This book has its origins in discussions I had with Jeff Coulter and Lena Jayyusi whilst I was on fellowship leave at Boston University. Aspects of the turbulent relationship between ethnomethodology and sociology (and as we came to argue, the human sciences) perplexed us. The first was that despite the fact that ethnomethodology has, during thirty or more years of ethnomethodological studies, provided a respecification of foundational matters for sociology, in the main, the discipline blithely carries on as usual. For example, the indifference that is shown to the radicalising respecification of sociological method is astounding for a subject that, above others in the human sciences, attempts to ensure that its students are methodologically trained.

The second aspect concerns the fact that although ethnomethodology is, in part, the product of Garfinkel's problem of operationalising Parson's theory of social action in situated circumstances of action, and is thus firmly rooted and located within sociology, his problem leaks into the other human sciences. This is because, although the disciplines propose separate and sometimes exclusive topics of enquiry, they have conceptual, methodological, epistemological, theoretical, and other foundations in common. In many respects, however, the human sciences at large are unaware of the foundational respecification that is proposed by ethnomethodology and the significance, or at least the implication, this respecification has for them.

The third feature was that within sociology, yet also within other departments of the human sciences that have engaged some ethnomethodological studies (often those in conversation analysis), there persists an obstinate, at times almost wilfully malicious misunderstanding of an ethnomethodological study policy.