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This article provides information about the Phenomenology and Ethnomethodology:
Literally, phenomenology is the study of phenomena; appearances of thing or things as they appear in our experience or the ways we experience things. Phenomenology studies various experience as experienced from the subjective or the first person point of view.
https://www.sociologydiscussion.com/development/notes-on-phenomenology-and-ethnomethodology/1113
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Phenomenology is a 20th century philosophical way of thinking about the nature of reality, which has influenced sociology. The German philosopher Edward Hussral is closely linked with phenomenology. Phenomenology argues that the only “phenomena” that we can be sure of is that we are conscious thinking beings therefore we should study any phenomena around us in terms of the way we consciously experience them.
This examination should be free of pre-conceptions of causal ideas. These ideas influenced sociologists such as Alfred Schutz who thought that sociology should look at the way individual construct the social world. Phenomenology is used in two basic ways in sociology: (1) to theorise about substantive sociological problems, (2) to enhance the adequacy of sociological research methods. There are two expressions of this approach, which are constructivism and ethnomethodology. Ethnomethodology integrates the Parsonian concern for social order into phenomenology and examines the means by which action make ordinary life possible.
Ethnomethodology as a sociological perspective was founded by American sociologist Harold Garfinkel is early 1960s. The main ideas behind it are set out in his book Studies in Ethnomethodology. It differs from their sociological perspectives in the way that which all the perspectives pre-suppose that social world is orderly, ethnomethodologists start out with the assumption that social order is illusory. For them social order is constructed in the minds of social actors as society confront the individual as a series of sense impressions and experiences which she or he must somehow organise into a coherent pattern.
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However, along with the changes in the broader perspectives in the development studies there can be seen another trend of changes in the approaches. The development approach gradually started to be more specialised and specific. It has become more local and regional in orientation. The early and the modern thinkers of development have been fundamentally associated with theoretical orientation of structuralism but the later development thinking has rejected this view. This approach exhibits more diversities in theoretical orientation.
The earlier groups are concerned with generalised theoretical orientation having world – wide application for development. But the present development thinking does not believe in general application of generalised theories. Now the development approaches are not relevant across the wider regions. This development approaches are related not only to growth but to what kind of growth, not simply to development but what kind of development. This has helped in emergence of approaches in diverse new directions which have come to be known as sustainable development, people- friendly growth, pro-poor growth, etc. Now the development approach is related to groups, actor- oriented approach, and participatory approach.