaction as being a contrived pre-planned performance. We are producing meaning inside the interaction we cannot just be following endless amounts of scripts with clauses and sub-clauses that are infinite. In this way we can say that everyday interaction is somewhat undetermined which breaks down Goffman’s dramaturgical metaphor at it’s core.

Or perhaps we could find some middle ground, between constant sense making and scripted performances.