Ethnomethodology as an alternative method for the qualitative study of challenging social arenas: The Nightclub

The current paper discusses the possibility of employing an ethnomethodological research model to generate qualitative data in challenging social contexts, where conventional procedures and techniques present a number of difficulties. These are social settings where it is either difficult or unnecessary to observe or conduct interviews for a variety of reasons. Through basic immersion and documentation of the scene’s phenomena, ethnomethodology enables the gathering, selection, and analysis of valuable data by utilizing the viewpoint of the researcher-expert who has membership knowledge after being acquainted with the scene under study. The study’s question is whether and to what extent ethnomethodologically produced descriptions, categories, and relationships can be legitimately used in qualitative research aimed at generating theory or identifying more general patterns, given its emphasis on how social order is produced through interaction and its seeming refusal to acknowledge the influence of general norms. The nightclub dance floor was selected as the challenging terrain for evaluation, and one of the ethnomethodology-specific techniques was used to investigate it (ten Have, 2004). The research findings were examined to determine their suitability for traditional qualitative analysis. Beyond the inherent findings of the ethnomethodological research, which are intriguing in and of themselves, the endeavor’s conclusion is that ethnomethodology can generate, from the bottom up, data in the aforementioned challenging spaces that construct the actual forms of the background values, beliefs, and norms present in the scenes under study. These forms can then be utilized for the development or production of concepts and theory.