Garfinkel found, using the Breaching Experiments, that people couldn't really cope with disturbances to the social order. Using very similar methods the Joker found that given the chance the people of Gotham wouldn't blow each other up. They were both social experimenters and they inspired me to be one too.
I swore that I would never give words with more than 8 letters the time of day. I also swore I'd never write a blog. I guess SOC250 is just breaching personal contracts I made with myself left, right and centre. Here are my ethnomethodological findings.
I came home today and decided to do the thing where you try to make someone specify what might have otherwise been another mindless social interaction (some call it being polite). Who doesn't love a bit of 'righteous hostility' at the end of the day?
I said: 'hey, what's going on?'
They said: 'not much. Where have you been?'
I said: 'do you mean where have I been just now, or do you mean half an hour ago, yesterday, this week, this year? Or do you mean where have I been in life, like in a Jenny-from-the-block kind of way?'
They ignored me.
That's when I knew Garfinkel was right, I was getting a taste of his medicine and it was bitter. It's just common decency to reply to someone when they've spoken to you. Especially if they've gone to the trouble of referencing one of Jennifer Lopez's greatest hits. The righteous hostility set in.
I said: 'just gonna ignore me then? How polite.'
They said: 'well, you're going on with crap!' There was the righteous hostility I was looking for.
I said: 'well, you've just been a subject in a sociological experiment, and if you were wondering, you've made the entire human race look like a bunch of idiots!' I could tell that one stung.
It doesn't get much more empirical than this guys. Garfinkel was a magician.
Heritage, J 1984, ‘The morality
of cognition’, in Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology, Polity Press, Cambridge, pp75-102.
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