Reading

Recently, I had the luxury of purchasing a lot of books from amazon using some consultancy money. One that I am enjoying is an edited collection by Hester and Francis on 'respecifying sociological knowledge'. Last night I was re-reading the first chapter (written by the authors)which forms an introudction. Here's a bit that i really liked and try to keep in my head,

"... the general thrust of Garfinkel's argument is exemplified by his remarks on the use of the 'first rendering theorem' and so we will comment briefly on this. Thus by, 'the first rendering theorem' Garfinkel refers to the practice amongst social scientists of transforming ordinary actions into analytic objects, or more precisely, instances of theoretical phenomenona. The process of transformation is premised on the position that there is 'no order in the plenum'. In other words, ordinary 'concrete' social life can only properly be understood by being transformed into analytical objects since only the latter enable orderliness to be displayed. In this transformation, the original orderliness of the phenomena, as it was produced by the parties to it such that it was intelligible as the phenomenon it was, is lost from view." (Hester and Francis, 2007, p. 8)

So, you see why I can't keep it in my head. At the same time, the idea is the core of ethnomethodological work so I need to.