Harold Garfinkel: Studies of Work in the Sciences

This volume includes an unpublished manuscript and selected portions of five seminars by Harold Garfinkel – the founder of ethnomethodology – on the topic of practices in the natural sciences and mathematics. The volume provides a coherent and sustained account of his program for the study of ordinary and specialized social actions. Presenting broader theoretical and methodological initiatives, as well as discussions and summaries of exemplary studies of social phenomena within and beyond the sciences, this work dates to the period in the 1980s during which the field of Science and Technology Studies was taking shape, with ethnomethodological studies of scientific practice forming a major part of its development at the time. Aside from their historical importance, the manuscript and seminars present a distinctive perspective on the natural and social sciences that remains highly original and pertinent to research on science, social science, and everyday life today. Offering critical insights and proposals relating to developments in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, this volume will appeal to scholars of Sociology and Science and Technology Studies with interests in the work of Garfinkel

Harold Garfinkel: Studies of Work in the Sciences

This volume includes an unpublished manuscript and selected portions of five seminars by Harold Garfinkel – the founder of ethnomethodology – on the topic of practices in the natural sciences and mathematics. The volume provides a coherent and sustained account of his program for the study of ordinary and specialized social actions. Presenting broader theoretical and methodological initiatives, as well as discussions and summaries of exemplary studies of social phenomena within and beyond the sciences, this work dates to the period in the 1980s during which the field of Science and Technology Studies was taking shape, with ethnomethodological studies of scientific practice forming a major part of its development at the time. Aside from their historical importance, the manuscript and seminars present a distinctive perspective on the natural and social sciences that remains highly original and pertinent to research on science, social science, and everyday life today. Offering critical insights and proposals relating to developments in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, this volume will appeal to scholars of Sociology and Science and Technology Studies with interests in the work of Garfinkel

Pulling Back the Curtain on the Wizards of Oz

The Wizard of Oz method is an increasingly common practice in HCI and CSCW studies as part of iterative design processes for interactive systems. Instead of designing a fully-fledged system, the ‘technical work’ of key system components is completed by human operators yet presented to study participants as if computed by a machine. However, little is known about how Wizard of Oz studies are interactionally and collaboratively achieved in situ by researchers and participants. By adopting an ethnomethodological perspective, we analyse our use of the method in studies with a voice-controlled vacuum robot and two researchers present. We present data that reveals how such studies are organised and presented to participants and unpack the coordinated orchestration work that unfolds ‘behind the scenes’ to complete the study. We examine how the researchers attend to participant requests and technical breakdowns, and discuss the performative, collaborative, and methodological nature of their work. We conclude by offering insights from our application of the approach to others in the HCI and CSCW communities for using the method

Zooming in and out : studying practices by switching theoretical lenses and trailing connections

This paper contributes to re-specifying a number of the phenomena of interest to organisational studies in terms of patterns of socio-material practices and their effects. It does so by outlining a vocabulary and strategy that make up a framework for theorising work and organisational practices. The vocabulary is based on number of sensitising concepts that connote practice as an open-ended, heterogeneous accomplishment which takes place within a specific horizon of sense and a set of concerns which the practice itself brings to bear. The strategy is based on the metaphorical movement of "zooming in" and "zooming out of" practice. The zooming in and out are obtained through switching theoretical lenses and repositioning in the field, so that certain aspects of the practice are fore-grounded while others are bracketed. Building on the results of an extended study of telemedicine, the paper discusses in detail the different elements of the framework and how it enhances our capacity to re-present practice. The paper concludes with some considerations on how the proposed approach can assist us in advancing the research agenda of organizational and work studies

Jubilee mugs:the monarchy and the Sex Pistols

With rare exceptions sociologists have traditionally had little to say about the British monarchy. In the exceptional cases of the Durkheimian functionalism of Shills and Young (1953), the left humanism of Birnbaum (1955), or the archaic state/backward nation thesis of Nairn (1988), the British nation has been conceived as a homogenous mass. The brief episode of the Sex Pistols' Jubilee year song 'God Save the Queen' exposed some of the divisions within the national 'mass', forcing a re-ordering of the balance between detachment and belonging to the Royal idea. I argue that the song acted as a kind of 'breaching experiment'. Its wilful provocation of Royalist sentiment revealed the level of sanction available to the media-industrial complex to enforce compliance to British self-images of loyal and devoted national communicants

Seeing the way: visual sociology and the distance runner's perspective

Employing visual and autoethnographic data from a two‐year research project on distance runners, this article seeks to examine the activity of seeing in relation to the activity of distance running. One of its methodological aims is to develop the linkage between visual and autoethnographic data in combining an observation‐based narrative and sociological analysis with photographs. This combination aims to convey to the reader not only some of the specific subcultural knowledge and particular ways of seeing, but also something of the runner's embodied feelings and experience of momentum en route. Via the combination of narrative and photographs we seek a more effective way of communicating just how distance runners see and experience their training terrain. The importance of subjecting mundane everyday practices to detailed sociological analysis has been highlighted by many sociologists, including those of an ethnomethodological perspective. Indeed, without the competence of social actors in accomplishing these mundane, routine understandings and practices, it is argued, there would in fact be no social order

Voice interfaces in everyday life

Voice User Interfaces (VUIs) are becoming ubiquitously available, being embedded both into everyday mobility via smartphones, and into the life of the home via ‘assistant’ devices. Yet, exactly how users of such devices practically thread that use into their everyday social interactions remains underexplored. By collecting and studying audio data from month-long deployments of the Amazon Echo in participants’ homes—informed by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis—our study documents the methodical practices of VUI users, and how that use is accomplished in the complex social life of the home. Data we present shows how the device is made accountable to and embedded into conversational settings like family dinners where various simultaneous activities are being achieved. We discuss how the VUI is finely coordinated with the sequential organisation of talk. Finally, we locate implications for the accountability of VUI interaction, request and response design, and raise conceptual challenges to the notion of designing ‘conversational’ interfaces