The paper works through the topic of ‘theorising’ as it has been treated in ethnomethodology. It is concerned to show that the topic has a somewhat equivocal status within that discourse; that some recent self-critical moves in ethnomethodology which have been touched off by considering these problems constitute no more than further uncritical repetitions of that discourse; that ethnomethodology's critics have been concentrating unnecessarily upon its supposed ‘idealism’ and have missed a central trouble: that ethnomethodology is an overly realist form (...) of social scientific work. (shrink)