Ethnomethodology and Grounded Theory Methodology

Abstract

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following article is another in John M. Johnson's special symposium on qualitative research methods. The Marilyn Lester and Stuart Hadden article attempts to integrate selected analytical insights of ethnomethodologists with the self-reflective methodological procedures of grounded theorists. They argue that the goals of sociological inquiry should be to generate analyses of generic social processes and to elevate these to the status of formal theory. In attempting to go beyond the "immaculate description of the case," a feature common to many ethnographies, the authors propose a set of procedures for promoting the inductive generation of formal sociological theory, one which is both horizontally and vertically integrated, capable of discriminating situational versus transsituational elements of the field research findings.