Weber's ideas about the appropriate methodology for the social sciences are drawn from the branch of philosophy known as phenomenology. At its simplest, this urges observation and description of things themselves, rather than trying through abstract reasoning to arrive at some kind of 'essence' of phenomena under study. A well-known study which combines this phenomenological methodological approach with a Durkheimian emphasis on the symbolic, ritual aspects of the pronouncement of punish¬ment by courts, addressing a wider audience, and in which the enactment of the ritual has significance over and above any deterrent or correctional effects of the punishment, is Garfinkel's 'Conditions of Successful Degra¬dation Ceremonies' (1956). Garfinkel describes courtroom procedures as having as their prime outcome the construction of a new status for the offender, to which all present can agree. The offender may be variously agreed to be wicked, sick or unfortunate, but s/he will have acquired a label such as 'thief' or 'assailant', and the coupling of the pejorative adjective with the labelling of the action reinforces the sentiment that such acts are indeed wicked or mad or misguided. Garfinkel stresses, in Weberian style, that the ceremony will be more successful the more the different partici¬pants conform to the expectations of their role. Garland (1990a) is right to point out that, contrary to the assumptions of some commentators on his paper, Garfinkel does not show that the enactment of the ritual is consti¬tutive of solidarity through promotion of the importance of the sentiments violated by the offence, but that, on the contrary, the degree of success of the ceremony will in large measure depend on the degree of social consen¬sus about the importance of the sentiments that already exists.