Garfinkel

Garfinkel is a surname, most prominently associated with Harold Garfinkel (1917–2011), an American sociologist who founded ethnomethodology. Ethnomethodology is the study of the methods people use in everyday life to construct and maintain a shared sense of social order. Garfinkel argued that social order is produced by participants through routine activities, talk, and practices, rather than being imposed by abstract theories.

In his research, he and his collaborators employed breaching experiments—deliberate disruptions of social norms—to reveal the tacit rules and expectations people rely on. His work emphasized the practical, situated nature of knowledge and the reflexive ways in which individuals interpret each other’s actions. He also highlighted concepts such as accountability and indexicality, whereby the meaning of utterances depends on the context in which they are used.

His landmark publication, Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967), helped establish the field and influenced a wide range of disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, linguistics, and organization studies. Ethnomethodology remains a foundational approach for researchers interested in how ordinary people produce social order in daily life.

Beyond Harold Garfinkel, the surname has been borne by other individuals in academia and various fields, but Harold Garfinkel remains the most prominent figure associated with the name in scholarly literature.