garfinkel durkheim

Wittgenstein, Durkheim, Garfinkel and Winch:Constitutive Orders of Sensemaking

ANNE WARFIELD RAWLSjtsb_471 396..418

As Winch (1958:11) proposed it the essential question was “how is reality intelli-gible to man”. In Garfinkel’s re-specification the question becomes “how is itpossible for two or more persons to make mutually intelligible sense together orhave the same social objects in front of them all?” In the latter version reality ispopulated by social objects that are constituted through a mutual orientationtoward constitutive rule/practice and by moves taken in these practices. Socialobjects/facts are treated as the result of meaning making processes coordinated byan orientation toward constitutive rules that are reflexive and situated. Wittgen-stein and Winch point out problems with the idea of “following” rules. Garfinkelproposes a distinction between types of rules and a distinction between “follow-ing” and “orienting” rules in sequences of interaction that addresses these issues.1

That Durkheim grounded his argument for the organic coherence of modernsocieties on an idea of constitutive rules and distinguished these from top-downforms of regulation is little remarked but very important. His overall argumentand indeed the entire edifice of modern social theory make little sense without it.

Elaborating the argument involves five things: 1) a theory of social objects, 2) adistinction between constitutive and institutional orders, 3) a distinction betweenprospective constitutive orders and retrospective accounts, 4) understanding thatsuch orders of practice are collaborations—and therefore collective momentsrather than ideas or units, and 5) reconceptualizing meaning as a matter of mutualcooperation (or interaction). In what follows I will elaborate on why these areessential and what this might look like.

I MUTUAL ATTENTION AND COOPERATION

Over the past several years, philosophers and cognitive scientists have proposedthe strong possibility that mutual attention and cooperation, not competition, ornot only competition, are basic and important human capacities. The argumentis generating widespread interest. However, some important sociology and phi-losophy is being overlooked in this discussion—even though in a very serious sense

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“mutual attention” is what some sociologies of language and interaction havealways been about—and what they have argued supports and extends aspects ofthe argument.

As it currently stands the idea is that a capacity—or need—for mutual attentionis hardwired into the human brain and drives evolution. But, it can be argued thatthere is a social reason why this capacity would be an advantage. What Wittgen-stein might and Garfinkel certainly would say, is that the requirement to mutuallyattend and cooperate with one another is basic to any constitutive process ofmaking sense.2 If humans are sensemakers: making sense by cooperatively creat-ing social objects then what makes it possible for us to make sense together willneed to be a characteristic feature of humans as a species.3

So, the critical question then is whether or not making sense together in factrequires a high degree of mutual attention and cooperation; and furthermorewhether this attention orients individuals, situated rules or more general values andbeliefs.4 An understanding of the need to make commitments and to fulfill obli-gations to mutual attention and cooperation in order to share a mutually intelli-gible world, offers a very different view of the foundations of human moralcapacities and social arrangements than the conventional view of an orientationtoward a structure of shared values—which results in a focus on individual andstructural complexities.

Why the conjunction of Wittgenstein, Durkheim, Garfinkel and Winch inapproaching this question? What I am proposing is that how people make sensetogether involves the highly cooperative use of what I refer to as constitutiveorders of practice: constitutive rules, “use” conventions, or background expect-ancies. This is a question to which all four have made important contributions.The contributions of Wittgenstein, Garfinkel and Winch to the discussion ofconstitutive rules have been recognized (although often misunderstood).Durkheim’s contribution to this question of constitutive orders will likely seem themost surprising. Yet, Durkheim considered the development of constitutive ordersto be the central question of sociology with regard to modern society and arguedthis as early as 1893 in De la Division Travail Social (DTS).5

II CONSTITUTIVE RULES AND SOCIAL FACTS

Durkheim devoted several sections of DTS to the question of self-organizingconstitutive orders in modernity (notably Book III Chapter I, the Second Prefaceand parts of the Conclusion).6 He ([1893]1933:408) maintained that the rules thatare constitutive of the social facts of modernity are different from those of tradi-tional society: “The rules which constitute it do not have a constraining forcewhich snuffs out free thought; but because they are rather made for us and, in acertain sense, by us, we are free. We wish to understand them; we do not fear tochange them.”7 With regard to constitutive rules a freedom of choice becomes

Wittgenstein, Durkheim, Garfinkel and Winch 397


possible—a freedom from belief that makes science and even truth possible inDurkheim’s view (Book III chapter 1 and 1913–14]1955). Freedom itself, heargues ([1893]1984:320) is created by a new kind of regulation that is spontaneousand self organizing: “it so happens that liberty itself is the product of regulation”([1893]1984:320).8 But, these regulations do not involve constraint “. . . it is incor-rect to say that any form of regulation is the product of constraint . . .”([1893]1984:320).9 According to Durkheim for this to work ([1893]1984:317) “Allconstraint must therefore be absent” from the orders and regulations involvingcontractual exchange and self-organizing practices.10 There is a role for “publicauthority” in this process. But, the role is not one of constraint: “. . . it is notenough for the public authority to ensure that undertakings entered into are kept.It must also, at least in roughly the average number of cases, see that they arespontaneously kept” ([1893]1984:316–17).11 Thus, Durkheim limits the role ofauthority in modern society to one of overseeing and consecrating the spontane-ous constitutive processes that develop below it. Authority cannot either generateor regulate that spontaneity. It can only try to make “external conditions” morefair ([1893]1984:316–17), and not enact regulations that interfere with constitu-tive processes.

The importance of Durkheim’s distinction between self-organizing spontane-ous rules, regulations and practices, and formal constraint based regulationscannot be overemphasized. Without it we arrive at the untenable view thatDurkheim believed more formal law and coercive regulation would solve theproblems of modern society (an interpretation that conflicts with everything hesays in Book III chapter 2). In speaking of the very real problems characterizingmodernity Durkheim proposes ([1893]1933:29) that what we have in modernsociety is a “constitutive lack” because the new constitutive rules needed forconnecting things together have not developed sufficiently as yet.12 Durkheim’sargument that justice is a requirement of modernity rests on this distinctionbetween coercive traditional and free spontaneous constitutive orders: bothinvolve rules or regulation—but of entirely different types. It is the reliance ofconstitutive practices on an egalitarian reciprocity of mutual cooperation thatrequires justice.

The purpose of society, as Durkheim argued in the Elementary Forms of Religious

Life (EF) ([1912]1915), the reason it existed, was to make it possible for people toshare ideas: to create shared social objects. Without detailed social practices andthe social meanings and objects they can be used to create individuals would liveisolated lives (in Bruner’s terms “autistic” lives). Different social practices, accord-ing to Durkheim, create different sets of ideas and social objects (although he didargue that a small set of essential ideas might be created by all social groups, Rawls2004). In traditional—belief based—societies in which solidarity depends onsameness and a constrained consensus this process involved the close coordinationof ritualized practices and the enforcement of their corresponding beliefs. But, ina modern society with a diverse population this explanation of sensemaking as

398 Anne Warfield Rawls


belief and constraint/consensus based will not work.13 There is no longer anygeneral consensus and beliefs are no longer broadly shared.14 The problem ofmodern society, then, becomes how it is possible that we do communicate acrossgroups or communities of belief and practice—as it is clear we do.

It has been necessary for forms of constitutive practice to develop that canenable the necessary close cooperation without the support of shared beliefs orcultural membership. As the foundation of meaningful cooperative activity inmodern society these new forms of practice—these social facts and the processesof constituting them—need to become the focus of empirical research. InDurkheim’s view, while some of these had already developed, more were neededand in order to support the process of their development it was necessary tounderstand how these processes worked. He proposed that the question of howorder and meaning—social facts—were created needed to be given a very differ-ent answer in modern society. He proposed that constitutive practices that arebased on the requirements of social action and collaborative sensemaking (not onbeliefs and ritualized practices) are needed to replace the more artificial and“mechanical” social orders of the past—which created a cooperative socialcontext by forcing people to share beliefs and a ritualized way of life (Rawls 2012).In place of religion and enforced conformity (or enforced consensus), the ability ofindividuals in modern societies to share ideas is based on cooperation in the useof situated and occasioned constitutive practices (like the bench practices ofmodern sciences, Durkheim’s example, or the sequential,and reflexive practices ofconversational turntaking, my example) that operate at least somewhat indepen-dently from beliefs (which have become fragmented).

In order to operate independently from beliefs and traditional institutionalstructures and to be flexible enough and specific enough to meet the changingneeds of situated practices, these practices would in Durkheim’s view need to beboth constitutive and self-organizing: an important idea. While beliefs can alsoconstitute shared realities they do so quite differently. For the holder of a belief theworld is populated with a set of objects that exist only because of those beliefs andtheir framing narratives (angels, devils, temptations, good people, bad people,them, us, money etc.). But, unless agreed on by everyone they do not constitute aset of stable and shared social objects. In a modern context, beliefs play anincreasingly limited role in organizing the coherence of public and work lifeamong strangers and mere acquaintances.

By contrast, the expectations about interaction (e.g. in a classroom, or at adinner party) or the skills constitutive of a particular job—make available for thoseparticipants who are competent to perform and committed to that specificpractice—for the duration—a set of meaningful social objects and actions that donot exist for those who are not competent to and participating in the practice(members of a practice). Shared belief is not required. Furthermore, the holder ofa belief may (in modern contexts at least) often act in ways that are inconsistentwith those beliefs without consequence. In a constitutive practice however, failure



to adequately perform the practice has the result that meaningful (i.e. mutuallyintelligible) social objects are not achieved. These consequences are immediateand self-sanctioning (discussed below). The consequences for excuses and justifi-cations are consequently different from what philosophers have supposed. Justi-fication is most relevant to belief based and formal institutional practices/roles,whereas something quite different—repair—is required by constitutive practices(Rawls 1987).15

The proposal (made by Durkheim in 1893) that constitutive and self-organizingpractices (generated by the specific needs of specialized work) hold the key tosocial solidarity and sensemaking—or mutual intelligibility—in modern societiesand to a kind of morality arising in the modern era—that Durkheim calledjustice—is important. The argument was intended as a foundation for a newSociological approach to questions of knowledge, truth and morality. Theproblem is that Durkheim did not elaborate in depth on constitutive practices andhis treatment of them has been largely overlooked and misinterpreted. Garfinkelhas said that what Durkheim did manage to elaborate is remarkable given the lackof materials available to him at the time with which to understand the problem ofconstitutive practices in details.16 Toward the end of DTS (Book III, Chapter 1)Durkheim sketched in some examples of what he meant by constitutive practicesin the natural sciences. Again, in the second preface of 1902 he elaborated onconstitutive orders in conjunction with occupational groups. But, these discussionshave not been sufficient to convey the argument.

III MEANING AS “USE” AND THE IDEA OF A SOCIAL SCIENCE

Wittgenstein and then Winch and Garfinkel engage and transform the argumentabout the relevance of constitutive practices to mutual intelligibility in ways thatI will argue do add up to something that is sufficient. Keeping their treatment inthe context of Durkheim’s original argument has the advantage of also suggestinga relevance of their work to important questions of truth and ethics.17 Wittgen-stein, in a series of arguments, gave us the important ideas of meaning as “use”and language games. Both involve the idea that practices or rules are constitutiveof meaning (are used by “members” to make meaning) and suggest an importantconvergence between philosophy and sociology. Winch explicitly extended theimplications of Wittgenstein’s ideas to social science. Winch (1958:44) argued thatepistemological questions (how we know—how we mean) stand at the heart ofsociological questions, but that sociology often just assumed that people first havelanguage and then sociologists study the way it is used. This is certainly anaccurate description of the conventional sociological approach. It is the samecomplaint that Garfinkel made from 1948 on when he said that sociology wasbeginning by asking questions that assumed objects that are the result of socialprocesses, rather than examining those social processes themselves. This is a kind



of positivism that ignores the relevance of constitutive social facts entirely. WhatWinch (1958:44) says is much the same: that sociology has overlooked that “thosevery categories of meaning, etc., are logically dependent for their sense on socialinteraction between men.”

Although Winch indicated Max Weber as the sociologist who was closest to hisidea of social science (because of Weber’s focus on meaning and interpretation),Durkheim is the social theorist who took most seriously the relationship betweencategories of meaning and social interaction and located constitutive practices atthe center of that process. Garfinkel’s work, which Winch was not aware of, goesmuch farther in this direction—treating not only social objects and perceptions,but also what Garfinkel calls “rationalities,” and “information” as socially orga-nized. Garfinkel placed interpretation and reflexivity at the heart of the constitu-tive process—and he elaborated this argument in empirical details.

While, Wittgenstein and then Winch transform the philosophical approach tothe problem of meaning—and make clear its relevance to social theory—they alsoleave us with some serious problems. For instance, it turns out not to be possibleto specify language games, or even to specify what “games” are. Wittgenstein wasforced to embrace the unhappy idea of “family resemblances” to explain therecognition of practices.18 “Use” criteria cannot be adequately specified. JohnSearle’s (1969) attempt to specify the use criteria for Speech Acts only serves tohighlight the problems. When meaning objects are treated as static—fixed units—and defined by criteria external to the situation they escape into ambiguity. Inaddition there are problems with the idea of following rules. Not only are rules notadequate to specify what is involved in “following” them, but there is a furtherproblem. As Winch points out, if meaning something is the same as to be seen byothers to follow a rule, then, the problem is that on this view anything (given someimagination) can be interpreted as following a rule. Clarification might be sup-posed to solve the problem. But that also seems not to be possible—since as PaulGrice (1989) points out—clarification would involve an infinite regress, eachclarification requiring a clarification, etc. So, it has seemed that we are stuck withthese ambiguities and uncertainties. As I will argue there are solutions to bothproblems. But, they require thinking about things differently.

IV RESPECIFYING SENSEMAKING AS A COLLABORATIVE PROCESS

What I suggest is that there are some rather simple—but not at all obvious—sociological insights that show how if we think about these problems a littledifferently it turns out that they were not in fact real problems in the first place.They turn out as Wittgenstein might say—to be the result of thinking about thingsthe wrong way round. In this case the mistake is invoking the idea of a constitutiveorder of use—which is essentially a reflexive social order—as if it could beanalyzed by focusing on individual units of thought and speech taken out of



sequential and reflexive context. In other words, understanding that meaning is aconstitutive social process (that meanings are made as we interact and can changewith each next move) and then not formulating that process in a sufficiently social,reflexive and constitutive way (relying on the static notion of social institutions,words, Speech Acts, or other units of meaning) has been a problem. It wouldbe something like trying to understand the game of football by reading therulebook, or examining a football, and never playing the game or even lookingat the play.

What I focus on in making my argument is the difference it makes to thinkabout making sense in a language as involving a constitutive order of “use”practices that just exists as a social institution of some sort (as in Wittgenstein’slanguage games and Searle’s Speech Acts)—and against which meanings can bemeasured and specified (as in “What are the language games for the word‘red’ ”?, or, the idea that marriage is a social object by institutional rule)—bycontrast with thinking about constitutive orders of “use” as reflexive socialorders (in which both rules and meanings change) which require the activeparticipation and commitment of more than one person at a time in order forany “meaning” to be achieved.19 Both types of meaning/order are importantand both in some sense involve the creation of social objects. But, the secondtype, constitutive orders of sensemaking, are more basic than institutionalorders, and only the second type—constitutive orders—are reflexive and situ-ated, requiring the high degree of ongoing mutual attention, cooperation andmoral equity being proposed.

In this reflexive and situated sense of constitutive “red” always occurs in asequence of action which is both constitutive of the sense of the move (turn) that“red” constitutes, and constituted by the order of the various moves (turns) thatcomprise that sense (only one of several reflexive relations involved in the processof sensemaking). Take for instance the question answer pair “What color shoesdid you wear?” “Red.”: or the turn pair “I just saw him with Janice”. “It makesme see red.”). One would want to say that these are not just language gamesinvolving the word “red” but also involving the idea that sequences of turns createspaces within which it can be expected that speakers will take certain kinds ofturns—that have a particular sort of constitutive “relevance” to the turn before, orif they don’t the lack of relevance also conveys information.

Even with regard to the idea that an individual can invoke their experience ofconstitutive practices in imagination, the American pragmatist G.H. Mead [1934]pointed out that when we try out ideas in our heads, so to speak, we invoke the“other” also in our heads to respond to those ideas—thus creating a kind ofmutual intelligibility by invoking the collaborative responses of the other. It isinteresting to note that in such thought exercises the “other” we invoke oftendisagrees with us. They can be seen to be attending to constitutive rules—not thedictates of our own interests. But, the fact that so much constitutive practice goeson “out of” consciousness as what Garfinkel calls “normally thoughtless” activity,



limits the utility of such exercises. Attention to the reflexive properties of actualsequences of talk, work and interaction is required.20

If “use” practices are considered to be constitutive of the sense to be made ofongoing social events—and involving mutual attention to reflexively relatedsequences of turns/moves—then analyzing these events cannot be done by iso-lating those use practices from the social sequences in which they are beingachieved (sequence is an emerging reflexive order and not at all the same thing ascontext). The analysis must involve consideration of what two or more are actu-ally doing together and how what they do builds an order of constitutive relevan-cies move by move as it goes. If there are not more than one cooperating together(or more than one are present but they are not cooperating and mutually attend-ing), then there is no reflexive constitutive order in play and no mutually intelli-gible sense can be made from the constitutive practice (interpretation will need tofall back on narrative, belief and attributed motivation).

The basic point is that one person alone cannot be in any meaningful sensecooperatively orienting toward a constitutive rule or rules. It takes at least two.Therefore the analysis needs to focus on the process between them as it unfolds inits witnessable empirical details.

Most philosophers and sociologists—even those who focus on language as“use” and “speech acts”—have tended to ignore this constitutive process. Dis-missing contingencies as unimportant and dismissing empirical evidence as con-tingent has been one problem. Contingencies are what real people have to dealwith. Furthermore, to the extent that empirical evidence involves observations ofcooperative rule use it is not contingent in the sense philosophers have assumed.The idea that social objects are created by social institutions has been anotherproblem. Thinking about social objects as defined by social institutions (before oroutside of actual social processes and once and for all) has very different conse-quences for the understanding of constitutive “use” practices than treating con-stitutive social orders as a separate and special way in which a very different kindof situated social object is a constant and very fragile ongoing collaborativeachievement. Constitutive orders are independent of social institutions and canand do resist them—something that Durkheim noted. Constitutive and institu-tional orders are two very different ways of approaching the problem of meaningor—mutual intelligibility. Furthermore, only the second approach is able toaccommodate contingencies.

The success of the argument, I maintain, will depend on taking the secondapproach.

V MEMBER’S METHODS FOR CONSTITUTING MUTUALLY INTELLIGIBLE

SOCIAL OBJECTS

The argument, as I make it, is indebted to Harold Garfinkel and his outline of atheory of communicative interaction. For Garfinkel (writing in 1948 a decade



before Winch) mutually intelligible meaning is the result of a mutual orientationtoward constitutive use practices. It is not surprising, therefore, that many scholarswho have been interested in Garfinkel have also taken a serious interest inWittgenstein (See the special issue on “Two Concepts of Rules” in the Journal of

Classical Sociology 2009 for an elaboration on this connection). Garfinkel’s versionof “use” and language games, however, is quite different from, and more sociallyinteractive, reflexive and situated, than that of either Wittgenstein or Winch.

Garfinkel’s approach to rules is developed through an empirical understandingof how constitutive practices are actually used to constitute mutually identifiablesocial objects in sequences of ongoing social action. Participants can be seen tomutually orient underlying constitutive presuppositions, or constitutive rules andto adjust their next moves to the relevancies projected by prior moves. They canalso be seen to interpret and change the rules with regularity. Garfinkel respecifiesuse criteria as those that “members” of such constitutive use practices recognizefor themselves as constitutive presuppositions in their actual accomplishment ofmutually intelligible action. Use criteria, on this view, include the practice ofcontinually changing those criteria (ad hocing and etcetera). This perspective alsohas the implications that failures and incongruities can be meaningfully seenagainst a specific set of constitutive presuppositions. That is, incongruities can alsoconvey meaning.

Garfinkel’s understanding of the role that orders of “use” play in communi-cation involves a complex order of reflexivity between participants. How therecipient of an action responds to a turn at talk (as acting on, or orienting, whichrule) exhibits an interpretation that constitutes the sense of the action. This ofcourse can change with the next response. Maintaining this reflexive engage-ment requires both a deep mutual commitment to the rules of play thatGarfinkel (1963) calls “Trust” and an orientation toward exhibiting both thatcommitment and the developing sense of the interaction—as matters evident inand exhibited through the moves—at all possible points—in a developing courseof constitutive action.21

In my own research with information design engineers the engineer with whomI was working put the question to me a number of times “What is a car?” “Howwould you define the essential attributes of a car?” He was not just looking for adefinition. It turned out he was thinking of something more like the Wittgenstein-ian idea that there are various language games—that of the insurance company,the police, and the registry of motor vehicles—for each of which a car would besomething different (something repairable, stealable, trackable).22 For his work asan information designer these differences were relevant. In different institutionalcontexts a car is an institutional social object that consists of different essentialparts. The “same” car is a number of quite different social objects constituted bydifferent social institutional practices (and the moral relationships involved inthose institutional practices). There would also be different work practices at eachinstitution for constituting such institutional objects.



But, another kind of answer treats the question as involving “car” as a socialobject in a reflexive moment of communicative exchange, constituted through theconstitutive use practices of talk, rather than as an object constituted by a set ofinstitutionalized social relationships. For instance, take the question “Do you havea car?” (which I realize has a different sense in the US than it does in Paris). InParis a person might mean literally “Do you have one?” as the incidence of carownership is relatively rare. But, in the US on very many sorts of occasions thequestion is not about the car, but is rather what has been identified as a “pre-request”—in this case—for a ride. This means that if the person who is asked thequestion “do you have a car?” does not indicate a negative response to thepre-request they can expect the asker to then go ahead and make a request fora ride.

In other words, persons in talking are responsible for hearing the constitutiveimplications of what others are saying: of anticipating what a turn at talk projectsas an expected next thing in a sequence. If a person makes a pre-request it should

be heard as such. There is a moral obligation involved. Competent participantsare expected to hear it that way. If you don’t hear it as following a rule aboutpre-requests, and make a response that does not treat it as a pre-request, then youwill be seen to have made a mistake—not to have followed a rule about what todo after a pre-request. This can be embarrassing and obligates others to help yousave face. It threatens the fragile worlds of interaction we build together andconveys information to others about lack of attention, lack of competence, lack ofregard for the feelings of others, etc.

Winch (1958:30) imagines that while people maybe should confirm the rulethey see the other following, they may choose not to do so.23 This he thinks is aproblem. But, studies of conversation show that this is not a problem in quite theway Winch supposes (one of the reasons why empirical studies are essential).People will sometimes do this—but not without consequences. Refusing toconfirm the rule one interprets the other as following (through silence or misin-terpretation for instance) will result in the other person making adjustments intheir presentation to clarify and repair. They will try again. Taking a turn thatdisplays a conflicting interpretation also has consequences. Repairs will be done.If the person who is refusing (or failing) to confirm continues to do so—afterseveral such adjustments (repairs) they will come under question themselves. Arethey competent? Or joking? Or a trouble maker? There is an obligation toconfirm (and to do so competently and recognizably) and people are heldaccountable moment by moment for doing so. A person who fails to exhibit thisobligation will come under question. Their motives will come into question: theirseriousness and their commitment to the job of communication in hand arequestioned if they do not meet the obligation. Failure to meet obligations withregard to constitutive background expectancies, working consensus, or benefit ofthe doubt, in turn reflects on the moral character of participants and on whetherand how others will be willing to communicate with them in the future (Garfinkel



1948, 1963; Goffman 1959). This is a strong reason why few people will refuse toconfirm the rule the other is following or orienting (except for joking which playson rule incongruity, but requires skill and can backfire on the joker. Rawls 2010).The consequences can be serious and immediate. I refer to this kind of constitu-tive obligation as self-sanctioning because consequences follow immediately froma failure to exhibit the obligation. Justification cannot repair such a failure evenwhen it is accepted as “adequate” (Rawls 1987).

There are many such sequential practices that persons engaged in interactiontogether are expected—have an obligation—to understand. Exhibiting an under-standing of these shows that one is orienting the rules—that they are committedto doing so and also competent to do so (getting it right is a demonstration ofcompetency and mutual attention—especially when things or terms areindexical—which is one reason why indeterminacy is a resource in this processand not a problem). This is how obligations of public civility and the assessmentof it come to be determinative of whether we can make sense together and who wewill believe we might be able to make sense with.

Such constitutive actions are a kind of social move that sets up expectations ina sequence of action. If after the pre-request about owning a car a person says“Yes,” (or does not make a negative indication) then the request “Can you give mea ride?” should be made (in the relevant US situation). There are obligationsinvolved. If the request does not follow as expected—then that is a problem andthe asker will be seen to have made a mistake. If the person who has said “Yes”(they have a car), goes on to respond after the request for a ride has beenmade—“Oh sorry but I didn’t bring it today”—there is also a problem. Theyhave made a mistake and will be held accountable for having not responded to theimplications of the first question. (It works the same way with any pre-request “Doyou drink coffee”, “What are you doing this weekend?” “Did you hear about soand so?” etc.) The implications of such turns at talk should be responded to. Doingso competently exhibits an understanding of those implications: It also demon-strates an understanding of the sequential rules/preference orders and a commit-ment to them. Not responding to those implications exhibits failure—of what kindthe others do not know until they pursue it for several turns and this they should do.

VI REPAIR AND SELF-SANCTIONING

The idea of “repair” involved in this is important with regard to Winch’s(1958:32) argument that a rule is only a rule in the sense that counts if one canmake a mistake in following it and if others can see or recognize this mistake andagree on it. People can be seen to make mistakes and those mistakes are taken up.If this were all a cognitive matter it would not be a sociological issue. But if the rulesets and their relevance to particular situations are social and must be displayedand responded to in recognizable and mutually validated ways to count as being



“used” then they have immense sociological relevance. If these things “must”happen in order for mutually intelligible objects and meanings to be constitutedthen there must be some ways of regulating, repairing and sanctioning mistakes.

The mechanisms for sanctioning were the focus of Durkheim’s argument inDTS and he maintained that those mechanisms change in modern society; wheresanctions once came from authority they now become self-regulating and self-organizing. His detailed focus on two types of legal process has obscured thispoint. A focus on how failures to exhibit a recognizable orientation to constitutiverules (or presuppositions) are self-sanctioned or repaired has been central to thework of Garfinkel and Goffman and to conversation analysis.24

Saying that there are obligations, that not meeting them creates “problems”,and that the others will pursue these problems and hold speakers accountable fortheir mistakes means that research on interaction and conversation has shownthat the response to errors of this kind is rather immediate. There is a “prefer-ence” for it to be immediate. There is less trouble the closer repair comes to theoriginal problem. As Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson have shown the preference isfor this process to occur as soon after the problem as possible and to allowcorrecting talk to be self-initiated (Schegloff, Jefferson and Sacks 1977). Thismeans that the listener must exhibit the problem they are hearing within fractionsof seconds (by not responding, making a face, or repeating a problematic word).Ambiguities are not just allowed to pass. There are “Troubles” (hitches, pauses,repeats, etc.) evident in the immediately following turn spaces. There is anexpectation—referred to as a “preference” that the person who has made themistake will initiate what is called a “repair” sequence given very subtle prompts.This leaves the least explicit traces of a problem. If they do not, however, otherswill call their attention to the problem. Sometimes the others will do this by tryingto repair the problem themselves. They may make a joke which while callingattention to the problem, relieves tension and realigns the mutual attention ofparticipants (if it works). As a last resort, they may tell the person who made themistake (and who has failed to make a repair) that they have made a mistake. Thisorder of preference has been exhaustively documented by Harvey Sacks, Emman-uel Schegloff, Gail Jefferson and others analyzing the sequential order of turnta-king in conversation.25

The strength of this mutual obligation to repair is essential. Not only is themeaning of words in conversation at stake (the ability to make meaning together),but as Winch goes on to say, because the language in which we speak of oursensations must be governed by rules—which are public and social—the languagein which we discuss our sensations also has a public and evidential character thatis inescapable. Our understanding of “reality” insofar as it involves the publicmutually intelligible understanding of such sensations must pass through sets ofsuch rules. Therefore, if use of the rules is not confirmed and mistakes are notmutually exhibited we stand in danger of losing contact with “reality”. Reality isfor the human social being an inherently social reality, such that according to



Winch (1958:32) even for a single individual “it is contact with other individualswhich alone makes possible an external check on one’s actions which is insepa-rable from an established standard”.

Not only do our perceptions pass through sets of constitutive rules (or consti-tutive presuppositions). But, Garfinkel points out that we tend to see only what therules specify—gestalts of socially constituted objects. In other words, we seeobjects in their social form first and it becomes very difficult to see them as “brute”perceptions. So, it becomes even more important that others cooperate to exhibitthe rules and confirm the constitutive character of social actions. For Winch thisremains a problem. But, for Garfinkel and Durkheim the empirical finding thatmutual intelligibility requires a mutual display of orientation to constitutive rulesthat are self-sanctioning solves the problem.

VII SEQUENTIAL REFLEXIVITY: RELEVANCIES THAT PROJECT FORWARD

AND BACKWARD

Mutual intelligibility is not only a matter of a connection between a word orperception and a rule for Garfinkel: Although that idea is complicated enough. Itinvolves the relationship between constitutive moves—between more than oneparticipant—in a constitutive practice going forward. Each move forward,however, also has the ability to change the meaning and relevancy of what wentbefore. A move together with its subsequent interpretations and confirmations—in a sequence—which may involve many rules, preferences and mutualaccommodations—constitute meaning (Garfinkel [1948]2006). That is whyresponding in accord with the rules (or orienting constitutive background expec-tations) is a moral imperative (Garfinkel 1963). Without that there is no way foreven one individual to know anything about themselves. Goffman and others havepointed out the consequences for the social self and its mental health that followfrom the obligation to orient others (Goffman 1959, 1961).26

Sociological studies of “Repair” work in conversation are studies of the inter-actional processes in which rules are made evident. Because “use” practices likerepair are available and participants are engaged in back and forthcollaboration—the sense of rules can be much more flexible and vague than if itwas necessary to specify every unit clearly in advance. Ironically, this vague andflexible notion of rules turns out to allow for more clarity in the end: Because thecollaborators can be counted on to see the process through. The rules distributerights and opportunities to speak across a given population of speakers (Sacks,Schegloff and Jefferson 1974). As such they are rules for how the process itselfshould be understood and managed—not for how particular words, phrases, acts,speech acts, are understood. And, the interpretation of each act in accord with arule is overshadowed by a consideration of whether or not the action adequatelyorients the need to respect the rights and responsibilities that are the underlyingcondition behind any particular iteration of rules.



This is the sense in which a more reflexive and social approach to constitutivepractices solves problems—like Winch’s point that anything can be interpreted asin accord with a rule. This may be possible when things are taken out of sequentialcontext. But, in any ongoing interaction “mistakes” are evident. One’s interpre-tations are immediately held accountable to the next turn in conversationalinteraction. If an interpretation does not match the course of action in play itimmediately leads to troubles in the communication. This practice of reflexivelybuilding a display that exhibits the building understanding achieved by partici-pants over the course of an interaction (first noted by Garfinkel in 1948) solvesGrice’s (1989) paradox—that meaning cannot be confirmed as conversation goesalong without an infinite regress. It is confirmed by the taking of confirming ordisconfirming next turns.

This way of solving Grice’s paradox does not involve clarification. It is pos-sible to exhibit one’s interpretation of rule following behavior by taking a turnthat exhibits the rule you think the other has followed/oriented, while atthe same time moving the talk forward. The first person (A) says something.The second person (B) tries to hear it as following a rule (or orienting apreference order). Then B says something that is designed to display to Athe rule they are interpreting them as having followed and the way they haveinterpreted them as following it (as involving a pre-request, a compliment, asassessment—for instance). Then A takes a turn that either confirms or deniesthis interpretation.27

For example: “Did you go?” “Yes.” “Was it good? (versus “Did you go?”Where?”) Contrary to Grice’s vision that clarifying such matters would involve aninfinite regress—in fact it can be done very efficiently. In fact, for many reasons,the fewer words the better. The more indexicality turns leave open, the more thesequence order and the relevance of turn order are required in order to display anorientation to rule, thus ensuring that the display occurs and that ambiguities donot simply pass (a point which Sacks noted early on). Consequently such displayscan be both efficient and certain.

As noted above, elaborating a comprehensive theory of use practices based onthis approach involves introducing a theory of social objects as created in andthrough constitutive practices; a distinction between constitutive orders of rule(which are prospective) and institutional orders of rule which are retrospective anddependent on accounts and justifications. It is essential that constitutive orders ofpractice are collaborations—and therefore collective moments rather than ideasor units. Taking all of this into account requires a reconceptualization of theproblem of meaning as one of communication (or interaction). A reinterpretationof Durkheim’s intention to found sociology on the idea of constitutive orders isimportant, as is a recognition of Garfinkel’s contribution to such foundationaltheoretical issues. Without this re-specification social thought remains mired in aconception of institutional orders and a consensus of beliefs that cannot explainthe ongoing management of contingencies in contemporary life and work. The



re-specifications and empirical elaborations of Garfinkel and the idea ofconstitutively ordered conversational sequencing, rescue the classic arguments ofmeaning as use, self-organizing practices, language games, and the idea that tomake sense in any of them is to orient a rule—and exhibit this to others.

VIII. POSING THE QUESTION DIFFERENTLY

What is being argued for is a different way of posing the philosophical questionabout meaning and understanding. As Winch defined the question it was “how isreality intelligible to man” (11). In Garfinkel’s re-specification the questionbecomes “how is it possible for two or more persons to make mutually intelligiblesense together or have the same social objects in front of them all?” and finally“How do we make what passes for ‘reality’ together?” These are very differentquestions. And, they suggest a different set of priorities.

Social objects exist because, as, and when we mutually constitute them. Theydepend on the details of that work and the constitutive orders involved in thecollaboration. Winch’s argument already involves the idea that social relations arean expression of reality (1958:23). The strong sociological twist on this is thatreality as we perceive it (as constituted social objects) is an expression of socialrelations: is created in and through the ideas, practices and rules used by coop-erating persons. Questions of truth and knowledge are raised in new ways.

We need to know what social structuring mechanisms (i.e., which constitutivetools for collaboration) are required in order for mutually intelligible social objectsand mutually intelligible truths to be created. And, we need to understand that theconsequences for questions of knowledge, truth and ethics will vary with theanswers. Not all approaches that treat reality as an order of social objects result inhopelessly relative notions of truth or unworkable approaches to moral questions.But, approaches that take social objects out of context and treat them as unitsrather than situated and reflexively constituted have been relativistic in this way.

There are broadly accepted ideas about society getting in the way. One impor-tant source is the misinterpretation of Durkheim. Durkheim identified onemechanism for creating social objects in common in The Elementary Forms that does

result in relativism on both counts: a traditional or ‘mechanical’ type of socialorder, having religious beliefs that are so much the same, and conducting religiousrituals in such an identical fashion that the ideas produced are also the same. But,this he argued is not the social organization characteristic of modern society.Unfortunately, the essential core of Durkheim’s epistemology (that located thebasis of six fundamental ideas in traditional societies in the enactment of sharedrituals) got confused with the argument with regard to Modernity in DTS. Reli-gious beliefs and collective representations have been conflated with enactedritual practices and the fundamental ideas they generate. As a consequence theidea that something like shared “goals and values” or a “consensus” regarding



beliefs and values is required to sustain meaning and social solidarity in all formsof society has become a staple sociological tenet and attributed to Durkheim. Thisinterpretation ignored the central point of Durkheim’s argument in DTS that anysocial form requiring this sort of consensus could not work in a modern society.The resulting structural-functional misinterpretation of Durkheim’s argument ledto the appearance of a moral relativity, and a rigidity with regard to creativity anddeviance in his work. Mainstream sociology has inherited these problems.

While it may be true that traditional and tribal societies depend on a highdegree of enforced consensus and conformity that results in a relativity withregard to morality, truth and knowledge, Durkheim’s point in DTS was to argue(by contrasting traditional and modern societies) that new forms of social orderare developing that do not depend on consensus and consequently do support ascientific idea of truth, independent of belief. Because people in modern societiesdo not share ideas and rituals to the degree required to achieve social objectsand meaning by enforced consensus they rely instead on self-organizing prac-tices. The required “sameness” in modern society needs to be achieved differ-ently (There are, of course, also many constitutive aspects of traditional societieswhich the “consensus” explanation does not cover, but because of the availabil-ity of shared beliefs and narrative this is not so obvious or necessary in thatcontext).

The question regarding modern society I want to pose as follows: When two ormore people do not share a framework of belief and ritual (or a narrative accountof a shared world) that is sufficient to sustain a common world and common ideas(as is often the case in modern public spaces and workplaces) then what makes itpossible on any given occasion for them to know just exactly what the other meansby what they say or do? Just what do the indexical symbols and expressions thatcharacterize everyday communication mean right “now”? Could there be somesocial mechanism—some constitutive orders of use—that people have at theirdisposal with which to construct a world in common when narrative consensus isnot possible?

Durkheim and Garfinkel have argued that there is such a constitutive order. Ifwe can identify the constitutive social practices that make mutually intelligiblesocial objects possible, then there will also be consequences for thinking about“truth” “reality” and “information” (Garfinkel [1952]2008). Information, forinstance, also turns out to be a social object (a big problem in information systemdesign right now. See Rawls, Mann, Garcia, David and Burton 2009, and Rawlsand Mann unpublished). There will be consequences for the way we think aboutsocial as well as moral relationships because such a set of constitutive principles oforder would be a moral good and commitment to them would be in turn a moralimperative. In a way that is analogous to the role played by religion (in creatingcore ideas) in Durkheim’s argument about traditional society these constitutiverules (and the mutual commitment to them) would be what make human reasonpossible in a modern differentiated context.



It was Winch’s criticism that sociology did not take seriously the epistemologicalissues that stand at its core. Durkheim did work out an epistemology built on theidea of constitutive social facts—although problems remained. Garfinkel madethe same criticisms of sociology that Winch did—a decade earlier in 1948.28 Thejob of both sociology and philosophy is the same: to explain how people makesense, how they know reality, without just assuming mutually intelligible languageand objects. Then to explore the consequences for truth, science, information,ethics, etc. Not only is the job the same. But, in my view it is a job that can onlybe done empirically. For this reason Durkheim argued that the basic questionsmust be redefined from a perspective that begins with the individual to one thatfocuses on the empirical forms of social cooperation. Ultimately that is also animplication of Wittgenstein. It is unfortunate that sociology for the most part hasabdicated its responsibility for these questions and instead approached the idea ofbeing “empirical” as a job of counting concepts.29 Certainly this practice of“polling,” as Grice (1989) called it, has no relevance to these essentialphilosophical/sociological questions. It is essential to articulate a philosophy ofsocial science that is based on social facts and takes constitutive social processesinto account.

Empirical—as I have tried to illustrate it here briefly—means something verydifferent from “polling” in the line of argument from Durkheim to Garfinkelfocused on constitutive practices. It means inspecting the mutually engagedexchange of turns of action between cooperating “members” of socialoccasions—as rule orienting and as exhibiting that quality—in a way that orientsnot a set of institutionalized rules—but an ongoing constitutive sequential order ofsensemaking. The process is much more fluid and flexible than Wittgensteinenvisioned. It is a process in which vagueness turns out to be a positive resourceand not a problem because handling it (as indexicality) involves a display thatconveys information—something that could only have been discovered empiri-cally and which is only evident over a course of turns. Nothing in Winch or incurrent philosophy of social sciences has this focus.

Contemporary discoveries regarding constitutive practices not only jointogether efforts that have been ongoing in parallel within philosophy and sociol-ogy for over a century; they also implicate the natural sciences, engineering anddesigned technologies in epistemological and moral questions. All of these haveincorporated models of social and language process into their design. Most treatmeanings as discrete objects that can be defined out of context. This is proving tobe a problem as information systems become more complex and interactive.Every piece of information, every scientific fact, is also in some very substantialsense a social object—and needs to be understood in relation to the constitutivesocial practices that constitute it (something that is motivating some very impor-tant studies in the sociology of science, work and technology. See Lynch1993, Stivers, Mondada and Steensig 2011, Heath and Luff 2004, Suchman2007, Maynard 2004). Changing our conception of how language works as a



cooperative constitutive process changes the understanding of what informationis (see Garfinkel [1952]2008). In the information age this is an importantchallenge (Rawls, Mann, Garcia, David and Burton 2009, and Rawls and Mannunpublished).

One final note about the implications for Ethics: While Wittgenstein may beright that talk about values is meaningless, the architecture of constitutive orders ofreflexivity and its mutual obligations are moral in a very different sense. Theyactually create the possibility of mutual sensemaking. They are not talk about

values. But, as a mechanism for cooperation they make any meaningful mutuallyintelligible talk possible. They make it possible to have something to value. And,they are in some significant sense in themselves true. As such we can have adifferent kind of discussion about their desirability and necessity. It is the kind ofdiscussion Durkheim said in 1893 we should have about the constitutive ordersthat he argued would become the basis of public civility and sensemaking inmodern differentiated societies.

Anne Rawls

Bentley University

75 Forest Street

Waltham, MA 02452

USA

[email protected]

Acknowledgments. An earlier version of this paper was presented as a lecture at theSorbonne in a Seminar on Wittgenstein organized by Sandra Laugier in June2010. I need to thank both Sandra Laugier and Albert Ogien for the invitation.The context was one in which the relationship between Wittgenstein, Winch andGarfinkel was directly implicated; in the context of a new “ethics of care” thatfocused on issues of mutual attention—in this case as a feminist issue: a conjunc-tion of ideas that the intellectual situation in Paris facilitates—but which is difficultto achieve elsewhere.

NOTES

1 There are several sets of lectures on rules given by Garfinkel in the early 1970’s. Hegave me these lectures in 1986 and asked me to make a commitment to publish them at amuch later date. They will soon appear in a volume devoted entirely to Garfinkel’s lectureson rules. He argues that there are tacit assumptions about what orienting specific rulesinvolves. There are tacit assumptions about procedures. In orienting rules all these tacitmatters are assumed. Competence requires exhibiting an understanding of them.

2 Jerome Bruner has argued that the ability to make meaning together presupposes thecapacity to create narrative worlds (see Acts of Meaning 1990). He has called his approach“cultural psychology”. There was an early collaboration between Garfinkel and Bruner ona research project at Harvard in 1946–47 in which they asked questions about how the



American perception of Russia was constituted. See Smith, Bruner, White 1956 for adiscussion of this research project (for which interviews were all recorded and transcribed).Garfinkel administered an “Information Apperception Test” for this research project thatmay be the origin of the line of thought that resulted in his 1963 paper on “Trust”. Bruner’slater references to Garfinkel, unusual for a psychologist, make sense in light of this earlycollaboration. Bruner seems, however, to have fallen in to some extent with the popularmis-interpretations of Garfinkel’s work which treat the focus on constitutive rules as a kindof Rational Choice Theory, rather than an examination of the reflexive and constitutiveaspects of perception and meaning making that it is.

3 To the extent that other species can be said to be communicating it is already beingargued that they do so by following rules in what are being called “self-organizing”systems—the same language used by Durkheim in DTS. See David J.T. Sumpter, 2006 foran overview of this research.

4 The idea of “orienting” objects and rules is an important one. Its use stands for theidea in Garfinkel’s approach that an “identified” individual engaged in interaction isabsorbed in the task and orienting the rules and other tacit requirements of the workinvolved. As a term it was intended to preserve the member’s perspective as an activeparticipant in an ongoing stream of interaction and to avoid the mistake of taking theactor’s retrospective attitude as the attitude of the orienting actor actively engaged inproducing a turn of action (See Garfinkel [1948]2006).

5 The book is referred to by an abbreviation of its French title. The original English titlereflects a misunderstanding of the French. It should be The Division of Social Labor. There areserious consequences for the understanding of the argument. A new edition by ParadigmPublishers will correct this problem.

6 See Rawls 2012 for an elaboration on Durkheim’s theory of the constitutive characterof social order in modernity.

7 (1893: 404F) « Les règles qui la constituent n’ont pas une force contraignante quiétouffe le libre examen; mais parce qu’elles sont davantage faites pour nous et, dans uncertain sens, par nous, nous sommes plus libres vis-à-vis d’elles. »

8 (1893: 380F) « . . . il se trouve que la liberté elle-même est produit d’une réglemen-tation. »

9 (1893: 380F) « . . . il est faux que toute réglementation soit le produit de la con-trainte . . . »

10 (1893: 376F) « Il faut donc que toute contrainte soit absente . . . »11 (1893: 375 F) « . . . il ne suffit pas que l’autorit publique veille a ce que les engage-

ments contractés soient tenus; il faut encore que, du moins dans le grande moyenne des cas,ils soient spontanément tenus. »

12 (1893:XXXIV) « Un tel vice de constitution n’est évidemment pas un mal local, limitea une région do la société; c’est une malade totius substantiae, qui affecte tout l’organisme . . . »

13 I am trying to make a distinction here between traditional constraint basedconsensus and the spontaneous consensus of parts that characterizes modern consti-tutive practices. Durkheim uses the word consensus is talking about both. But he is clearthat in the second case consensus is spontaneous and does not involve constraint.Because of the prevalence of treating his use of consensus in all cases as indicatinga traditional consensus of beliefs and values that is constraining I make the attemptto clarify.

14 Scholars often make the assumption that because modern society works there mustbe some general consensus. But they are making this assumption based on their beliefthat consensus is required for a group of people to coordinate their activities. Theassumption is made in the face of daily experience of an almost total lack of sharedbelief, value and attitude in the general population. If one drops the idea that consensus



is necessary for a moment and considers instead that it might be possible to coordinatethe activities of a large number of persons by orienting rules then it becomes apparentthat no consensus on ideas, beliefs, attitude etc. would be necessary in order to do so.All that is required is that participants be orienting toward the same set of rules andunderstanding this about eachother—Garfinkel’s trust requirement of stable concertedinteraction.

15 There are implications for philosophies that focus on justification and excusing as away of understanding the constitutive requirements of ordinary talk (see Austin 1955,Brandom 1994, Pomerantz 1989).

16 Private communication. See also Garfinkel 2007 for a commentary on this view ofDurkheim.

17 While Garfinkel and Durkheim directly address the question of the moral require-ments of constitutive and self-organizing practices Wittgenstein does not. Searle (1964)does. The implications are important. If meaning and identity depend on mutual commit-ment to practices then those practices are constitutive of what is most necessary to socialbeings (see Rawls 2010).

18 Saul Kripke has offered a different set of explanations and correctives for this problemof uncertainty in his modal logic and Kripke semantics. While there are some similaritiesbetween Kripke and Garfinkel, in a very basic sense the two lines of argument are entirelydifferent. We might say that Kripke moves in one direction toward what one might callbounded logical certainly, while Garfinkel moves in the other toward an unboundedindexical sense of overlapping publics based on a commitment to constitutive rules. Thedemonstrations of certainty in Garfinkel’s work and in conversation analysis depend oncontingent and reflexive details and a mutual commitment that at least so far have not beenrendered as logics.

19 I realize that for many people the difference between constitutive rules and insti-tutional rules is not clear. They are quite different. But, the difference is complicatedand has led to a great deal of misinterpretation. To greatly oversimplify, in an institutionthe rules describe an idealized order of work or play that is rarely actualized. C. W. Mills(1940) argued that institutions operate as a set of narrative accounts that looselygovern action within the institution. In constitutive practices the rules are directlyrelated to the actual moves of the play and in cooperative use are directly constitutive ofthe objects and meanings that are created. In Garfinkel’s terms a constitutive practiceand the actual work of enacting it could in some cases be a Lebenswelt Pair: in whichthe constitutive practice perfectly describes the steps of creating the relevant socialobjects. A number of attempts have been made to clarify the difference between con-stitutive and institutional (or “summary”) rules over the years, especially since Rawls1955. See the Special Issue of the Journal of Classical Sociology devoted to this question in2009(4) Rawls 2009, Coulter 2009, Manning 2009, Sharrock and Greiffenhagen 2009,Ogien 2009, Cicourel 2009.

20 The suggestion has been made that Mead and Vygotsky have addressed the sameissue from a more psychological standpoint. Bruner also connects Vygotsky with thisquestion. But, I think there are several important differences. For Mead and Vygotsky thedistinction between “natural” objects and mediated social objects is produced by socialinteraction around an object. For Durkheim, and even more significantly for Garfinkel,even the perception of “natural” objects involves social processes. Interaction does notrelate to objects—it creates them. Perception itself is in most ways that matter a socialprocess. Mead and Vygotsky would relate social interaction to the structure of meaning.For Garfinkel social interaction (and its rules) is the structure of meaning. For Durkheimand Garfinkel the reciprocity of experience is a tenuous achievement requiring cooperationin sets of rules over a course of action. The focus is on meaning as a process and on its



reflexive character—each next move can change the objects. No meaningful objects arenatural.

21 Garfinkel and Egon Brunswik (1937) both referred to aspects of the process ofperception as a natural experiment. In Garfinkel’s case ([1948]2006) each conversationalexchange is an experiment in which both hearer and listener make interpretations of whatthe turn they heard most probably is (the rule and tacit assumptions it most probablyorients) and then exhibit that interpretation in a responding action, or turn. The interpre-tations are only probable and often need to be corrected. But, they are corrected andprobability through this process becomes certainty.

22 Garfinkel and Sacks referred to such category relevant terms as “Membership Cat-egorization Devices”—the first example of which involved the distinction between “pos-sessitives” vs “possessibles” with reference to cars and policing. This marked abreakthrough in their early discussions about the social organization of language (1960–2).

23 Kripke (1982) is not mentioned in this context, although he made a similar point,because I am accepting the point that any action can be retrospectively accounted for orjustified as following a rule and arguing that the point is not relevant to what actuallyhappens in interaction prospectively. Accounts and justifications only come into playretrospectively. If there is a prospective order by rule they could have nothing to do withits recognizable character. This point needs to be emphasized. The observations aboutrules by Winch and Kripke do not apply to the case of orienting rules in sequences ofconversation because the demonstration of rule orientation is ongoing and constitutive ofmutual intelligibility. If meaning fails and one is asked for a justification, reason orexcuse—then of course anything can be made to look like it is following a rule retrospec-tively. The argument is that this is not the case prospectively: going forward. The adequacyof one’s orientation toward and confirmation of rules is entirely a matter of whether or notin an actual sequence of moves/turns with others those others were able to both see andconfirm the rules that were being oriented. Agreement on exactly one interpretation of therule in question for each move is required.

24 Sacks sometimes referred to these as “devices” for doing something, rather thanreferring to them as rules.

25 Turn-taking preferences are often treated as “linguistic” rules, which tends toobscure their relevance to mutual obligations. They are interaction obligations and theirrelevance to making meaning together cannot be adequately specified as linguistic. SeeRawls 2010 for a discussion of turntaking preference orders and their relation toGarfinkel’s Trust requirement and Goffman’s working consensus—that is, their relation-ship to morality.

26 The individual who does not orient shared rules produces a unique set of objects andmeanings. Their actions in orienting those objects and meanings will quite naturally seemstrange to others. Goffman, along with several other thinkers at the time includingGarfinkel treats at least some aspects of mental health as a social identity or label thatresults from some consistent production of unexpected behavior. The person who producesunexpected behavior is finally judged by others to be incompetent in ways that requiremedical help and the process of becoming mentally ill is consecrated by processes oflabeling, being talked about while present, and other interactional forms of stigma andavoidance that Goffman documents (1961).

27 A discussion of “A” and “B” taking a series of interpreting turns that aremutually confirming and rule orienting appears in Garfinkel [1948]2006: 184. The ideathat Garfinkel was outlining there was elaborated in greater detail in the work of HarveySacks, Gail Jefferson, Emmanuel Schegloff and Anita Pomerantz often referred toas Conversation Analysis. Garfinkel’s idea that perception is a matter of interpretationand confirmation is similar to Egon Brunswik’s argument that perception is a matter of



interpretation and probability. The big difference is that in Garfinkel’s case the interpre-tations are confirmed by persons cooperating in the use of sets of rules.

28 Unfortunately, much of Garfinkel’s early work remained unpublished. There aremany reasons. But, in the archives there are rejection letters from journals to which hisearly work was submitted. Editors like Herbert Blumer whom one might have supposedwould have been sympathetic told Garfinkel quite explicitly that his work was not sociologyat all and refused even to have it reviewed.

29 Counting concepts refers to the prevalent methodological practice of operationalizingand clarifying concepts and aggregating attitudes and beliefs across demographic popula-tions that have been classified conceptually.

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