Eavesdropping: The craft of social inquiry

Abstract

AbstractThis article is an exploration of John Shotter's suggestion to approach social inquiry as a ‘craft’. To take this suggestion seriously calls for making visible the specific ‘skills’ that conjure social inquiry into being, as craft. For this reason, the article presents small vignettes—drawn from the author's practice of supervision of researcher‐practitioners—that elucidate some of the turbulent passages that social researchers learn to negotiate, as they ‘acrobatically’ stretch themselves to eavesdrop on the messy trails of world‐making activity they are thrown into, as they participate in a social milieu. From waiting at awkward thresholds that do not announce an agenda; to approaching mis‐takes as occasions for bringing experience to articulation; to registering the pregnancy of silences that meet language at its edge. Just like Joyce's masterpiece Finnegans Wake brings into visibility the work that readers must perform to engage with its messy text, so this article argues that social inquiry as craft involves becoming skilled in various heuristic moves, through which social worlds can be listened into articulation.