Harold Garfinkel (1917–2011)

Abstract

and Keywords This chapter focuses on the work of Harold Garfinkel, a philosopher who developed an approach to sociological enquiry called ethnomethodology. After providing an overview of Garfinkel's personal and intellectual life, it discusses ethnomethodology in relation to an ontology of becoming. Specifically, it explores how ethnomethodology accesses the continual making and remaking of social things and how process thinking renounces structural, subjectivist, and rational-individualistic explanations of such accomplishments. It also considers the relevance of ethnomethodology to organization studies.