Observing Ethnomethodology: The Practical Logic of Social Systems Theory Liu Yu Cheng PhD Student, Dept. of Sociology, National Chengchi University, Taiwan [email protected]

Ⅰ Foundations of Luhmann and Garfinkel’s Thoughts This essay concerns mainly with the relationship between social systems theory developed by German social theorist Niklas Luhmann and ethnomethodology (abbrev. EM in the below) of Harold Garfinkel, and suggests three arguments about this. The first one assumes that social systems theory at a macro level and EM at a relatively micro level do not contradict mutually, rather, they are complementary to each other. Secondly, it also states that EM can also be the micro target of social systems theory via applying a second-order observation. And thirdly, since this target has been emphasized by many contemporary researchers, it seems that regarding EM as the practical logic of social systems theory which concerns sociological studies is quite a possible way to this extent. 1 This definitely needs to be articulated more carefully. Arising out of these three arguments, we can find several concepts differ in these two theories, but have indeed been paralleling at different levels. And then I will concentrate on the last one which of my most interest. Although these two theories are of different origins, there are similarities between them. Luhmann develops his grand-scaled theory from biology of Maturana and Varela, the second-order cybernetics of von Foerster, logistics of Spencer Brown, and constructivism. In addition, he also modifies or even reconstructs Parsons’ systems theory while substituting the role of actor for “communication”.2 However, Garfinkel develops his This argument can be developed initially also from the phenomenological legacies according to Husserl, Heidegger, then Schutz, etc., although they differ in some respects. Since Heidegger has already inverted Husserl’s emphasis of theory over praxis which then represented as ready-to-hand over present-at-hand in Being and Time. Heidegger does indeed open up the possibilities to reconsider that we can start with this inversion and indicate the connection between theory and methodology, in this respect, from EM to social systems theory. 2 Although social systems theory has these traditions can be traced, they are nonetheless respectively constructing the theory. Thus, Luhmann was considered neither as a structural functionalist, nor a neofunctionalist, nor a postmodernist. (Fuchs, Review, p. 117) 1

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ethnomethodology from the phenomenology of Husserl and Schutz, and linguistic traditions as well. Especially while concerning the conversations analysis, which is the main theme of ethnomethodology, this connection becomes clearer than others. Besides, the relationship between EM and phenomenology has been claimed by Garfinkel himself, and also by later scholars.3 However, in spite of these different bearings, these two theories have something in common. On the one hand, social systems theory also derives several ideas from phenomenology of Husserl, such as the concept of horizon, the distinction of cognitive and normative expectations 4, or even his own declaration that the uncovering of the ultimate end of the world, which means the grasping and reduction of complexity, must depend on the transcendental phenomenology. This orientation definitely refers to both Husserl and Schutz. (Bednarz, 1984: 55) On the other hand, Garfinkel’s investigations of the daily practical actions and common sense knowledge do not exclude the possible effects of structures, nor do they indicate that successful ethnomethodological inquiries have to lose or sacrifice the issues of structure.5 Since the daily conversations and common sense knowledge, or even those unnoticed rules are products of an ongoing accomplishment, Garfinkel, and Luhmann as well will be both regarded as constructivists in this sense.6 Ⅱ Affinities We firstly start with this question “what is ethnomethodology?” which is also one of the subtitles in Garfinkel’s book, and then clarify its rationale for the further inquiries. According to him, the term “ethnomethodology” means: [T]he investigation of the rational properties of indexical expressions and other practical actions as contingent ongoing accomplishments of organized artful Kenneth Leiter (1980) has offered an excellent explanation about the relationship between phenomenology and ethnomethodology. Subtle analyses of this are also to be found in Garfinkel’s Studies in Ethnomethodology. 4 Of which derived from Husserl’s distinction of open and problematic possibilities. See also Schutz’s discussion of these ideas. Schutz, Collected Papers, p. 79-82. 5 Garfinkel, Ethnomethodology’s Program, p. 124. 6 Although Garfinkel confirms his stance of this by stating that “we decided to reject any notions regarding how the world ‘really’ is”, hence abandons any possibility of ontological viewing of society and member’s actions, and then adopts the phenomenological concepts from Husserl and Schutz, while simultaneously leaves aside the concept of “transcendental subject” of the former. (2006: 117) 3

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practices of everyday life.7

This definition has been given some clear and important implications since then. First of all, while regarding it as a method, its researching targets are conditioned within this “life world”, which means everything happened and experienced in our daily life. Among these, there exist several features concerning of people’s actions. The term “action” refers to some kinds of behavior performed by someone for some reasons and achieving some purposes with regard to a time parameter. Garfinkel (2006: 102-4), following Edmund Husserl, uses this term to mean “meaningful or intentional experience”, compared with “conduct”. This “meaningful or intentional” also denotes the premise of a preconceived condition which informs this action. The action performed by people also indicates a concept of process, which means that oriented by the present in the sense of Schutz’s distinction between “act” and “action”. The former can only be recognized while it has been performed, since it exists in the past, it can also be projected potentially into the future; hence it refers to both the past and the future. However, the later is bound to the present. Action is a process which always orients towards projects, and therefore exists in a continuing achievement. This distinction offered by Schutz contributes to demonstrating and understanding what Garfinkel terms “practice” and its relation to the ongoing accomplishments of everyday life. 8 Furthermore, this also contributes to the social reality analyzed by Luhmann with regard to the time relation between system and environment. 9 Luhmann makes a similar distinction as those phenomenological legacies did. Although at quite different levels, we still have connections between them. He distinguishes social systems from interaction systems, and thereby society from interactions. Within the latter further indicates the difference between perception and communication, which quite similarly corresponds to act and action, although the former replaced by Luhmann with the term “episode”. (1995: 406) Besides, only communications constitute social systems as if perceptual processes constituting interaction systems. (Luhmann, 1995:412) This essay argues EM, p. 11. In the remaining parts of this essay, we will adopt a loose application of the distinction of act and action, and regard it as two sides of a coin, therefore as a unity of differences. 9 Refers to the article ‘The Cognitive Program of Constructivism and the Reality That Remains Unknown’, Luhmann mentions for the first time of A. Schutz and makes an analogy of time perspectives with him. 7 8

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that the practical logic of social systems theory has been already included within it and concretely represented or embodied in EM. This should be largely granted to their transformations of phenomenological thoughts as their contemporaries noticed. The operations of interaction systems are no differences from social systems, although they differ in some respects and cannot be equated arbitrarily. Derived from this distinction comes about the distinction of society and interaction which Luhmann argues that social systems are determined by the nonidentity of them. The term “society” used here indicates the most complex social system, and comprises interactions and societal systems. We can say that the interaction systems are the internal history of society and the later external history of social systems, which means the environments. These two distinctions at different levels, that is, “system/environment” and “society/interaction”, have to be mediated by “human beings” as sensors who contribute to this interpenetration between them. 10 We will focus on the interaction systems and its relations to the social orders which are of EM’s interests. The analysis of actions of social members involves not only in the implicit intentionality which lead also to the problems of motivations, but also the appearances of actions performed by actors, which means bodily movements as well. This concerning of both intentionality and appearances of actions become the foundations and rationales of EM. And this also refers to noesis-noema structures promoted by Husserl’s analysis of intentionality, which then suggests that noesis is the act and noema the perception. (Garfinkel, 2006: 133) In view of systems theory, noesis-noema structures exist in interaction systems which likely correspond to the distinction “communication/perception”. In addition, it also perhaps connects with societal and social actions. (Luhmann, 1995: 426) According to Luhmann, perception is “a less demanding form of acquiring information than communication. It makes possible information that does not depend on being selected and communicated as such.” Continued with that, perception provides “a certain security against some sources of error…” (1995: 412) Luhmann transforms this psychic-based perception to a social-based one in that it is “an articulation of double contingency, when one can perceive that one is perceived.” (Ibid) This reflexive perceiving, compared with “explicit” communication, explicates “Human being” indicates not the concrete entity or real person in this way, in the contrary, the term describes the psychic system which mediates meanings as similar to social systems, thus makes the interpenetration between them possible. 10

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some features of the project of EM. As Garfinkel discloses as far as the observer concerns, “[T]he rules of procedure by which the manifestations of a person’s ‘spontaneous life’ are to be realized by the observers; -are assigned their significances by the observer in his task of interpreting an ‘other’.” (2006: 102) This combination of perception and communication within interaction systems contributes to the formation of “background expectancy”, which Garfinkel terms to refer to the “rational properties” of indexical expressions or irrationality. Its premise, to Luhmann, lies in the securing of continuation of communications and the fulfillment of expectations and avoids or reckons with the disappointments occurring between systems’ interactions. This combination also structures and sanctions the objects (noema) which are able to be perceived by actors (noesis), which connotes what Luhmann named “institutionalization” and Garfinkel “standardization”, or even loosely Husserl “horizons”, or “finite province of meaning”. (Garfinkel, 2006: 117) In this sense, the combination acts out the boundaries between society and interaction systems. Since perception demands no necessarily precise information to work on observing but has to make observations possible, and decides what can be communicated later, it has to rely on “social dimension of perceptible meaning as a selector” to draw a delimited system’s boundary. (Luhmann, 1995) Perception is necessary to interaction systems; however, when it is intended or experienced as communication which condensed from perceptions, the social systems survive and continue to operate. How does this social dimension form? To answer this question requires of considering the autopoiesis of system and another feature of interaction systems, “presence”. Presence, according to Luhmann, indicates “people’s being together there guides the selection of perceptions and marks out prospects for social relevance.” (1995: 415) This represents also in Garfinkel’s analyses of member’s accounting practices and their settings. Besides, it is not sufficient until we mention the operations of autopoiesis and the self-reproduction of systems. These operations of a system are always to be found as the present which means that every operation implies also the construction of reality within a system. 11 This presence suggests in one way that delimitation is working on those presented perceiving or 11

Luhmann, 2002, p. 136-7.

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observing the observed, and in the other way that both intentionality and appearances of actions, and therefore communication and perception interpenetrated into each other. System’s autopoiesis seems to conflict with its formation of structure which can also mean the horizon of finite possibilities. However, this will be solved by a centered leader or speaker following some rules self-produced by system and then produces the “redundancy of possibilities”. This also explains what EM’s conversation analysis becomes possible. This wait for further justification within conversations has implications from expectations of actors, whatever in social systems theory or EM. And this is how law formed by this distinction of society and interaction as Luhmann articulates in his analysis. (Luhmann, 1985) Ⅲ Concerning Ethnomethodology Now we can turn to a more practical dimension concerning with EM from respects of systems theory. What we have here is a concept of dynamics rather than static conditions with regard to what had happened or are going to happen along the time thread. In addition, members within society are performing whatever may be considered as laymen or professionals’ actions. They are doing something according to certain “rules” or using them (how members perceive and use those rules instead of performing actions caused by them) underneath what they probably do not noticed or even perceived. In Garfinkel’s terms, these “seen but unnoticed” rules permeated our daily life and our every action, “for all practical purposes”. That what he calls “background expectancy” functions and also becomes the foundation of our daily communication or interaction with other people. By this he also indicates that there are numerous kinds of background expectancies necessarily have to be used in order for actors to receive somewhat expected reactions from others. Besides, all actions or all expecting expectations founded on this principle will be able to contribute to some meaningful communications and interactions between members or even non-members. For actors performing actions, they potentially appropriate this process in a reflexive way, that is, they apply this to themselves. This also, to some extent, has definitely to be hidden and required its anonymity insomuch as the daily communication and interaction become possible with the time required for those reactions, especially in modern complex societies. Otherwise, it will be of more difficulties to furnish with solutions and thus interruption might

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immediately occur. Once members involved in actions within the settings notice “consciously” the operations of reflexivity, that is, the distinction has been identified by other members, probably then come out the breaking down of expectations between members to some extent. Both Luhmann and Garfinkel have delineated this point in a similar way. Thus, from the above makes efforts to consider the relationship between ethnomethodology and systems theory. While the purpose has been attempted to “observe” EM from viewpoints of social systems theory, it will be impossible without considering the concept both mentioned and developed by Garfinkel and Luhmann, i.e., reflexivity. 12 However, also argued in some places, this concept is applied by them respectively to two different levels. Despite of this, they both indicate the similar process which self-refers to itself. The premise of the concept of reflexivity must have to be self-reference. Without this establishment of self-reference and operation of it, this process of reflexivity will be lead to only projections or reflections. Moreover, also of importance is that without the effects of reflexivity, the observer can no longer see what conceals behind the construction and appropriation of daily common knowledge as suggested by Garfinkel. There is no necessary to identify whether observers consciously or unconsciously percept those operations of reflexivity, at least of Luhmann mentions no possibility for observers to understand what the distinctions used by them which are considered as the observers’ blind spots.13 The operations of reflexivity become visible when different observers observe each other and make out other’s using of distinctions. This is also how the reality of a “world” forms by the “blind spot” for which “has to be assumed to be the unity of the system/environment distinction, when this distinction is employed”.14 In this situation refers back to what Schutz’ distinction of act and action, and therefore object from subject as well. Ⅳ Differences The term “reflexivity” has been elaborated by Schutz as he transforms it from human’s mental operations to social embodied ones. It from its phenomenological origin denotes also the second-order construct of indigenous constructs. See also Schutz, 1962, p. 48. Garfinkel inherits this viewpoint of reflexivity and refers it to also actor’s accounting and using of the constructs of the settings as the parts of their accounts. Charalambos Tsekeris and Nicos Katrivesis (2008: 3) correctly point out this inheritance and adoption by ethnomethodology. 13 Luhmann, Theories of Distinction, p. 190. 14 Luhmann, 2002, ibid, p. 136. 12

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The difference exists between these two theorists has been identified firstly through the investigation of phenomenology of Husserl and Schutz, and then at the theoretical level, which the latter means in terms of Luhmann, “translated from action to system and from subject to object” suggest that appropriating the concept of reflexivity presents only (self-)observing the observed based on the self-reference of the system in a pre-given, mutually conditioned, and successive communications.15 While Luhmann says that only communication communicates,16 and systems communicate rather than understand with each other, there indicates on the one hand that individuals do not belong to social systems but parts of their environments, and the end of communications will not lead to understanding but this process has already consisted of it on the other hand when Luhmann defines communication composed of utterance, information, and understanding, and thus understanding relates to the capability of distinguishing utterance from information. Therefore, conversations between systems means that only conversation knows what will be communicated next. Communication, and also conversation reproduces itself within systems. “Conversations develop their own internal history, regardless of whatever plans any actors might have”. 17 This “internal history” to some extent is irrelevant to the actor’s intentions whether the actor attempts to orient those conversations toward a certain direction. As an observer observes, the observer cannot understand what has been communicated between the observed. The observing systems have only partial information about the observed and cannot be exhausted. In other words, there exist plenty of possibilities to select; of course these possibilities have already been conditioned to a certain range by situations observed or, by systems’ operations of self-reference and hetero-reference. Hence, this internal history can also indicates in a somewhat loose way, in Garfinkel’s terms, those “seen but unnoticed” rules which governed and conditioned what’s going on and how it will be developed during conversations. Most importantly, this has also claimed what Durkheim regards “irrational foundations of rationality”, or “indexicality” which was emphatically emphasized by Garfinkel. In EM, daily conversations between 15 16 17

Luhmann, SL, p. 288. Luhmann, Theories of Distinction, p. 169. Fuchs, Review, p. 118.

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members are always context-oriented, and exactly by this whether laymen or professionals can work on their own projects. Garfinkel distinguishes indexical expressions from objective expressions, and argues that there exist only indexical expressions in our daily life and even in scientific rationality. According to Garfinkel, all objective expressions are also composed of indexical expressions, and this is so called the “rational properties” of the later. Thus, the “rational” only designates partiality, and therefore a product of construction consisted of those indexical-based objective expressions. These “objective expressions”, or “rules” as members so truly realized and temporarily adopted, initially have to be considered as if they possess some characteristics of “agreements”. And then these characteristics turn into basic information regarding members’ recognition of them. Agreements as constructs in the first place have been gradually transplanted in certain ways such as institutionalization or standardization into some taken-for-granted complex, and then becomes unnoticed expectations appropriated by members’ daily conversations. However, the questions should be like what constitute these agreements, and how they work to form “background expectancies”. Still it is an old question of how social order is possible. Garfinkel refers the answer to some kind of potential rules used and produced by members of society, which extended mainly from Schutz’s analyses of ego-alter assumptions, whereas Luhmann offers viewpoints from the second-order cybernetics and radical constructivism. In addition, Garfinkel (1967) also makes clear that EM should not view behavior as caused by rules, but study instead how people use these rules. In this way, he treats those rules as already-taken-for-granted for members of societies, and do not mentions too much about how these rules or social orders work. Leiter (1980: 191) noted that this social order for ethnomethodologists refers to “the factual character of social reality as a social product of members’ interpretive procedures”. Social reality to Garfinkel occurs only in this procedure, hence stands against what realism describes. 18 Members’ accounting practices also create, complement or modify that social order they are happening to report either to outsiders or Luhmann describes the reality purely constructed and operated by systems themselves within systems only. Systems can not directly connect with or reach the environments outside of them. Hence, what they think of the environment is nothing but imagination. This stance contradicts those objectivists who think of the existence of things out there independent of human minds. To some respects, this is true for Luhmann when he mentions that for members those rules represent as real while they see them as real. 18

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insiders, i.e. within members. These reports produced by them have to be valid not only for those members within, but also in certain situations have to convincing those without. While members are required to use what they have reported and potentially created to account for what they have done, then this is how reflexivity emerges. Social orders come out rightly from those recursive, also though not really always successive operations of describing and observing of members. 19 Approaches provided by institutionalization and socialization has been proved that fail to offer a satisfied and convincing answer to the old but still important question, as Parsons had already did. We can find some explanations to these questions from social systems theory, especially the concepts of observation and reflexivity. Ⅴ Reflexivity The concept of “reflexivity” brings together the social systems theory and EM, which deduced in the former from systems’ operations and the later empirical investigations indicate that whatever causal operations and causal agents both do not exist. This elimination of causality with regard to the accounts for the communications of systems and the mutual relationships of accounts and settings has been suggested as a prevalent feature of them. Members report something that has been already conditioned by their using of accounts, which also means that accounts apply themselves to this process of interpretation. Hence in turn constitutes the explanation of that setting. The only difference between EM and social systems theory is that this reflexivity emphasized by ethnomethodological investigations must represent itself accompanying with indexicality, whereas not described in this way by systems theory.20 Although Luhmann speaks of contingency and that of only communication communicating, he does not connect cognitively reflexivity with context dependence. The reason should be that the concept of context-orientation has been absorbed by systems as “constructed reality” which deems that exists implicitly or explicitly beyond subjectivism and/or objectivism. This recognition also While Heidegger contrasts the “ready-to-hand” and “presence-at-hand”, and suggests that there are distinctions between modern science and modern technology, he uses the same strategy as later extended by EM to describe the relationship between human and the world. This reflexivity for instance has been demonstrated clearly by Don Ihde as follow: “modern science is embodied technologically”, and another states “technology is the source of science, technology as enframing is the origin of the scientific view of the world as standing-reserve”. (1979: 110-11) Also adopted from the traditions of phenomenology, Luhamnn makes similar explanations of this concept. 20 Researchers also claim that this reflexivity with indexicality will be able to respond and adjust to the environment and also social phenomenon. See also Charalambos Tsekeris and Nicos Katrivesis’ analysis. 19

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indicates what Luhmann explains the time relation between system and environment as “simultaneity”. 21 Following this also connects to what Garfinkel means by reflexivity. In other words, rules, whether noticed or not, appropriated reflexively by members of society are simply due to their necessary indexical characteristics, according to Garfinkel, while Luhmann argues they are already constructed by and within system’s operations. There should be another reason which makes this argument more convincing is that how Garfinkel defines the “actor”. While Luhmann obviously transforms the actor or subject to a concept of system, Garfinkel’s elaboration of the term seems to have selective affinity with Luhmann’s. 22 First of all, he suggests the term has two kinds of meanings. One is that the “shorthand generic designation of the agent to an action”. And another one is that several concepts by which the observer try to describe and explain what the rules initiate an action means to an actor, these concepts include animal symbolicum, role or cognitive style, and noesis-noema structures. (2006: 107) Then, he alternately defines it from the opposite to ask “what is it that we do not mean by actor?” and “What is man?” anyway, and gives his answer as follows: [M]an for our purpose is to be considered a dummy, a dope, a lifeless puppet, all of whose potentialities for activity we shall invest him with. His portrait will reveal a series of assumptions as to the kinds of experiences he is capable of experiencing under specific conditions. The dummy heart that beats beneath that dummy breast is made up not of nerve and muscle but the rules of hypothetic-deductive method. (Emphases are mine) (Ibid)

When viewed from this, it seems that the actor for Garfinkel is something like just acting out what his situations give to or construct for him what he can and should do. And furthermore, the actor as an experiencing “system” is nothing more than what Luhmann describes his psychic systems participating interactions with other psychic or social systems. Most importantly, the actor definitely will be influenced by his surroundings whether concretely or not, which indicates that his perception and cognition are both conditioned to some extent by certain seen but unnoticed rules. Initially this perception has been confined to some habitual 21 22

Luhmann, 2002, ibid, p.137. I will come back in the remains to this point. And also seems to contradict with Husserl’s arguing of the existence of a transcendental subject.

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behaviors and then once noticed and institutionalized for some purposes gives rise to rules or laws which also continuingly and reflexively make up how the actor accounts for his actions, both consciously and unconsciously.23 This transformation of the actor from “person” with flesh and blood, or subject with agency to a more passive figure who can merely experiencing what others, including his surroundings, constitute for him can also be compared with Luhmann’s descriptions of three kinds of systems by which the meaning of “actor” has also been transformed. Luhmann argues that there are three kinds of systems, interaction system, social systems, and organizations. Every system has its own communications and the communicated, thus they also reproduce these communications necessary for them. Hence, social members and their accounting practices as well somewhat can be viewed as if they involve in or they are interaction systems. Here we encounter another important operation of system which also corresponds to my concerns. Although we have already delineated in other parts of this article, it is worthy of going deeper and more practical about this operation of interaction system, and its relations to EM. Of systems in interaction are those which respectively apply expecting assumptions to each other. In this sense, background expectancy has simply been one form of these expecting assumptions. Regarding the analysis of the forming of law, Luhmann argues as the point of departure that for all interaction, “certainty in the expectation of expectations constitutes the essential basis,” and then distinguishes the cognitive from normative expectations to demonstrate how the latter have been institutionalized into the positive law in its extreme pole. 24 Communication starts with common assumptions, according to him. Most of the time, these assumptions are vague and not necessary to be visible by communicating counterparts. What they have as systems is the ability to select, to make distinctions, and to reduce possibilities. This ability also depends on the differentiation of a system which to a somewhat extent reckons with its own complexity. Bourdieu has already suggested that habitus in his using means an unlimited source of production of thoughts, perceptions, expressions, and actions. This also constitutes the foundation of expectations and members’ accounting practices. 24 Luhmann, SL, p. 30. There are some thoughts come across my mind that this distinction of cognitive and normative expectations seems to correspond to what Husserl’s distinction of “open possibilities” and “problematic possibilities”, and Schutz’s two types of relevance systems, “topical” and “interpretive” systems. 23

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Besides, this assuming of their counterparts follows some “rules”, and can be divided into cognitive and normative expectations in Luhmann’s term. Expectations have no origin in any kind of objectivity. Expectations are always context-dependent, and due to this, communicating communications becomes possible and can be continued as well. The reason for this should be both Garfinkel and Luhmann view the act in the former and the episode in the latter as, mediating through action and communication respectively, reflection of the past and at the same time projection into the future. In other words, expectations have always been expected and also communications communicated. This “reflexivity” argued by both of them should be similar to each other. Despite of the fact that Garfinkel refers it more close to the reflection than to the self-referential circularity, for he suggested,25 Members’ accounts are reflexively and essentially tied for their rational features to the socially organized occasions of their use for they are features of the socially organized occasions of their use. (Garfinkel, 1967: 4)

That this describes the relationship between settings and members’ accounts of them indicates the settings members accounting for instruct members’ accounts, and members’ accounts also constitute in turn those settings. This becomes possible only when we consider the role played by indexical expressions, of course according to Garfinkel. This indexicality gives to both the settings and accounts expectable features, and this concept of “expectable” means not only the settings but also members’ accounts are able to develop their own expectation of expectations, in Luhmann’s terms. Let’s put it another way while considering how Luhmann analyzes the time question. In other parts I have mentioned that Luhmann regards the simultaneity of system and environment, and the reality constituted through it. He claims: [T]he foundation for the reality of the system is the simultaneity of its operation with the conditions of reality that sustain it. (2002: 137)

In other words, at the same time of the operation of a system also constitutes the reality of the system, but this operation has to be Although I am not so sure to conclude like this, it is still valid to point out the similarities between them, and is of no relevance to our discussion. 25

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conditioned by its reality which supports it. It is possible only when we accept that the system operates in the basis of events that “only have a momentary presence and that already begin to disappear at the moment of their emergence”. (2002: 136) In here we see also the practical logic of systems theory embodied in EM, which states that a member’s accounts are the operation of a system and the reality of the system is the settings or objects that member attempts to account for. Then we can link to what the reflexivity presents as “members’ accounts are constituent features of the settings they make observable (or accountable)”, claimed by Garfinkel (1967: 8). From this, the “seen but unnoticed” rules have their formation. No matter members are situated in the first-order or second-order observations, considering the case of Garfinkel’s discussion about his students tried to explain what happened in a series of conversations, they can always apply this indexicality to make some expectations work. In daily conversations, concealed social order has reflexively been used by members to expect expectations from others, and expectation of expectations of expectations otherwise makes this social order more concrete than early developed. When I expect of the other may expect of my expectations just like what I am doing to him, we can regard it as natural congruence of mechanisms of generalization, as Luhmann suggests. (Luhmann, 1972: 77) Ⅵ Reviewing the Experiments via Social Systems Theory Let us have the try to rewrite with perspectives of social systems theory one of Garfinkel’s experiments which he assigns to his students. In order to know how members of society use what kind of expectancies as seen but unnoticed backgrounds of common understandings to recognize what each other talked about, Garfinkel requires his students treat themselves as boarders in their ordinary and familiar interactions with their families or friends, and to record those activities occurred in these situations, for at least fifteen minutes to an hour. Students are obliged to assume their positions as strangers and have to describe those conversations and interactions both happened to them and their counterparts. Thus, Garfinkel also requires these students do their best as they can to put aside all kinds of social relevances with regard to those people involved, “as if the writer had witnessed the scenes under a mild amnesia for his common knowledge of social structures”. (Garfinkel, 1967:

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45) In the end, the students report and describe those situations they have observed and their thoughts about this task. Most students reported the difficulties of how they tried hard to be a stranger in that situation. They were easily influenced by those originally familiar attributions used by them such as relationships, history, the place of the scene, motives, socially standardized character of that events, etc. However, while they “bracketed” these expectancies, there appeared some unexpected results in their reports. What they viewed was very different from what they used to be, and what they used to take for granted to some extent represented another picture to them. This appeared strangeness to the ordinary scenes has been the function of the seen but unnoticed rules as background expectancies prevailed our daily conversations and interactions. With respect to social systems theory, or we can elevate to a more abstract level, the second-order observations of systems. Since “an operation that uses distinctions in order to designate something we will call ‘observation’”, whereby the observer (observing system) observes the observed (system), observing system is able to recognize what the observed system applying what kind of distinctions (or say, fundamental distinction) to itself. (Luhmann, 2002:134) In this case, the distinction used by members performing observations or being observed should be routine and non-routine. And from this unconsciously using of distinctions, the observed system can describe itself and develop its identity, and also establish and modify its boundary with the environment. Besides, these distinctions appropriated by systems will be able to produce and also to select from within the possibilities generated in order to resonate with the environment. Hence the distinction which has been chosen by the system will be the fundamental constitution of system’s expectations, and its expectation of expectations as well. 26 This foundation also constructs what the above experiment attempts to clarify and present those seen but unnoticed rules in our daily conversations and interactions. However, it is not necessary to argue that all of those distinctions have to be considered as retreating into backgrounds of our common knowledge of understandings. There are only some, usually most of them, become and form our basis of 26

This also argued by Luhmann that the reality of a world simply imagined by members (i.e., cognitive systems and social systems, and interaction systems as well) or their observations of other observing systems, hence is completely internal to the system and only exists within the operation of a system. (Luhmann, 2002: 134-5)

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common understandings, thus not only system’s operations and its expectations, but also its expectation of expectations both constitute and make the ordinary and common talk understandable and possible. Garfinkel also notices this aspect of expectations when he concentrates on observing how members make the settings accountable and how they influenced by the unnoticed rules. In this one way observation of the experiment, once the observing system recognizes the mode of using distinctions to operate within the observed system, it will also apply this process to it, and know how this distinction works, although it will not perhaps know what the distinction is applied. However, this situation can be resolved while considering other systems’ observations of the observed systems. In the above experiment, students report that that phenomenon they observed is not a “real” one of their usual family scene, which means that they observed in a nearly pure context-free way has been contradicted to what they have already expected whether consciously or unconsciously of the “normal” one. Actually, students’ actions or observations only express how the background expectancy affects them, instead of a means used to understand the observed. However, every kind of expectancy, overtly or covertly, indicates the selection of a distinction, such as status, gender, identity, settings, chairs, not tables, etc. Conversely, the selection and application of a distinction also constitute the foundation of expectations. We either choose or adapt to what we have already chosen or adapted and understood previously, otherwise we cannot see the meanings in the daily conversations with others. According to this, observing system observes what distinctions the observed has used will not necessarily influence its own operations. However, through this second-order observation it offers interdependence and interpenetration between systems, although not necessarily results in increasing understanding of each other. At the time when the observing system observes, it also makes a distinction, and this distinction will also operate as its background expectancy. Thus we have the arguments of Weber’s viewpoints of objectivity. Even if the observing system attempts to “escape”, “ignore”, “disregard”, or “bracket” what the observed, also including the observing system as well, using of these seen but unnoticed rules to make sense the observed, this ultimately failed due to the second-order observations also involve in the “circularity of self-reference”, which means it uses in the same way as the observed using these rules. This situation will be exactly what Luhmann calls two systems

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in interaction are just like two black boxes when faced with the other. For example we can give what Garfinkel mentions in his experiment that students process their “jobs” hardly avoid of these whatever rules and their actions have been regarded by their counterparts as “weird”. (1967: 46-47) While both of their theories have the same sources of phenomenology, they indeed transform it. This breaking down of the expectations of the observed when the action has been acted out of the situation, and also of the observing system when not acted out elaborates the possibility of how second-order observation might intervene in between the interactions. This interfering to some extent depends on how it will disturb the observed system with regard to the fact that they are each other’s environment. And this will also generate more possibilities, and communications within systems in reaction to them. So as to the disappointment of the expectation of expectations the system develops or operates more expectations, therefore possibilities, in case of the occurrence of further disappointment. This indicates that the time required to react shortens increasingly. That’s the evolution of the modern law. Following the above, the second-order observation merely suggests a way of “seeing” how system uses the distinction and from the re-entry of the unity of difference emerges the system. However, the reflexive operation of second-order observation perhaps have the effects on disturbing systems, either the observing or observed one. In other words and back to Garfinkel’s experiment, the results necessarily produced by those observed members are to some extent those correspondences to the reflexive operations of the observing systems, which in part here refer to their acting out those actions. (Garfinkel, 1967: 47) However, we are not describing the normal situations as those lay and professionals usually do. In addition, the feedbacks of the observed such as asking what’s wrong with you or are you out of your mind, have too included how their using of distinctions, i.e., the extension of previous expectations, and continue to form their accounting of Garfinkel or constituting of Luhmann the understanding of the results of the reflexive operations of the observing system. Therefore, the ends of interaction and communication are nothing more than an ongoing accomplishment. And the finishing of communication refers to another circularity of communication, which comprises of the distinction of information and utterance. According to this, Luhmann insists that only

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communication communicates. The finishing of communication depends not on the understanding of the information or utterance. Instead, it is like that we communicate until we get what we have expected rather than the factual situation or reality it has been achieved. Hence, the accomplishing of communication is when we are satisfied with the fulfillment of the expectation of expectations. Once disappointment between these expectations of different systems in interaction appears, systems respectively retrieve and recover their other expectations as possibly as they can in order to maintain boundaries with environments, and therefore their identities. So far as we put aside the role of actor played across the course of actions or the operations of expectations within systems, the focus has been thus transferred to the operations and members using of expectations, also expectation of expectations. And this is also what EM mainly concerns which can also be represented in terms of social systems theory and through this acquires more general picture of this modern society. Ⅵ Conclusions In this essay we examine the similarities and differences between social systems theory and ethnomethodology, and make three arguments or rather possibilities for those interested to notice the practical logic of social systems theory with regard to ethnomethodology. Firstly, due to those affinities between them, we have observed that out of the same intellectual legacies these two thoughts are quite compatible with each other. Then, as an object of research, the ethnomethodology adopts also the similar ways with systems theory by which the observations and second-order cybernetics are of the most prevalent. What EM overlooked has been the continuing and combining the relations of actor and structure. It has been argued that “indexicality” insisted by Garfinkel perhaps has a more intricate root. It results from the operations within and between systems attempting to communicate with each other, and this should be an impossible accomplishment because of their non-transparent condition when encountering with others. Hence, indexicality explains the latter operations of the system when it evolves and differentiates into a more complex one. Just like Luhmann mentions that in a simpler society the interaction system closes more to the society, and we perceive what we have and who we are, whereas in a more complex one, their distance increases and results in the separation of social structure and semantics, therefore requires more

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modern mechanisms to reckon with this situation. While social systems theory of Niklas Luhmann has been suffered not quite fair judgments, mainly on its abstractness and uneasy way to be put into action, this analysis presents the possibilities of using it to reflect and complement what other thoughts neglect, and also escalate the analytical level concerning the social phenomenon.

References Bednarz, J. (1984). Complexivity and Intersubjectivity: Toward the Theory of Niklas Luhmann. Human Studies, 7, 55-69. Bednarz, J. (1984). Functional Method and Phenomenology: The View of Niklas Luhmann. Human Studies, 7, 343-362. Fuchs, S. (1997). Review work(s): Social Systems. Contemporary Sociology, 26(1), 117-118. Garfinkel, H. (1967, 1992). Studies in Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Garfinkel, H. (2002). Ethnomethodology's Program: Working out Durkheim's Aphorism. New York & Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Garfinkel, H. (2006). See Sociologically: The Routine Grounds of Social Action. Boulder & London: Paradigm Publishers. Leiter, K. (1980). A Primer on Ethnomethodology. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. Luhmann, N. (1985). A Sociological Theory of Law (E. King & M. Albrow, Trans.). In M. Albrow (Ed.). London, Boston, Melbourne and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Luhmann, N. (1995). Social Systems (J. Bednarz & D. Baecker, Trans.). Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Luhmann, N. (2002). Theories of Distinction: Redescribing the Descriptions of Modernity (J. O'Neil, E. Schreiber, K. Behnke & W. Whobrey, Trans.). Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Rasch, W. (2000). Niklas Luhmann's Modernity. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Tsekeris, C., & Katrivesis, N. (2008). Reflexivity in Sociological Theory and Social Action. Facta Universitatis, 7(1), 1-12.

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