This book revisits the arguments by which Harvey Sacks and Harold
Garfinkel opposed the widespread attempt in the social sciences to
construct disciplinary theories and methods in place of common-sense
knowledge of human action, and proposed instead an alternative that
would investigate the organised methods of natural language use and
common-sense reasoning that constitute social orders - arguments that
led to the establishment and proliferation of ethnomethodology and
conversation analysis.
As the very "constructive analysis" that they opposed has begun to be
incorporated into influential lines of research in ethnomethodology and
conversation analysis, the authors return to the founding insights of
the field and reiterate the importance of Garfinkel and Sacks' original
and controversial proposals for an "alternate" sociology of practical
action and practical reasoning. Showing how constructive analysis has
become entrenched in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis and
arguing for a need to "re-boot" these approaches, this volume
constitutes a call for a renewal of the radical alternative proposed by
Garfinkel and Sacks.