In brief, I consider Garfinkel to have been one who most advanced social (and cultural) theory building on foundations laid down my Durkheim, but also by Boas and Benedict, Levi-Strauss, and others not generally considered Garfinkel's immediate predecessors (e.g. Schultz). I say this even though Garfinkel has nothing to say about "culture." Rather, I appreciate his emphasis on learning about human beings by looking closely at what they do on the assumption that human beings should not be imagined but that they can be observed. In many ways, Garfinkel made the strongest argument for ethnography as the necessary foundation of knowledge about humans (and perhaps even other life forms).