Fantastic question — you're now connecting Durkheim’s idea of “new social facts” emerging from changed behavior with Ethnomethodology’s “order imposed by individuals.”
Let’s clarify the relation and difference:
Does the new social fact (emerged from changed patterned behavior) equal the order imposed by individuals as per Ethnomethodology?
Not exactly equal, but closely related.
Both reflect the idea that individuals are not passive recipients of social facts, but actively construct or reconstruct social order. However, they differ in scale, method, and assumptions about objectivity.
| Aspect | New Social Facts (Durkheimian Evolution) | Order in Ethnomethodology (Garfinkel) |
|---|---|---|
| Origin | Emerges when many individuals repeat new behavior → collective pattern becomes external norm | Individuals actively construct local order through everyday interactions |
| Nature of Order | Eventually becomes objective, constraining, institutionalized | Always fragile, situational, negotiated, never fixed |
| Level | Macro-level: society-wide (e.g., new marriage norms, new education patterns) | Micro-level: small, localized (e.g., how people queue, greet, apologize) |
| Perspective | Structural-functionalist legacy | Phenomenological, interpretivist |
| Temporality | Becomes durable and persistent (social fact) | Continually reproduced in the moment (interactional order) |
While Durkheim's “new social facts” arise from emergent collective behavior over time, ethnomethodologists like Garfinkel argue that social order is constantly constructed by individuals through everyday methods of sense-making.
Thus, ethnomethodology captures the microfoundations of how new behaviors begin, while Durkheim captures how they become institutionalized and generalized as social facts.