Ethnomethodology Analysis Research Articles

Turnstile politics: practices of care and mobility justice in Santiago’s public transport system

Modern public transport systems are typically designed by following universal aspirations to predictability and standardisation. In the case of Santiago’s public transport, however, this design philosophy has often translated into concrete, practical struggles for users with more vulnerable corporealities. In analysing the case of a controversial turnstile installed in Santiago’s buses in 2016, this paper draws on video analysis to examine how passengers respond to, and locally deal with, its exclusionary design. Passengers’ interactions with this technology demonstrate how the turnstile is taken up as more than a mere sorting device, to become a matter of concern around mobility (in)justice. A detailed analysis of these interactions – through ethnomethodological analysis of video data – describes how passengers respond to the turnstile’s exclusionary design by deploying diverse embodied practices of care towards other users experiencing trouble with it. Such practices of care align with a grounded, embodied sense of mobility (in)justice as opposed to more abstract understandings of distributive justice. The paper concludes by discussing the potential forpublic transport systems to become more just and inclusive environments designed as infrastructures of care, whereby materialities may not only allow, but support, practices of care among users.

Reframing art online through collective meaning-making

ABSTRACT Building on the embodied consumption literature, we draw on Merleau-Ponty’s theory of art to consider how new modes of visibility arise in interactions between individuals online. Focusing on one particular virtual and collaborative museum programme, we use ethnomethodological analysis of interactions to analyse video recordings of virtual arts conversations. The analysis explores how participants render visible their orientation to each other and to the works of art discussed in the workshop. Thus, we can see how participants produce the sense and significance of works of art in, and through ‘intercorporeal interactions’ while participating in a virtual arts programme. Observations and findings from our research have significant implications for the strategic management of virtual consumer experiences.

Coaching parkour: the instructed concerted actions of negotiating expectancies

ABSTRACT This paper offers an ethnomethodological (EM) account of parkour coaching based on an eight-month participant observation conducted by the researcher in a parkour gym in Madrid (Spain). It addresses from a praxeological perspective the emotional dimension of parkour coaching: the tension balance between confidence and fear, expressed in the negotiation of expectancies upon athletes’ performances on each occasion. To do so, it provides a detailed EM analysis of the endogenous production of negotiating expectancies among members (coach and athletes) during parkour sessions. The coaching ethnomethods for negotiating expectancies constitute a social orderliness on each occasion. The negotiation of expectancies can lead to positive or negative breaching moments which demands the execution of some repair work to maintain the social orderliness of the parkour class. Such dynamic negotiation constitutes a key feature of the process along which parkour proficiency is achieved.

Ethnomethodology: Land and Building Tax (PBB) Collection in Totosan Village

The aims of this reseach to find out how the Totosan village government collects PBB P2. Researchers collected research data using observation, interviews, and documentation, which conducted in-depth interviews with 5 informants. Data analysis through the stages of reduction, presentation, conclusion drawing and verification as well as ethnomethodological analysis with the help of NVivo R1 software. The method of PBB P2 collection carried out in Totosan Village is conditional on the value of local wisdom, where tax collection is carried out by (1) visiting the taxpayer directly; (2) provide education about PBB P2; and (3) provide solutions to problems related to P2 PBB collection and provide services in the P2 PBB payment process. In addition, village officials who have this task emphasized that they came to submit SPPT not to collect taxes, so that it seemed as if village officials were officers who collected taxes, even though they were only facilitators who submitted SPPT PBB P2. This study implies the theory that many ways of collecting taxes do not have to rely on existing legal rules because they create fear for taxpayers. Therefore, in ways that are local wisdom as a new alternative in tax collection.

The orthopedic surgery preparatory exam course: Measuring residents’ satisfaction and perceptions through video ethnomethodology and survey analysis

Objectives: Orthopedic training in Saudi Arabia has changed how residents are assessed for their board examination. The new format uses scenario cases instead of real patients during the assessment. However, these changes were not received well by the residents. The Orthopedic Surgery Preparatory Exam Course is a 3-day training course designed specifically to address these concerns. This study investigated the effectiveness, perceptions, and satisfaction levels of the residents who took this course, emphasizing the video recording approach. Methods: A quantitative survey was designed by the research team and validated by experts. Edits were made after their feedback. Purposive sampling was used, and all 12 attendees of the course participated. All participants were 5th-year residents enrolled in the orthopedics residency training program in Saudi Arabia. A qualitative ethnomethodology analysis of video recordings for pre- and post-mock exams was also conducted. Results: The analysis demonstrated that participants were less anxious in the post-mock exam and showed improvement in their confidence and communication skills based on analysis of the assessed criteria such as eye contact, vocal projection, gestures, posture, and movement. The participants generally perceived the course useful in preparing for their board exam. Conclusion: The participants generally perceived the course to be useful in helping them to prepare for their board exam by familiarizing them with the exam environment. The participants reported the strength of the course as being able to provide a realistic simulated experience. On the other hand, the participants viewed the weakness of the course in its duration and generally requested more days to be added to the course. They were generally satisfied with the course helping them prepare for the board exam. It is recommended to incorporate the course as part of the residency training program curriculum.

Reading What is Not There: Ethnomethodological Analysis of the Membership Category, Action, and Reason in Novels and Short Stories

This paper investigates how the reader of prose fiction fills in the blanks regarding a fictional character’s membership category, action, and reason for the action. Aligning with an ethnomethodological approach to texts and appropriating membership categorization analysis (MCA), we analyze how the readers of J. D. Salinger, an author whose works are well known for their ambiguity and ambivalence, would grasp the unwritten identities of characters and the meanings of their actions. Our analysis specifies two types of methods deployed for the reader to understand the fictional texts. First, in an at-a-glance way, the reader can supply the missing categories and sequence of actions by turning to the commonsense knowledge and social norms regarding the association between the category and the activity. Second, the reader can construct various interpretations regarding the recognizably ambiguous scenes of the text by turning to the conceptual knowledge of the relevant social phenomena, the maxims specific to the act of storytelling, and the writer’s techniques peculiar to the fictional texts. The findings demonstrate the vast applicability of an MCA approach to the analysis of the work of reading prose fiction and shed light on the detailed operations of the author’s maxims and techniques in the textual configuration of prose fiction, thereby indicating the possibility of ethnomethodological analysis including the interwoven consideration of the reader’s activity and the textual organization.

To Walk the Same Road: Convivial Possibilities and Ethical Affordances in Borderlands Schooling

In this article, I explore how teachers and students in two distinct regions of the US-Mexico borderlands, southern Arizona and south Texas, treated social difference as an ethical affordance (Keane 2014) or a resource for moral stancetaking. Inspired by work in the anthropology of morality and ethnomethodological analyses of “accountable moral choice” (Heritage 1984, 76) in interaction, I examine how the salience of social difference can become an imaginative affordance for probing experiences of and possibilities for living with difference. When axes of social differentiation became relevant to ongoing interaction, participants used them to frame their own actions or others’ actions as morally admirable, justifiable, or questionable. At times, they did so in ways that foreclosed possibilities for conviviality; at other times, their “ordinary” ethical activity (Das 2012) suggested new possibilities for dealing with social difference in diverse contexts. The analysis testifies to the “internally riven” nature of the moral universe (Keane 2011, 173)—the different stances available to be taken up, even in relation to the same people and the same objects of evaluation—and underscores that conviviality is better viewed not as a lasting state of affairs, but as a provisional interactional achievement and a site of struggle and contradiction.

Ethnography in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis: Both, neither, or something else altogether?

This article focuses on various ethnographic procedures and findings in ethnomethodology (EM) and conversation analysis (CA), addressing the question of how EM and CA relate to ethnography. Given the obvious answer that EM includes ethnography, we also argue that CA does as well, though just how EM and CA do so needs to be qualified and specified. Ethnographic procedures have been used in EM for decades, although often in non-standard ways, and currently with some ambivalence. In CA, it is more common to disavow ethnography in favor of recorded and transcribed interactional exchanges. However, we argue that CA often makes use of ethnographic insights drawn from extended study of recordings, while also identifying “ethnographic” inquiries of a sort that take place within the organizational settings studied. Our aim is to identify the place of ethnography within EMCA by taking an inventory of ways “ethnography” has been used, invoked, produced, and/or disavowed in particular studies and to highlight what is distinctive about those various EMCA uses of ethnography in contrast with more conventional ethnography.

Secondary ethnographic analysis: Thinking about things

There is a fruitful tension in ethnomethodological work. On the one hand, real-world data are used to rein in analytical privilege. On the other, conceptual discussions necessarily take place in a more open analytical space. Describing settings in detail and thinking about things in the abstract are both essential components of the ethnomethodological project. What ethnographies might consist in complicates this picture. Garfinkel initially deflated the concept of ‘ethnography’, using it to refer to how all members of society make sense of their world. Sacks, on the other hand, initially construed his sociological project as a more rigorous form of professional ethnography. Ethnographic methods rightly remain an important tool for ethnomethodological analyses. They provide an empirical grounding for analysis and facilitate ‘thinking about things’ in a more open manner than some other forms of data. This paper argues that ethnographic analyses more generally can be used as ethnomethodological resources, (re)introducing the idea that others’ fieldwork and analyses are legitimate resources for ethnomethodological work. Some materials from Elijah Anderson’s classic ethnography A Place on the Corner are used to illustrate the possibilities taking this approach might offer.

Wittgensteinian Ethnomethodology (1): Gurwitsch, Garfinkel, and Wittgenstein and the Meaning of Praxeological Gestalts

Garfinkel’s Ethnomethodology (EM) at its core involves a praxeological, or interactional, respecification of Gestalt phenomena. In early EM, this is pursued through the development of a category of praxeological Gestalten in which social facts (or social units) are respecified as Gestalt phenomena, where members are the constituents and the social unit is the whole or Gestalt, produced praxeologically by the methodic work of its members. In later work, Garfinkel would praxeologically transpose traditional perceptual Gestalt phenomena, such as music, to explore the interactional work done in the production and perception of those phenomena. In developing EM by praxeologically reconfiguring Gestaltism, Garfinkel drew on the constitutive phenomenology of Aron Gurwitsch, wherein Gurwitsch sought to integrate Gestalt Psychology and phenomenology. In drawing on Gurwitsch, while also being informed by the work of Schütz and, later, Merleau-Ponty, EM is often depicted as either heavily indebted to phenomenology or as a distinct type of phenomenology: praxeological phenomenology, perhaps. At the same time, parallels have been drawn between Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later work and EM, since Garfinkel’s Studies in Ethnomethodology was published in 1967. The parallels drawn have often centred on the treatment of rules and rule-following and on the similarities in the treatment of meaning in EM and in Wittgenstein’s later work. However, given the centrality of Gestalt psychology to the development of EM, it is worth noting that in his later manuscripts Wittgenstein discussed Gestalt phenomena and Gestalt Psychology extensively and in ways that often anticipate what Garfinkel would do with Gestaltist ideas. It is, therefore, worth exploring the similarities and differences between Wittgenstein’s, Gurwitsch’s and Garfinkel’s engagement with Gestaltism. This is what I seek to do in this article. In conclusion, I propose that EM should be seen, like Wittgenstein, as post-phenomenological.

Paradox as an Interactional Resource: An ethnomethodological analysis into the interconnectedness of organizational paradoxes

In this paper, we demonstrate how performing and belonging paradoxes act as triggers, mitigators and amplifiers for each other in moment-by-moment interaction. We show how expressing a performing paradox as part of group practice triggers belonging tensions, particularly when there is a strong expectation towards a uniform value-base. We further demonstrate how a familiar performing paradox at the organization level is constructed to mitigate the belonging tensions through latency. This leads to an amplification dynamic where a paradox that is more socially appropriate is reinforced in order to cope with a more interactionally problematic one. Our results speak to research on the intertwined nature of paradoxical tensions and the relationship between latency and salience in working through paradox. Our study advocates for developing a more systematic approach for studying the interactional foundations of organizational paradox and offers ethnomethodological conversation analysis as one means to achieve improved understanding in this domain.

Teachers’ responsiveness to students’ gestured candidate responses in whole-class STEM interactions

ABSTRACT We contribute a previously unidentified way representational gestures are used to organise participation and the co-construction of knowledge in whole-class interactions in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) classrooms. Drawing on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EMCA), we characterise students’ gestured candidate responses and how teachers respond to them. To answer teachers’ questions, students sometimes use representational gestures to provide silent, ‘off-the-record’ tentative responses that we call gestured candidate responses (GCRs). Teachers can respond to GCRs by ratifying or declining students’ responses. Teachers’ responses to GCRs include (1) ratifying the GCR by nominating students to share the response, (2) ratifying the GCR by repeating the gestured response for the class, (3) declining the GCR by not publicly pursuing the contribution, or (4) declining the GCR by publicly rejecting the contribution. Our analysis contributes to a better understanding of how students use gesture and how teachers attend and respond to students’ gestures in STEM classroom discourse.

Analysis of Behavior and Meaning of Ojek Driver Operational Costs in Calculation of Net Income Through Ethnometodological Study

Behavioral accounting study is a study that looks at the unity between accounting actors and the accounting system itself, so that in this behavioral accounting study, humans and accounting systems are recognized for their existence in the organizational dimension. In this study, researchers want to see the cost behavior of motorcycle taxi drivers (both online and base) in carrying out financial management to support their operational activities. Another objective of this research is to see how the motorcycle taxi driver community interprets costs. Thus, the focus of this research is all costs included in self-budgeting (self-budgeting) delivery service business activities. This study uses a non-positivistic qualitative research paradigm using ethnomethodological analysis tools. The data used in this study are all primary data obtained through in-depth interviews and direct observation. The results of this study indicate that most of the ojek drivers do not control their operational costs based on the cost principle, but rather based on their physical needs. This shows that self-interest is the biggest determinant in achieving organizational goals (in this case the household). In addition, there are inconsistencies in treating expense as cost. Most of the ojek drivers realize that the expenses they use for their personal interests will affect their family income, this shows that the expenses for their personal interests are recognized as operational costs.

Religious Education for Schools Within Conflict-Prone Zones: An Inclusive Multicultural Approach

The multicultural approach plays a vital role in learning religious education in order to recognize the diversity that exists, especially in conflict-prone zone schools. This study aims to describe a multicultural approach in learning religious education in conflict-prone zones. Through exercising Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology analysis, this qualitative research was conducted at SMAN 2 Pasaman and SMAN 1 Luhak Nan Duo senior high schools within conflict-prone zones of West Pasaman, West Sumatra. The dynamics of school philosophy towards inclusive multicultural approaches in religious education for schools in conflict-prone zones indicated that academic culture within said schools must be capable of creating a more harmonious atmosphere among ethnic diversities, mainly that of Javanese, Minangkabaunese, and Bataknese. The application of multicultural approaches in religious education for such schools in conflict-prone zones showed that the planning, implementation, and evaluation of religious education must be carried out while simultaneously considering the diversity of these ethnicities. The employment of an inclusive multicultural approach in association with schools in conflict-prone zones showed that the school’s physical environment is strategic for the interaction of various ethnicities, such as with Javanese, Minang, and Batak ethnicities at SMAN 2 Pasaman and SMAN 1 Luhak Nan Duo. This research is useful as input in making and improving policies by schools and the government regarding the implementation of religious education with a multicultural approach in conflict-prone zone schools.

Doing the Organization’s Work—Transcription for All Practical Governmental Purposes

By comparing two distinct governmental organizations (the US military and NASA) this paper unpacks two main issues. On the one hand, the paper examines the transcripts that are produced as part of work activities in these worksites and what the transcripts reveal about the organizations themselves. Additionally, the paper analyses what the transcripts disclose about the practices involved in their creation and use for practical purposes in these organizations. These organizations have been chosen as transcription forms a routine part of how they operate as worksites. Further, the everyday working environments in both organizations involve complex technological systems, as well as multi-party interactions in which speakers are frequently spatially and visually separated. In order to explicate these practices, the article draws on the transcription methods employed in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis research as a comparative resource. In these approaches audio-video data is transcribed in a fine-grained manner that captures temporal aspects of talk, as well as how speech is delivered. Using these approaches to transcription as an analytical device enables us to investigate when and why transcripts are produced by the US military and NASA in the specific ways that they are, as well as what exactly is being re-presented in the transcripts and thus what was treated as worth transcribing in the interactions they are intended to serve as documents of. By analysing these transcription practices it becomes clear that these organizations create huge amounts of audio-video “data” about their routine activities. One major difference between them is that the US military selectively transcribe this data (usually for the purposes of investigating incidents in which civilians might have been injured), whereas NASA’s “transcription machinery” aims to capture as much of their mission-related interactions as is organizationally possible (i.e., within the physical limits and capacities of their radio communications systems). As such the paper adds to our understanding of transcription practices and how this is related to the internal working, accounting and transparency practices within different kinds of organization. The article also examines how the original transcripts have been used by researchers (and others) outside of the organizations themselves for alternative purposes.

ISLAMIC FINANCIAL LITERACY DAN ISLAMIC FINANCIAL BEHAVIOUR MAHASISWA (Studi Etnometodologi Terhadap Efektivitas Pembelajaran Manajemen Keuangan Islam)

This study aims to determine whether the learning process of Islamic Financial Management courses has been effective in improving students’ Islamic financial literacy and Islamic financial behaviour. This study is a qualitative research, using an ethnomethodological approach, to be more specific this study employs an Islamic ethnomethodology analysis tool, namely "amiiin". The Islamic ethnomethodology "amiiin" has several stages, they are: deed, knowledge, faith, information revelation and ihsan. Previously, the data were primary data which obtained by observation, interviews, documentation and focus group discussions. The results of this study indicate that Islamic financial management courses are effective in improving students’ Islamic financial literacy and Islamic financial behaviour. Likewise, the "amiiin" ethnomethodology analysis after studying Islamic financial management, their financial management behaviour leads to ihsan behaviour, which is to obtain blessing.

An ethnomethodological analysis of students’ understanding of the concept of trigonometry in a high-stakes examination in South Africa

[English]: In South Africa, National Senior Certificate (NSC) mathematics examination is a capping external examination taken at the culmination of twelve years of schooling. The purpose of this study was to investigate and analyze the responses of examinees in the examinations in the concept of trigonometry. While the study mainly used an ethnomethodological approach, a documentary analytical approach was also adopted. Documentary analysis was necessitated by the private nature of the NSC examination, as we only had access to the written work of the examinees. The major findings were: (1) that the strategies and tactics used by examinees are highly driven by the context of the high-stakes examination; (2) that examinees’ ways of working exhibit the general structure of the practice that is commonly found in mathematical discourse practices. Further studies are required to deepen the understanding of the thinking processes of examinees by conducting focus group interviews, where the examinees are afforded opportunities to explain their workings in school-based assessments. [Bahasa]: Di Afrika Selatan, ujian matematika National Senior Certificate (NSC) adalah ujian tambahan yang diambil pada akhir dari dua belas tahun sekolah. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk melakukan investigasi dan analisis tanggapan siswa peserta ujian matematika NSC terkait konsep trigonometri. Selain pendekatan etnometodologi yang secara umum dipakai dalam penelitian ini, pendekatan analitis dokumenter yang juga diadopsi terkait karakteristik ujian NSC, dalam hal inipeneliti hanya memiliki akses pada jawaban tertulis peserta ujian. Temuan utama penelitian adalah: (1) bahwa strategi dan taktik yang digunakan oleh peserta ujian sangat didorong oleh konteks ujian berisiko tinggi; (2) bahwa cara kerja peserta ujian menunjukkan struktur umum praktik yang biasa ditemukan dalam praktis diskursus matematika. Penelitian lebih lanjut diperlukan untuk memperdalam pemahaman tentang proses berpikir peserta ujian dengan melakukan wawancara kelompok terfokus, dimana peserta ujian diberikan kesempatan untuk menjelaskan cara kerja mereka dalam penilaian berbasis sekolah.

Rules at Play: Correcting Projectable Violations of Who Plays Next

This study examines the situated use of rules and the social practices people deploy to correct projectable rule violations in pétanque playing activities. Drawing on Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, and using naturally occurring video recordings, this article investigates socially organized occasions of rule use, and more particularly how rules for turn-taking at play are reflexively established in and through interaction. The alternation of players in pétanque is dependent on and consequential for the progressivity of the game and it is a practical problem for the players when a participant projects to break a rule of “who plays next”. The empirical analysis shows that formulating rules is a practice for indicating and correcting incipient violations of who plays next, which retrospectively invoke and establish the situated expectations that constitute the game as that particular game. Focusing on the anticipative corrections of projectable violations of turn-taking rules, this study revisits the concept of rules, as they are played into being, from a social and interactional perspective. We argue and demonstrate that rules are not prescriptions of game conduct, but resources that reflexively render the players’ conducts intelligible as playing the game they are engaging in.

‘What? Olaf is the taxi driver?’

While children’s remarkable ability to co-construct spontaneous fantasy narratives in pretend play interaction has been noted, sequential organization embedded in the collaborative construction of narratives have received little research attention. Drawing on an ethnomethodological and conversation analysis perspective, the current study examines the sequential organization of pretend play narratives co-constructed in children’s play interaction. Close sequential analysis based on 30 hours of audio and video recordings reveals an array of resources and interactional practices used to construct and maintain the spontaneous narratives. Sequential analysis allows to observe sense-making procedures embedded in the way participating children respond to and develop the storyline. The paper concludes with a reflection on how real-world knowledge informs and regulates the co-constructional process of fantasy narratives.

Accessibility as a ‘doing’: the everyday production of Santiago de Chile's public transport system as an accessible infrastructure

ABSTRACT This paper seeks to expand mainstream descriptions of accessibility as a characteristic of materialities and infrastructures, inscribed into them at the design stage. Instead, it explores accessibility as a practice. That is, as the outcome of ongoing everyday interactions taking place between disabled and non-disabled users encountering materialities and accessibility-oriented protocols. Accessibility is framed as a relational achievement in which the practical action of those who routinely navigate public transport infrastructures locally enact heterogeneous landscapes of accessibility. The paper draws on qualitative data of disabled people using the public transport system of Santiago de Chile. Through an ethnomethodological analysis of video recordings and ethnographic work, the interaction between disabled and non-disabled passengers and infrastructures is put in context, revealing the embodied skills and interactional work that people do in order to enact accessible situations for themselves and for others.