Smithing Queer Empiricism: Engaging Ethnomethodology for a Queer Social Science

Abstract

Is queer social science possible? Early queer theorists disparaged empiricism as a normalizing, modernist discourse. Nonetheless, LGBTQI+ social scientists have applied queer concepts in empirical projects. Rather than seek a queer method, we ask, Is there an empirical perspective that (ontologically) envisions social relations more queerly—attending to discursive and materialist productions of reality? Dorothy Smith’s work foregrounds people’s activities of engaging texts and satisfies Black queer studies’ and new materialisms’ critiques of early queer theory. Underutilized and often misread, especially its ethnomethodological sensibilities and its vision of actors as relational, practical actors, her work shows how my race is not mine, it is ours; your sexual orientation is not yours, it is ours; their gender is not theirs, it is ours. Smith offers an ontology without essence, grand theory, or normativity, facilitating a range of queer, interpretive projects—from the intersectional to the transnational to the embodied.

Queering Doing Gender: The Curious Absence of Ethnomethodology in Gender Studies and in Sociology

“…Doing gender is a relational, negotiated activity, constantly in production in situations (West and Fenstermaker 2002; West and Zimmerman 2009), which posits gender as in motion and malleable over time (Crawley and Green 2021). Specifically, my gender (or race or class or sexuality) is not mine; it is ours (Crawley et al 2021). Meaning-making happens in real time, in interaction between people; it is joint “communicative effort” (Garfinkel 2006; Rawls 2006).…”

“…Importantly, the work of West and Zimmerman, Kessler and McKenna, and Dorothy Smith rely on Garfinkel’s articulation of the practical and artful Garfinkel’s production of reality , which rather queerly puts forth an ontology without an essence (Crawley et al 2021) and, although focused on gender, can similarly facilitate anti-racist scholarship (Berbrier 2008; Rawls and Duck 2020). EM is concerned with “actions more than things” and is “attuned to communicative action” or “how reality is produced” (Gubrium and Holstein 1997:8), which focuses on the production of realities in situ (Fox 2006; Maynard 1991).…”

“…EM does not envision actors or action as taking place by unitary, whole persons who are imbued with motive—that is, the modernist notion of self (Garfinkel 2006; Rawls 2006). Quite the opposite of positing a Cartesian actor, EM posits relational, practical actors— situated action in which people work jointly to produce a situational order—connecting institutional texts, social interaction, and putative identities (Crawley et al 2021; Smith 2005). Ultimately, scholars reading “doing” as an individuated act of performance miss West and Zimmerman’s most important point—the centrality of accounts of and accountability to sex category (Hollander 2013; West and Fenstermaker 2002; West and Zimmerman 1987, 2009).…”

“…Yet this means Risman and colleagues and Lorber overlook West and Zimmerman’s and Smith’s EM focus on the inseparable and mutually constitutive production of the institutional and interactional. 6 Utilizing EM sensibilities and refuting the thingification of concepts like social structure (Crawley et al 2021), Smith (1987, 1990, 1999, 2005) instead focuses on people’s doings in situ within the context of extralocal relations of ruling—an interpretive stance that shuns realism and the supposed micro/macro split.…”

“…Alternatively, most gender scholars outside sociology follow Butler’s (1990) poststructuralism, focusing almost entirely on discourse, not interaction. This leaves ethnomethodology as a particular kind of interpretive sociology, little known or understood (Brickell 2006; Crawley, Whitlock, and Earles 2021), and stripped of its potentially critical edge and empirical potential. Challenging realism, individualism, and naturalism through EM, West and Zimmerman’s major contribution—that gender and sex are ongoing social accomplishments—remains insufficiently mined, including how it might apply to sociologies of race and sexuality.…”