The New Conservatives: Ethnomethodologists, Phenomenologists, and Symbolic Interactionists

Abstract

As Sorokin has pointed out (1956), sociological theories, like other theories, may be nothing more than attempts to explain some contemporary event in terms that &dquo;seem right&dquo; to the theorist and his audience. In fact, Gouldner (1970) has suggested that the mark of a good theory is the gut-level feeling that it fits the historical moment; it makes sense of events otherwise too depressing to contemplate, or too disjointed and random to understand. The recent growth of publications in ethnomethodology, phenomenology, and symbolic interaction may illustrate this phenomenon.(Symbolic interactionism, of course, is not a new theoretical perspective, but must be treated in conjunction with the two former theoretical perspectives because of similarities in structure, purpose, and intellectual origin.) We would like to examine the implications of these theoretical models for contemporary sociology. It is important to note that these theories have implications at two levels: the methodological and the political.These theories implicitly deny the generalizability of any theory of social change, and at the same time give a superficial sense of universal understanding of society. We are not arguing that case studies cannot lead to under-

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