The development of Garfinkel’s ‘Trust’ argument from 1947 to 1967: Demonstrating how inequality disrupts sense and self-making

Abstract

Garfinkel began developing his famous Trust argument, that a minimum of equality and reciprocity he called ‘Trust Conditions’ is a prerequisite for sense-making in interaction, while working with Parsons from 1946 to 1952. The argument grounds a social justice approach to social order and meaning with affinities to Durkheim’s ‘implicit conditions of contract’ and Du Bois’ ‘double consciousness’. Tracing the development of the Trust argument, we examine 14 unpublished PhD proposals from 1948 in which Garfinkel formulated his approach through studies of Jewish identity that, with his earlier research on Race and subsequent studies of the ‘pre-medical candidate’ and transgender identity, demonstrate how inequality disrupts normal ordinary practices of sense and self-making. As a social theory, Garfinkel’s position builds on approaches to social action, interaction and language by Parsons, Schutz and Wittgenstein. As a systematic research programme, however, Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology charted new territory. Inspired by his own experiences as a Jewish man, he was the first to focus on how interactional troubles reveal the ‘hidden’ taken-for-granted details of how social objects and identities are cooperatively achieved in interaction and document how inequality interferes with that achievement.