A COMPARISON OF SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONIST AND ETHNOMETHODOLOGICAL DESCRIPTIONS OF HOW A JUDGE DISTINGUISHED BETWEEN THE EROTIC AND THE OBSCENE

In 1985, a member of the Canadian judiciary handed down a written judg ment in which he distinguished between erotica and obscene matter. The judgment attracted the scorn of some normative sociologists, who comp lained of the insufficiency of the social psychological research on wh ich it was based. Their reaction prompts a review of the judgment in t he light of social constructionism and of ethnomethodology; this, in t urn, prompts a comparison of social constructionist and ethnomethodolo gical methodologies, in which the legal judgment serves merely as a te st case. It is argued that normative sociology and social construction ism, both being of an essentially ironic cast, occlude the judge's sen se-making procedures, the very phenomena they purport to describe. Eth nomethodology, on the other hand, being nonironic, promises to capture those procedures.