Sensemaking Practices: Garfinkel and the Ethnomethodological Turn

Karl Weick’s interest in sensemaking was initially sparked by conversations with Harold Garfinkel and his studies of juries. Yet Weick ultimately diverged from Garfinkel in important ways. While Weick focused on how individuals make sense of equivocal situations, Garfinkel asked a deeper sociological question: how is social order possible? How do people produce and sustain shared social realities? Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology studies the everyday practices through which members of society make those practices accountable—visible, rational, and reportable. Through seemingly mundane behaviors, such as standing in line, taking turns in conversation, or shaking hands, social reality is continuously enacted. Although Garfinkel never used the term sensemaking, some of his students have drawn parallels to it, albeit differently from Weick. This chapter explores how an ethnomethodological perspective reshapes our understanding of sensemaking—not as an individual, cognitive process, but as a public, situated, embodied, and interactional accomplishment. In doing so, it deepens and refines sensemaking as a tool for navigating organizational uncertainty and complexity.