What is ethnomethodology? Ethnomethodology is an autonomous social science. The founder, Harold Garfinkel, worked with Talcott Parsons but left sociology to create a completely new field of empirical research. Ethnomethodology is based on the fine description of interactions. It contains specific studies of conversation, called Conversation Analysis (by Harvey Sacks), focusing among other topics on turn-taking sequences. As ethnomethodologists claim, it is important to understand that Ethnomethodology is not a methodology but a social science. Its name comes from the concept of ethnomethods, standing for methods that actors use to accomplish their everyday tasks (and which ethnomethodologists study).