Differentiating Regulative and Constitutive Normativity: Talcott Parsons, Harold Garfinkel and the Sticky Problem of Meaning

ABSTRACT In everyday life, individuals regularly confront novel situations which demand their attention and response. In such situations, they routinely deploy portable norms to select between appropriate and inappropriate next actions. Yet, these norms do not seem to determine the conditions of their own application. How then are we able to act in an orderly and mutually intelligible manner? This paper examines two attempts to answer this question, neither of which is entirely satisfactory. Talcott Parsons solves this ‘problem of meaning’ by postulating the existence of a cultural system that governs the applicability of shared norms. By contrast, Harold Garfinkel's ethnomethodology prioritises actors' own methods of in situ sense‐making, drawing attention to contextually specific practices for securing intersubjectivity. Although Garfinkel's approach resolves some problems with the Parsonian account, I argue that his break with Parsons introduces a conceptual slippage between regulative and constitutive normativity. In view of this, the final section argues that contemporary social theory would benefit from renewed attention to the mutual autonomy of these two phenomena.