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needs no remedy as such, because order is to be found in this alleged chaos. It is here that Garfinkel radically departs
from Parsons s so-called plenum and provides a corrective to the structural-functional strain that has, until recently,
dominated the sociological landscape.
Order as a contingent property of social action, however, presents difficulties of its own. From a naïve
situational perspective, it seems implausible to suggest that members relative to a context of interaction simply make it up
as they go. This, of course, is not exactly what ethnomethodologists are claiming. However, to argue that intelligibility
and meaning are indeterminate outside of particular interactive contexts is to restrict the meaning of words and
expressions to the immediate situation in which they are uttered. If order/structure is a constitutive property of such local
intelligibility and meaning, then it becomes a mystery as to what it is that provides language its structure. In other words,
while it is true that members methods of creating order do not follow a script per se, it is also true that these same
methods, however contextually bound they may be, cannot be created ex nihilo moment by moment.
The problem can be illustrated further through an analogy. The construction of a building, for example, is
something locally produced, i.e., a site specific accomplishment under normal circumstances. Nevertheless, the technical
means, blueprints and materials by which a building is constructed are typically not manufactured on site. The workers
bring a variety of skills and resources to the site, which make the building s construction possible. All sorts of
preconditions must be present before the construction project can begin. This is not to say that innovation or creativity
are absent, but in normal day to day work following certain guidelines, standards or codes allows for a smooth and
predictable set of practices that everyone can recognize for coordinating activities. Without such normalizing
preconditions
shared skills, common resources and understanding
the complex task of constructing a building would,
at minimum, be extremely cumbersome and chaotic.
In a similar fashion, we rely on shared background assumptions, knowledge and know-how to coordinate our
communicative activities. Certain preconditions must be present for members to maintain and reorient their surroundings
when communicating. Most ordinary, everyday communication is rather mundane and routine. We engage in
predictable patterns of speech that are not always new or innovative but recapitulate things we ve said many times before
and in familiar situations. For instance, I repeat a familiar interactive ritual on almost a daily basis. I walk into my usual
coffee house, set my things down at a table, go to the counter and say Hi Sam. How s it going? Sam replies with
Convention