Ethnomethodological Perspective Research Articles

Wedangan: An ethnomethodological perspective of the liberating food marriage

This research aims to solve the research problems regarding the most important value of an object in the form of the wedangan phenomenon. This research objectives to expose the superiority of the communities’ food consumption tradition in the form of wedangan. This research belongs to a qualitative study and uses ethnomethodology as an initial approach. It is because the initial data findings are in the form of an indexical conversation that explicitly refers to the concept of wedangan. The concept refers to wedangan in real life, which is in the form of eating and drinking activities while chatting. The research findings are: 1) the most profound structure of wedangan’s tradition is food provision and food eating; 2) wedangan accommodates three forms (food stall, street food, and restaurant); 3) wedangan also accommodates three food values (delightful, useful, and meritorious); and 4) there is an egalitarian consumption pattern in wedangan, people regardless their social class visiting the same place, eat the same food, being simple and be ordinary (or usually we call it as food marriage). Wedangan is a social activity with advantages from a social, economic, and political perspective. Therefore, this phenomenon requires more serious attention from the government.

Context-sensitivity and context-productivity: notions of "practice" and "practicality" in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis.

The text reconstructs the concepts of practice and practicality used in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis and examines their internal similarities and differences as well as similarities and differences to other practice theories. After a description of the characteristics of practice theories, the ethnomethodological perspective on practice and practicality is presented. Then, the use of the terms in conversation analysis is examined. Ethnomethodology uses the notions of "practice" and "practicality" to outline a non-metaphysical theory of social order in which the sharedness of rules or meanings is not presupposed. "Practical" here means that social action, and social order more generally, are practically grounded as well as temporally and situationally constrained. The fact that practical action is fundamentally situated and can only be understood "from within" establishes an essentially indexical character of practical action. In conversation analysis, "practices" are viewed as "context-free" but "context-sensitive" components that constitute action and as such become the objects of investigation. While some have diagnosed a departure of conversation analysis from its ethnomethodological roots, I argue that "context-freeness" and "context-sensitivity" should be complemented by "context-productivity" by reference to Garfinkel's interpretation of Aron Gurwitsch's gestalt phenomenology in order to formulate a more encompassing concept of practice.

Incentives, Assistance, and Social Sanction in Changing The Community Behavior of Waste-Management in Indonesia

This paper examines the role of incentives, assistance, and social sanctions in shaping community behavior towards waste management in Indonesia. Combining rational choice theory with an ethnomethodological perspective, the study challenges the conventional assumption that economic condition or environmental knowledge and awareness are the primary drivers of individual/social action in waste management. Using the qualitative participatory research in the "Mentari Elok" housing complex located in the suburban area of Yogyakarta Indonesia, this study found that the behavior of the majority of residents did not relate to the economic condition or the level of education. The pattern in waste management remains conventional: throwing the garbage without sorting it first, dumping the trash in any place, or burning it in an open space. The research, which is based on qualitative data gathered through observation and assistance during community service activities, demonstrates that the lack of incentives for eco-friendly activities acts as a deterrent to sustainable waste management techniques. Furthermore, the lack of constant and quantitative assistance from social empowerment facilitators makes it more difficult to adopt good waste management behaviors. Furthermore, the lack of social sanctions affects the community's motivation to follow waste management rules. The findings add to the existing body of knowledge by emphasizing the necessity for focused interventions that address these characteristics. These insights can be used by policymakers and waste management practitioners to create policies that provide actual advantages, establish regular support programs, and employ social punishments to encourage good behavioral change. However, it is vital to recognize the study's limitations, such as its concentration on a certain cultural and socioeconomic environment. Future studies should broaden the scope to include different contexts of places and times, as well as longitudinal studies to evaluate the long-term effectiveness and sustainability of the interventions.

Betawi Ethnic Parents' Perceptions of Girls' Higher Education

This paper concludes that parents of Betawi ethnicity in Tangerang city area have different perceptions about higher education for their daughters. Some of the differences in perception include: 1) Considering higher education very important, because women when they are married and have children, the mother becomes the "first madrasa" for her children and the intelligent mother will give birth to an intelligent generation as well; 2) Consider it unimportant, because they assume that girls when married are more focused at home to be housewives; 3) Although many of the Betawi ethnic parents expect higher education in their children, many of them are at a weak economic level. In principle, this paper aims to photograph the phenomenon of reasoning of Betawi ethnic parents related to higher education for girls in Tangerang City. In its analysis, this paper uses a descriptive qualitative method that assumes that researchers are not only actors in the field but can also be the subject of research. This research is indeed considered less than perfect; therefore, it is necessary to conduct further research at least through this research to provide an overview of how Betawi ethnic perspectives concern higher education for their girls. A study that describes social phenomena in the perspective of ethnomethodology in Betawi society.

Introducing a Study of Second Chance School Teachers from the Self-reflection Perspective of Discourse Analysis and Ethnomethodology

Introducing a Study of Second Chance School Teachers from the Self-reflection Perspective of Discourse Analysis and Ethnomethodology

Work from Home: Social Media, Virtual Meeting and the New Family Relationship

The COVID-19 pandemic has actually forced people to work at home. Office activities outside the home can result in the transmission of COVID-19 to its workers. The government has taken a decision to minimize employee attendance at the office. Employees are encouraged to work at home (WFH), especially in groups vulnerable to infection. The house is turned into an “office space.” With the internet network, these employees are connected to each other. Although factually, this pattern is not a new thing because it has been carried out since the 2000s and is now becoming increasingly intensive. Through qualitative research with an ethnomethodological perspective, the results show that with this pattern, the house has become an encounter between public space and domestic space. This requires a strategy to manage roles in the home. Through in-depth observations and interviews, there were several important findings. First, there is a struggle for space in the house. Second, there is a transfer of stress from work to home. Third, there is a renegotiation of roles in the house, so as not to disturb family harmony. No less important, the community of users of social media and virtual meetings builds constructions of public and domestic space and time. The division of space and time in virtual space is also related to a person's role and social status when in the real world of work.

Translating secular-religious divide: everyday negotiation of Christian distinctiveness in Catholic schools in the Czechia and Slovakia

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to inquire into the Christian distinctiveness of church schools as an interactively achieved pragmatic resource. The ethnomethodological perspective incorporated in this research offers an actor- and meaning-focused take on the question of what makes Christian schools different from public schools. We connect this issue to the secular-religious divide debate and argue that church schools in Czechia and Slovakia function as laboratories of secular-religious dialogue. Actors engage in creative translations of Christian values to more secular variations which successfully communicate with the secular public. The interactional approach directed the analysis to the religious, focusing on bordering to create space for the specific identity of the school. The exploration of bordering is based on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork in three Catholic grammar schools in Czechia and Slovakia. This paper shows how unique and divergent enactments of Christian distinctiveness are constructed.

‘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.

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.

Developing purchase supporting system based on ethnomethodological perspective.

Developing purchase supporting system based on ethnomethodological perspective.

Sticking to the rules

In this paper, we take an ethnomethodological perspective to analysing members’ competence in a professional practice. We propose an approach which systematises different levels of analysis to identify the underlying management rules, principles and procedures that are significant for the way members in a Lean department meeting organise their in situ activity. Authentic video footage, on-site observations and ethnographic material form the basis of our research focus. Our analysis suggests that the mere presence of an inscribed post-it within an activity does not automatically render it into an object which facilitates discussions, organises activities or records outcomes, but that it is embedded within the members’ taken-for-granted knowledge and routine ways of doing. As such, it is the larger organisational context and the activity at hand which determine the role of the post-it in the moment-to-moment interaction. In conclusion, we suggest going beyond the conventional understanding of context and participation framework in analysing work practices, as an approach to broadening our understanding of what constitutes context from members’ own perspectives in a professional workplace practice.

Entextualization in co-production of legal discourses involved in the stories of female offenders who seek house arrest instead of pre-trial detention

Neste trabalho, analisamos o discurso empregado em um processo judicial envolvendo duas mulheres infratoras grávidas presas, uma que conseguiu o benefício da prisão domiciliar por meio do Artigo 318 da lei 3689/41 do CPP e outra não. Apresentamos, em uma perspectiva etnometodológica do texto, de que forma a entextualização está ligada à co-producão de textos, suas trajetórias e aos contextos de processos que envolvam tal situação e os recortes possíveis na análise discursiva como prática social e aplicada à linguagem jurídico-institucional. Procuramos pesquisar de que forma os discursos são co-construídos pelas rés e pelos profissionais da área, interpretados, retextualizados e entextualizados até a sentença. Buscamos investigar os discursos escritos e a forma como são organizados incorporando aspectos do contexto (BLOOMAERT, 2001 e 2005) de forma que o texto resultante carregue em si elementos da história narrada inicialmente, assim como elementos que apresentem a trajetória dos textos (BLOOMAERT, 2001; CARRANZA, 2010) e das narrativas co-produzidas pelos profissionais envolvidos em relação ao que foi dito pelas rés no início e retextualizado, recontextualizado até o final do processo (ERLICH, 2007 e 2015). Os dados foram gerados a partir do pedido de prisão domiciliar e da sentença proferida pelo juiz responsável por cada caso.

特集論文 「何をどう学ぶか」をデザインするためのエスノメソドロジー研究の視点 「対話的な学び」はいかに「立場の違い」を通じて生まれるのか

特集論文 「何をどう学ぶか」をデザインするためのエスノメソドロジー研究の視点 「対話的な学び」はいかに「立場の違い」を通じて生まれるのか

LITERACY WITHOUT BORDERS: THE FINE-GRAINED MINUTIAE OF SOCIAL INTERACTION THAT DO MATTER (ALSO IN PROMOTING HEALTH LITERACY)

ABSTRACT This paper explores the fine-grained interactional minutiae involved in promoting health literacy in medical interactions. More specifically, it explores the multimodal interactional resources (verbal and nonverbal) that health professionals and lay participants mobilize in order to make sense of fetal ultrasound images. We adopt the ethnomethodological perspective of Multimodal Conversation Analysis (SACKS; SCHEGLOFF; JEFFERSON, 1974; GOODWIN, 1981; 2010; MONDADA, 2018) to investigate 10 audio and video interactions that were recorded during fetal ultrasound exams that took place at a moderate and high-risk pregnancy ward in a public hospital in Brazil. Our aim is to ‘make visible’ the multimodal ethnomethods that interactants employ in order to render ultrasound images intelligible ‘texts’. Among the various semiotic resources mobilized to achieve intersubjectivity in this complex setting, special focus is given to the healthcare professionals’ use of similes, and the fundamental importance of the temporality in which verbal and nonverbal resources are mobilized in the process of making images intelligible. In that sense, we hope to bring to this special thematic issue the methodological advantages that a Multimodal Conversation Analytic perspective can afford to the discussion about multiliteracies and, in practical terms, to the advancement of health literacy. In medical contexts, health literacy can (and perhaps should!) be a concern ‘at all points.’ There might be no ‘borders’ to what constitutes a health literacy source or resource. Our claims, thus, are the following: (i) ultrasound images do constitute materials to be ‘read’ and understood - also by lay participants; (ii) healthcare professionals can (and perhaps should) promote health literacy among patients by employing efforts to make images ‘readable’; and, finally, (iii) social interaction is one of the constitutive loci for the promotion of multiliteracy events.

Perspectives to management language games and social interaction in self-managing organizations

This essay identifies a theoretically interesting area, i.e. language and social interaction in self-managing organizations. By building upon earlier work in Wittgensteinian language games, we show that despite some existing research on management language games (inside and outside pragmatic constructivism), not much is known about language games in self-managing organizations. The essay brings together ideas concerning language games in general management and pragmatic constructivism, making a novel contribution in the area. Furthermore, we present an ethnomethodological perspective on analysing language and social interaction: conversation analysis (CA). We suggest that CA could be utilized to analyse social interaction within self-managing organizations in more detail, showing how the specific institutional characteristics of this type of organization are talked into being in this particular context. Several further research questions are proposed for future studies in management language games and language and social interaction.

The work to make an experiment work

ABSTRACTContrary to its typical presentation in scientific publications as a certain and linear process, in reality, the experimental method, not least the design aspect of it, requires a great deal of trial-and-error and ad hoc decision-making on the part of the researchers. This uncertain and contingent aspect of research, although little known outside of the circle of experts, has important implications for our understanding of the nature of science and scientific findings.This paper offers a backstage perspective to experiment design, where the uncertain and contingent nature of experimental research is at its starkest. It draws on insights from the sociological perspective of ethnomethodology through the auto-ethnographic first-hand experience of the first author's own social psychology experiments. Based on detailed lab notes and planning documents on how and why design changes were made, the analysis focuses on the evolution of the experiment design, particularly the researcher’s in situ practical reasoning for how to make the experiment work. From this, we show how ethno-methods shape experiment results and highlight the inseparability of social science experimentation from in situ practical reasoning.

Categorization Activities in Norwegian Preschools: Digital Tools in Identifying, Articulating, and Assessing.

The article explores digital literacy practices in children’s everyday lives at Norwegian preschools and some of the ways in which young children appropriate basic digital literacy skills through guided participation in situated activities. Building on an ethnomethodological perspective, the analyses are based on 70 h of video recordings documenting the activities in which 45 children, aged 5 and 6, and 8 preschool teachers participated. Through the detailed analysis of two categorization activities – identifying geometrical shapes and identifying feelings/thoughts – the use of digital tools in the social organization of the activities is examined. The article finds that children’s digital literacy activities encompass visual, verbal, audio and embodied competencies that become relevant, and thus accessible for learning, in the interaction between the children and between the adults and children by serving as norms and guidelines for what constitutes correct categorizations (geometrical shapes and green and red feelings) in the situated activities, and that are appropriated and actualized by the children in interaction with their peers. The findings also show how the categorization practices in preschools deal with symbols and labels in ways that create and sustain socially organized ways of knowing, seeing, and acting upon the world. Digital media are embedded in routines, procedures, and socialites that are part of these categorization practices; they are part of how children are instructed to experience, interpret, understand, and act in the world. Moreover, the different technologies created different conditions for the children’s participation. It was found that peer interaction was part of the digital literacy activities that involved such mobile technologies as smartphones and tablets, while when using non-mobile technologies, e.g., smartboards, the activities were structured more as ‘classic’ classroom activities, primarily guided by the teacher and the didactic material presented through the smartboard.

A story more real than reality

Abstract This article examines the concept of experientiality in conversational storytelling from an ethnomethodological perspective, introducing a case in which the narrative mediation of experience fails. The recipient misses the experiential point of the story in the flow of interaction, which stems from other reasons than a failure in sense-making or cognitive comprehension. I discuss my findings with Monika Fludernik’s influential theory of Natural Narratology, according to which all narratives concern experiential exchange between the teller and the recipient, which travels from one consciousness to the other through natural cognitive parameters grounded in real life schemata. Applying conversation analysis, I focus on scrutinizing the details of the turn-by-turn unfolding activities of the participants. My analysis demonstrates that Fludernik’s conception of naturality falls short in capturing the relevancies of naturally occurring storytelling. Ignoring the reflexive intentionality of telling and reception makes Natural Narratology ill-equipped to grasp the dynamics of experientiality in everyday narration.

The multimodal interactional organization of tasting: Practices of tasting cheese in gourmet shops

Taste is a central sense for humans and animals, and it has been largely studied either from physiological and neurological approaches or from socio-cultural ones. This paper adopts another view, focused on the activity of tasting rather than on the sense of taste, approached within the perspective of ethnomethodology and multimodal conversation analysis. This view addresses the activity of tasting as it is interactionally organized in specific social settings, observed in a naturalistic way, on the basis of video recordings. Focusing on video recorded improvised tastings of cheese in gourmet shop encounters, the paper offers a systematic analysis of the way in which tasting is orderly achieved in an intersubjective way. It follows the various steps characterizing tasting, from the invitation to taste, to the grasping of a bit to taste, which is put in the mouth, chewed, and swallowed; it details how an interactional moment offering the taster a priviledged, individual, focused space in which to devote exclusive attention to the object tasted is actively tailored by all parties. By contrast, the completion of tasting is marked by a return to mutual gaze, the animation of facial expressions and nods, and the final production of a judgment of taste. By offering a systematic reconstruction of how these tasting moments are organized, the paper invites to a multimodal approach of sensoriality in social interaction.

Moving forward with ethnomethodological approaches to analysing mathematics classroom interactions

Ethnomethodological approaches to research such as Interactionism, Conversation Analysis and Discursive Psychology have so far played only a small part in mathematics education research. This is in contrast to the wider use of these approaches in language education, medical discourse research, and legal discourse research. This article outlines the key principles an ethnomethodological approach follows, the methods used and the necessary reconceptualisation of some key concepts that are the focus of much mathematics education research. These are illustrated with some key examples from research in mathematics education, before looking at other fields for potential opportunities not yet realised within research in mathematics classrooms. These opportunities include a range of research questions already receiving a great deal of attention within the field but are yet to be examined from an ethnomethodological perspective. They also include new approaches that involve combining different research approaches which have been used to great effect in other fields.