Ethnomethodology Analysis Research Articles

Conversation analysis, publics, practitioners and citizen social science

During the course of this short article, I respond and connect with insights and issues raised by the Conversational Rollercoaster (CR) and its relationship with conversation analysis (CA) and the public science of talk. I constructively engage with the innovative thinking and practice associated with this initiative. Finally, I consider how this might enhance a potential drive to connect ethnomethodology (EM) and CA to additional public and collaborative practices and interventions in the digital age.

Some thoughts on the Conversational Rollercoaster

The commentary provides a series of notes on the article ‘The Conversational Rollercoaster: Conversation analysis and the public science of talk’. There are two broad areas that I attend to: one is on the formulation of the Conversational Rollercoaster in the light of the warrants of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis and the second is around what the Conversational Rollercoaster accomplished.

FINANCING BEHAVIOR OF THE PLANT OF SUGARCANE TO FARMERS IN BLITAR DISTRICT (Ethno methodology Study on Sugarcane Farmers in Rejoso Village, Binangun District, Blitar District)

This research was conducted in Rejoso village, Binangun sub-district, Blitar district, with research object of sugar cane farmers there. This study aims to find out how the behavior of farmers in Rejoso Village about financing in the management of sugar cane, especially in financing behavior of the plant of sugarcane. In Rejoso village, plant of sugarcane is only done once in the period of 5 to 10 years because once planting sugarcane can be harvested many times even up to 10 times the harvest. The type of research used is qualitative research using Ethnomethodology method. Ethnomethodology is a study of how people create and understand their everyday life and the way they complete daily life. The subject for ethno methodology is not primitive tribal people but people of various situations in our own society. In this study, the subject of research is the sugar cane farmers in the Rejoso Village, Binangun District, Blitar. Data obtained by interview technique then result of the interview then analyzed to know how financing behavior of the plant of sugarcane. Based on the research results obtained from analyzing the results of interviews with sugar cane farmers in Rejoso Village that the financing behavior of the plant of sugarcane is vary depending on each individual. The difference in behavior lies in how to obtain sugar cane seeds, how to prepare the land and how to plant seeds of sugar cane.

FINANCING BEHAVIOR OF THE PLANT OF SUGARCANE TO FARMERS IN BLITAR DISTRICT (Ethno methodology Study on Sugarcane Farmers in Rejoso Village, Binangun District, Blitar District)

This research was conducted in Rejoso village, Binangun sub-district, Blitar district, with research object of sugar cane farmers there. This study aims to find out how the behavior of farmers in Rejoso Village about financing in the management of sugar cane, especially in financing behavior of the plant of sugarcane. In Rejoso village, plant of sugarcane is only done once in the period of 5 to 10 years because once planting sugarcane can be harvested many times even up to 10 times the harvest. The type of research used is qualitative research using Ethnomethodology method. Ethnomethodology is a study of how people create and understand their everyday life and the way they complete daily life. The subject for ethno methodology is not primitive tribal people but people of various situations in our own society. In this study, the subject of research is the sugar cane farmers in the Rejoso Village, Binangun District, Blitar. Data obtained by interview technique then result of the interview then analyzed to know how financing behavior of the plant of sugarcane. Based on the research results obtained from analyzing the results of interviews with sugar cane farmers in Rejoso Village that the financing behavior of the plant of sugarcane is vary depending on each individual. The difference in behavior lies in how to obtain sugar cane seeds, how to prepare the land and how to plant seeds of sugar cane.

Mandarin ethnomethodology or mutual interchange?

Contributors to the 2016 Special Issue of Discourse Studies on the ‘Epistemics of Epistemics’ (EoE) claim that studies of epistemics in interaction (how participants display orientations to their own and others’ states of knowledge) have lost the ‘radical’ character of groundbreaking work in ethnomethodology (EM) and conversation analysis (CA). We suggest that the critiques and related writings are a kind of mandarin EM, lacking an adequate definition of ‘radical’, other than to invoke brief and by now familiar statements from Garfinkel and Sacks regarding the pursuit of ‘ordinary everyday activities’ and the avoidance of ‘formal analysis’. Drawing on Egon Bittner’s work, we further suggest that the EoE group shares properties and problems common to social movements claiming the mantle of radicalism. Because of their particular focus on CA and Harvey Sacks’ early work, we also demonstrate that Sacks was not, as asserted, preoccupied with the singularity of occasions. Rather, from his earliest available work (the 1964 lectures), Sacks pursued trans-situational aspects of sequential organization, and documented these not only through single cases but also through the comparative analysis of specimen collections. We conclude by considering how EM and CA are compatible endeavors, both in their engagement with traditional research topics – or what Garfinkel called ‘asymmetric alternates’ – and in their appreciation of generic features implicated in the assembly of social actions and social worlds. This implies a relationship of mutual interchange between EM and CA.

KONSTRUKSI MASYARAKAT PENCARI SUMBANGAN DI JALAN RAYA (Studi Kasus Pencarian Amal Masjid Di Jalan Raya Kabupaten Pamekasan)

The phenomenon of charity’s conducting in highway for the establishing meant of mosque has been levelly occurred, in certain Islamic community. The levelness phenomenon is viewed from the perspective of sociology, however it is important to research the phenomenon by focusing on (1) the characteristics of religiosity of the member of society, the charity collector (2) the rationalization of charity collector behavior (3) the description of social meaning of charity collection in the highway. The research methodology with certain insistences, includes: the use of qualitative approach and emic perspective. The technique of data gathering uses observation, depth interview, ethno methodology and documentation based on the problem of research, on the strategy of research is divided into phases, namely, in the field of research, information’s gathering and data analysis. The later (data analysis) uses the procedure of induction, conceptualization and interpretation by applying double hermeneutic. Moreover the observation of validity of research uses triangulation member check technique and the lengthen of researcher’s presentation. The research obtain some important information about the social meaning of charity’s conducting for the establishment of mosque in highway, as follows (1) the process of “religion like” for social activity or the covering of social activity in the name or religion (2) the realization of public’s of public’s disbelief against committee, manager and organizer of mosque establishment. Such information carry out the implication: (1) religion is the only one culture explaining human’s way of live, (2) religion is closely fastened to public’s aspects of live, (3) the deconstruction on Islamic missionary concept or Islam missionary is directed to the domination of Islam’s social which maintains Islam’s social dimension.

Book review: Sara Keel, Socialization: Parent–Child Interaction in Everyday Life

This book is the newest addition to the Routledge series ‘Directions in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis’, which is dedicated to publishing the latest work on the study of human conduct and aptitudes, the (re)production of social orderliness and the methods and aspirations of the social sciences. Keel’s contribution fits perfectly with this aim, analysing interactions between parents and (young) children in the light of socialization theory.

The micro-politics of sequential organization

AbstractConversation analysis (CA) and ethnomethodology (EM) have long dealt with political talk, but this is the first thematic volume showing the continuity and diversity of EMCA studies in this field. This introduction provides an overview of early to recent EMCA contributions to the study of political talk and discusses how they developed a distinctive field of investigation and how the papers of the special issue draw on and contribute to it. The introduction also clarifies how specific sequential and categorial organizations of social interaction manifest and foster political action and participation, and are locally treated as of political importance by the participants themselves. The study of micro-politics of sequentiality focuses on the temporal, emergent, and sequential unfolding of interaction and the way its organization opens/closes possible occasions for politically relevant actions. By showing how these are established, responded and oriented to by the participants, it offers a respecification of political issues.

WACANA DAN PRAKTIK ETIKA AKUNTAN PUBLIK DALAM STRUKTURASI (+SQ)

This research aims to understand the ethical discourse and practice of the professional accountants in a public accounting office (KAP) area. Hence, it is developed with the basis of interpretive paradigm. To explore the comprehensive meaning of ethics in everyday practice, writer used a collaborative theory (ethno methodology, structural and spiritual intelligence or SQ).This research shows two indications. First, in the KAP’s management is more informal climate and the managing partner has a strong strength change in the organization. In the framework of ESQ, it can be understood that the informal pattern developed was the manifestation of the chief’s internal dimension which are not always based on a certain convention, a flexible behavior, a tendency to maintain life quality inspired by visions and values, self tendency to see the relationship between lots of things (to view in a “holistic” way). Second, the structural pattern is not only rolling in the context of interaction between human being and organization, but also in the context of social environment setting. With an informal pattern developed in a KAP, the discourse and practical of ethics which is developed here is coming from the chief’s effort and shared of value personally. While, this effort is inseparable from the social context coped with this individual and organizational context. Especially, ethical practice is always happened because the existence of a strong external pressure from multiparty.

Ethnomethodological Studies of Visuality

The article considers how ethnomethodology (EM) studies visuality. Historically, there were four approaches to visuality in EM, those of visuality as observable activity, as images, as practices of vision, and as language constructions. Harold Garfinkel’s idea of witnessability implies that the phenomena of order exist in observable methods of their production. Observability, or witnessability, at this point can be an equivalent for visuality because it suggests an opportunity to be studied with visual methods. In such a case, any ethnomethodological study is a visual study because it implies a description of observable methods of order production. Besides this idea of observability, three separate projects of visual research were developed in EM from 1980s to the 1990s by Michel Lynch, Charles Goodwin, and Jeff Coulter. They all tried to present the practical approach to visual perception (in contrast with perception as an individual psychological process), but found solutions in studying different aspects of visuality, which were images, practices of seeing, and language constructions describing different modes of perception. This text considers the relationships between the three conceptions and Garfinkel’s initial idea of observability. It analyzes ideas which Lynch, Goodwin, and Coulter added to Garfinkel’s ethnomethodological program, and shows how other ethnomethodologists use these additions. The article demonstrates that together they produced EM’s approach to visuality, although none of these projects were completely realized inside EM. It is based on Garfinkel’s idea of observability, supplemented by the opportunity to study perception as a practical social achievement situated in local interactional contexts.

Ethnomethodological Studies of Visuality

The article considers how ethnomethodology (EM) studies visuality. Historically, there were four approaches to visuality in EM, those of visuality as observable activity, as images, as practices of vision, and as language constructions. Harold Garfinkel’s idea of witnessability implies that the phenomena of order exist in observable methods of their production. Observability, or witnessability, at this point can be an equivalent for visuality because it suggests an opportunity to be studied with visual methods. In such a case, any ethnomethodological study is a visual study because it implies a description of observable methods of order production. Besides this idea of observability, three separate projects of visual research were developed in EM from 1980s to the 1990s by Michel Lynch, Charles Goodwin, and Jeff Coulter. They all tried to present the practical approach to visual perception (in contrast with perception as an individual psychological process), but found solutions in studying different aspects of visuality, which were images, practices of seeing, and language constructions describing different modes of perception. This text considers the relationships between the three conceptions and Garfinkel’s initial idea of observability. It analyzes ideas which Lynch, Goodwin, and Coulter added to Garfinkel’s ethnomethodological program, and shows how other ethnomethodologists use these additions. The article demonstrates that together they produced EM’s approach to visuality, although none of these projects were completely realized inside EM. It is based on Garfinkel’s idea of observability, supplemented by the opportunity to study perception as a practical social achievement situated in local interactional contexts.

Interactional Lenses for Contemporary Migration Studies: The Case of the “Cosmopolitan Sociability” Concept

The article attempts to revise the concept of ‘cosmopolitan sociability’, proposed by Nina Glick-Schiller for the field of migration research, from the interactional perspective. Cosmopolitan sociability characterizes such forms of integration of mobile people that do not refer to ethnicity or the country of origin; instead they are based on openness, free emotional sharing, and general human competencies available to everyone. However, the use of the concept by anthropologists and sociologists seems to neglect specific situational mechanisms of how cosmopolitan sociability is produced and reproduced in everyday interactions. We seek to fill this gap addressing theoretical resources of ethnomethodological membership categorization analysis, as well as interaction ritual theory. We propose to combine these approaches as complementary conceptual frameworks to analyze cosmopolitan sociability practices at the situational level. Ethnomethodological tradition helps to identify mutual definition and accounting of what is happening in specific here-and-now situations. This allows analyzing the stability created within the framework of cosmopolitan interactions, as well as the specific moral order that is reproduced within them. Moreover, ethnomethodological analysis helps to identify contexts where cosmopolitan sociability can or cannot arise. Interaction ritual theory, as developed by Randall Collins, characterizes situational solidarities and group symbols emerging and sustaining in everyday interactions. It is also able to trace the influence of the individuals’ past experiences (previous chains of interactions) on their participation in situations of cosmopolitan sociability. The proposed approach is illustrated by the analysis of several examples of labor migrants’ interactions in the Federal Migration Service.

Co-constructed imagination space: a multimodal analysis of the interactional accomplishment of imagination during idea-development meetings

New ideas in organisations are often developed during business meetings and are thus dependent on the local setting and the participants’ abilities to collaboratively ideate turn by turn. Using ethnomethodology and multimodal conversation analysis as its methodological and theoretical framework, this article shows how idea development can be accomplished through the co-construction of a co-imagined space that functions as a resource for participants. This co-constructed imagination space is a theoretical construct which in oriented-to details can be accomplished through (1) organisation of turn-taking during discussions, (2) embodied orientations, and (3) use of local material structures and the environment.

Sports coaching as action-in-context: using ethnomethodological conversation analysis to understand the coaching process

This paper explores the turn to context within contemporary studies of sports coaching, observing that the theoretical progress in reconceptualising coaching as complex and contextually shaped social activity has not yet been matched by empirical studies explicating how coaching actually transpires as situated action. It argues that this imbalance is attributable, at least in part, to a research practice predominant within sociological research on coaching that involves mobilising theorised conceptualisations of context to specify the significance of social actions. The paper outlines an alternative understanding of context, shared by the perspectives of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, under which actions and contexts are treated as being reflexively configured by participants in and as their ongoing accomplishment of intersubjectively intelligible social activities. It suggests that empirical investigation of coaching practices adopting an ethnomethodological conversation analytic approach (EMCA) stands to provide fresh understanding of the situated and contextual nature of the coaching process, and presents an empirical analysis of a video recording of a naturally-occurring coaching activity which demonstrates participants’ orientations to specific contextual features as a resource for organising a coaching correction. The analysis illustrates in a small way how one aspect of coaching, the correction of player errors, unfolds as a course of situated collaborative action, and thereby demonstrates how EMCA offers a research strategy by which coaching may be appreciated as a fundamentally social and contextual practice.

Argument in professional-client encounters

Adopting the methods of Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, this article aims to add to our knowledge of the dynamics and resistance in professional-client encounters. It does this by examining the argumentative function of second-hand assessments in the setting of vocational rehabilitation. In the situated negotiation of appropriate work-targeted initiatives (education, job training, etc.), the practice of reporting second-hand assessments functions either as ‘opposing’ the professional’s investigations, or, when used in initiating turns, as ‘promoting’ the client’s case. Regarding the first, second-hand assessments provide opportunities to oppose and redirect the institutional agenda. That is, the issue introduced by the professional is fended off more or less openly through second-hand accounts, which provide a presumptive better grasp on the matter at hand.

Ethnomethodological Indifference: Just a Passing Phase?

This paper examines whether social workers and other direct service practitioners can find utility in ethnomethodology despite or even because of the policy of “indifference”. Garfinkel, the father of ethnomethodology (EM), sets out “ethnomethodological indifference” (EM-I) to insist that EM studies do not supplement, formulate remedies, develop humanistic arguments, or encourage discussions of theory. While at first blush such limits on EM might appear to be a barrier for most social workers this paper argues against first impressions. It is argued that EM provides an important redirection for social work practice and research. Additionally, it is proposed that by approaching EM through Dorothy Smith’s Institutional Ethnography social workers can bridge Garfinkel’s quest for haeccities (“just thisness; just here, just now”) with extended social relations and actual courses of actions to find congruence between EM and accomplished professional practice.

On the Way to Cycle Rage: Disputed Mobile Formations

On a sunny Sunday afternoon in 2012 a conflict arose between two men riding a popular mountain biking track in New Zealand. This gained both local and international attention after one of the riders posted his video of the incident on a social media site where it went ‘viral’. The video helped identify the other rider, who was taken to trial and convicted of assault. This paper uses the video as data for an ethnomethodological analysis of the joint production, in real time, of an ordinary trouble that takes an unexpected turn. The two riders come across each other travelling downhill at speed on a narrow track, and quite quickly they develop a disputed mobile formation. The camera-clad rider wants to pass the older rider in front, and proceed at a faster pace, but except for an intriguing and brief interlude, the older rider will not let the other pass. Consequently, the camera-clad rider grows increasingly frustrated; the problem is, he is oblivious to the way his own actions in showing he is faster, result in dangerous tailgating. It is this, along with some ‘lecturing’, that annoys the older rider. At the end of the ride, complaints and accusations are made, and then a brawl breaks out. The paper uses snapshots and transcriptions from the video to analyse how visual, vocal and tactile aspects of their interaction, situated in the terrain they are travelling through, contribute to the conflictual ending.

Interaction during mental health floating support home visits: managing host–guest and professional–client identities in home-spaces

Mental health work has been transformed by ‘shifting geographies of care’ from institutions to care in communities, in particular by the emergence of support located within home-spaces. This article studies a floating support service targeted at people with mental health problems and contributes to research on post-institution and home care geographies. The data contain 17 audio-recorded home visits conducted by professional care workers. An ethnomethodological analysis informed by geographies of care in home-spaces shows how the home as a material space has consequences for conversations and the relations between the service users and workers. The parties orient to two relational and shifting identity pairs in their ‘home-space talk’: a host–guest pair (social call talk) and a professional–client pair (targeted intervention talk). Professional–client pair dominates, and in this sense floating support produces institutionalization of home-spaces. However, social call talk that enables service users to act as hosts governing their home-spaces has important functions. Orientations to hosts and guests create symmetry and trust among the parties that encourages recovery promoting interaction. The article also demonstrates the applicability of the methods developed in the geographies of mental health and home in the ethnomethodological interaction analysis, and the other way round.

Expressions of Spiritually Inspired Leadership in the Public Sector: Calling for a New Paradigm in Developing Leaders

This is a dissertation for contemporary times. It is a story of intellectual and spiritual growth and renewal, a narrative account of the events that helped to shape the author’s worldview of leadership and organizational life. This dissertation documents a two-year long action research project for which the author was a complete-member researcher. This is a documentary of a research approach that can be used to shape and co-create reality of what spirituality means in context of leadership, and make research more relevant to the lives of workplace managers. This dissertation integrates several distinct pieces of empirical research that explore the meaning of spirituality in context of public sector leadership. It provides insight into the methodologies and techniques used in research, specifically how autoethnography, grounded theory, ethnomethodology, and narrative analysis designs were applied to collect, analyze, and synthesize data to develop a cogent story of how leaders express their spirituality.The research was accomplished in two phases. The results of the first phase suggest that scholars should develop an integrated theory of leadership that includes spirituality as a facilitating and intrinsic dimension of motivation and action. Furthermore, the author argues that spiritual beliefs and manifestations might provide a promising new way to assess mental models of reality at particular stages of human, moral, and leadership development. The second study suggests that although leaders may be able to define spirituality in context of leadership and express ways in which spirituality manifests itself in the workplace, there is little evidence to show that academic programs or workplace developmental programs address the notion of spirituality in a formal or institutionalized manner. The research suggests a leadership development model that facilitates transformational learning experiences through critical and deep reflection and honest discourse about the meaning of spirituality.

Normatividad en deporte: una reespecificación etnometodológica

This paper presents an ethnoethodological reespecification on the analysis of the different kinds of normativity in sport. In sports competition two kinds of rules are normally differentiated: rules of the game and ethical rules or fairplay. The ethnomethodological analysis affords us to distinguish a third kind of normativity, referred to what can be called praxical rules. The interest of the ethnomethodological proposal is not in the formal analysis (FA) of the different types of sport rules but in offering detailed analyses of the in vivo work of the members within real game situations through the use of ethnomethodological alternates (EA). To select the cases of analysis we conducted a search on Youtube, introducing labels such as ‘curious play’, ‘strange play’, ‘tricks’, ‘foul’, ‘dirty play’ for sport in general and for speci"c sports (finally we restricted the cases to football), in Spanish, English and Italian. The analyses of the images allowed us a better comprehension of sport normativity, making visible the praxical dimension and showing the complex articulation among the different kinds of normativities.