Book science and history of the book: The ethnomethodological approach

Transformations in the communication space, driven by the rapid development of technological means for encoding, recording, disseminating, and consuming information, exert significant influence on the social and cultural practices of readers' interaction with texts. The contemporary mediatized environment necessitates an updating of the research approaches used in studying traditional and electronic communication media. The aim of this research is to analyze the heuristic potential of the ethnomethodological approach in book studies and to formulate key principles, objectives, and directions for studying books and reading using ethnomethodology's toolkit. The article examines contemporary scientific approaches to studying books and reading: functional, system-typological, historical, semiotic, and medialogical. It concludes that there are gaps in the theoretical understanding and generalization of micro-social book studies research. As a promising paradigmatic model for analyzing book communications, the ethnomethodological approach developed in the works of H. Garfinkel, E. Livingston, A. McHoul, and R. Watson is proposed. The genesis and evolution of ethnometh-odology are characterized, and its fundamental analytical categories (accountability, reflexivity, documentary method, texture, indexicality) and scientific methods (participant observation, breaching experiments, conversation analysis, analysis of social interaction context) are explained. A thematic spectrum of potential book studies research within the ethnomethodological framework is proposed: the role of books and reading in the formation of local identities; text-mediated communication within specific communities and diasporas; analysis of commemorative practices, samizdat (self-publishing), etc. Core principles of the ethnomethodological approach as applied to book theory have been developed: the post-non-classical stage of scientific development and the "collage-like" organization of experience for individuals, communities, and societies necessitate creating a map of historical-book discourses rather than a linear hierarchical typology or classification; the analysis of speech, text, and information carrier as a unified sign system; reconciling the level of content with the level of material form in book communications; studying book forms not as social facts, but as a social process of transforming reader biographies into specific cultural practices; understanding reading-as-a-social-phenomenon and text-as-a-socialthing, which find their embodiment in a prospective-retrospective model of reading. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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