Agnes and Garfinkel: thinking about gender through a classic of sociology

Abstract

In this article we intend to show how the relationship between Agnes and the American sociologist Harold Garfinkel produced a gender analysis that differed from the biological theories of its time. Through the concept of passing and the ethnomethodology’s notion of routine the author anticipates certain assumptions that would guide the notion of gender that would develop in the 1990s. In the first part of the text, our focus will be on impacts of Agnes’ experience for ethnomethodology; in a second step, we will provoke a dialogue between Garfinkel and Judith Butler’s theory of performativity.