Garfinkel’s Politics: Collaborating with Parsons to Document Taken-for-Granted Practices for Assembling Cultural Objects and their Grounding in Implicit Social Contract

Abstract From his 1940–1942 studies of Race, through 1967 study an “inter-sexed” person called Agnes, Garfinkel’s research was always politically engaged . When Garfinkel Parsons’ PhD student at Harvard (1946–1952) and later during a period collaboration with Parsons (1958–1964), both theorized culture as domain social interaction independent from structure resting on its own implicit contract. This conception grounded their respective “voluntaristic” “reciprocity” based approaches to specifying assembly processes for making categories in way that put the empirical under microscope made justice scientific concern. emphasized importance contract aspects theory – adapted Durkheim ethnomethodology, planned contribute foundation position were criticized abstraction. Nevertheless, important differences remained. model required assimilation consensus, thus inadvertently enforcing existing inequalities. Garfinkel, by contrast, deeply concerned “structural problems” like inequality, treated assimilationist positions scientifically ethically unsound. His documented reciprocity pre-requisite successful interaction, while treating “troubles” generated inequality key understanding order writ large.