Ethnomethodology - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Ethnomethodology at Play

Mark Rouncefield and Peter

TolmieSlide2

Garfinkel’s Bastards at Play

The usual apologies..

Play is a commonplace word

- we

use ‘play’ as a simple ordering

device

Contrast with

conventional sociological studies

- demonstrates

the breadth of

EM analysis

‘play

’ involves ‘work’ - all activities, even ‘play’, involve ‘work

’:

‘

For the

ethnomethodologist

there

is no domain of human practice that is exempt from this. Human action and interaction does not just tumble from the sky ready formed. Instead, even the most mundane of actions have to be produced somehow, somewhere,

somewhen

. This is a job of work

’

Slide3

Sociology and Play

Sociology - ‘

the attempt to discover what is social about the social world.

’

But Sociology uses ‘play’ for

further

rehearsal

of explanatory themes

they

have found to be interesting and relevant elsewhere

Don’t tell

us

very much

about

leisure

activities

themselves – marginalized or

sacrificed in pursuit of other disciplinary, political and theoretical goals

.

T

he

analysis of sport

becomes ‘

the

docile matrix for the exercise of a theoretical

will

’

Slide4

Standing Out while Fitting In: Serious Leisure Identities and Aligning Actions among Skydivers and Gun Collectors

One

of the most enduring expressions within the skydiving argot is the maxim, ‘Eat, Fuck, Skydive!’ By designating skydiving as belonging to the same basic category as eating and intercourse, the expression underscores the sensual, hedonistic character of the experience and implies that people skydive for the same reasons that they engage in the other two activities … Intertwined with the foregoing themes in skydiving subculture is … an ethos of ‘

hyperheterosexuality

’ and male dominance. While skydiving culture has been changing in recent years in ways that may be reducing this patriarchal hegemony, the change is variable across the skydiving community, where

hyperheterosexuality

and male dominance continue to be strong, if not as hegemonic, as in the past.Slide5

Yet More Ranting..

What’s

this? -

‘

a complex “material interaction” between the material capital that is in the objects of the kit and the embodied capital that is in the body of the sailor

.

’

Sociology risks ‘

hiding

the phenomena

’ behind an analysis of the forces that supposedly shape the form, structure and experience of play.

Sociology seems to presume that its problems are

theoretical

- as

if; ‘

persons live out the lives they do, have the children they do, feel the feelings, think the thoughts, enter the relationships they do, all in order to permit the sociologist to solve his theoretical problems.

’

Slide6

Ethnomethodology and Play

Garfinkel

– ‘do I have all the parts?’;

Sudnow

;

Livingston etc etc

Goode -

Playing

with My Dog Katie: An

Ethnomethodological

Study of Dog-Human Interaction

(Goode 2007

) :

This book is an attempt to display in detail a guardian playing with his dog, an instance of just that. That people play with dogs is in itself, in its own right, a ‘miracle of everyday society’. I am not saying that play between companion dogs and their guardians is (or is not) socially or politically important or consequential. It is more like when Sacks watched and

analysed

a videotape of a couple greeting each other at the door. He was not doing so to advance a political agenda- to change how people greet each other at doors, for example. He did it to discover and appreciate the incredible details in and of the simplest things we

do

‘to discover and appreciate the incredible details in and of the simplest things we do’Slide7

Bedtime Stories

Reading

is a commonplace activity, visible across all walks of life and in virtually all human settings.

Early sociological interest

outlined

the various ways in which sociological issues, the ‘usual suspects’ of class and gender and social groupings, impacted on what, why, how and when people

More

recently the focus of research on reading has largely moved away from an interest in the actual activity of reading towards an interest in the form, the physical mechanisms, the technologies, by which reading is accomplished

– and scare

stories telling us that such devices are ‘making us stupid’ (Carr 2008) or ‘lazy’ (Collins 2011).Slide8

Bedtime Stories

use data gathered in domestic environments that concentrates upon the actual situated practices of

reading

stories to children at bedtime.

explore

how reading is actually accomplished

as

a part of the daily fabric of life:

how

it fits within the domestic routine;

who

can do it where and when;

how

it is actually visibly done;

how

its visible character ramifies for others in the household;

how

it is manifestly about leisure and pleasure

Slide9
Slide10

Book Reading as Embodied

Many aspects of reading as a social phenomenon can be seen to turn upon its physical embodied character. In the following observations the mother (M) is reading a bedtime story to her daughter Sarah (S):

M picking up the book to sit down as S reaches out to her

M gets ready to open the book

M flicks through the pages

M opens the book

M lifts out the bookmark

M puts the bookmark on the arm of chair

M sorts out the dust jacket

M positioning the book to read

M holding the book in place as asking S to recall the last part

M flicking back to the prior chapter.

M flicking back to the current chapter.Slide11

Book Reading as Embodied

S

ome

ways in which reading is embodied

the manner of sitting;

of

holding one’s arms;

of

holding one’s hands;

the

angle of the head;

the

direction of the gaze

;

the

actual relation and orientation to the book being held

;

each

of these proceeds dynamically in order to accomplish something that amounts to ‘reading to your daughter’ and ‘being read to by your mother’

.

Even the position of their heads is a feature of the embodied practices of reading. The focus is the book and the words on the

page, - looking

elsewhere becomes an accountable matter – as inattention or

tiredness

But this

isn’t just any old reading, this is ‘bedtime’ reading

- child

is ready for the bed, is physically tired and

the mother

is alert to these

signsSlide12
Slide13

Reading is Manifest

Reading, by virtue of its embodied character, is also manifest to

others

open

to ordinary recognition and reasoning as a feature of the environment.

that

someone is reading, just what they are reading, just where they are within the thing they are reading, how other things are organized around them, and so on, is all available to others in the setting,

carries

a number of important implications for how others might orient to the reader.

competent

member of the setting can see, ‘at-a-glance’, that ‘Mum is reading to Sarah’ and this in turn has implications for matters such as: can I interrupt?, can I listen in?, can I put the TV on or some music? and so on.

Manifestness

here is

what

is

audible

.

Part

of being a competent member of the setting is knowing, hearing, just what is being read as the current bedtime story to Sarah right now,

if

the mother here was reading a book to her daughter in French, or it was the daughter herself who was reading to the mother, the scene could well be reasoned about as something

else.. Slide14

Book Reading has a Visible Order

It

has a beginning: books are located, picked up and brought to readiness for reading.

There

is a middle: books are

ongoingly

engaged with, with visible attention to the printed page, with the positioning of fingers just so for the fluid turning of the page, and so on. These things are only intelligible for what they are because of how they are ordered in relation to what has gone before.

There

is an end: books are closed, perhaps bookmarks inserted or pages turned down, they are put to one side so that their very placement speaks to how they are done with for the present.

B

edtime

reading has spatiotemporal

characteristics -

bedtime reading could happen

anywhere but it doesn’t -

reading has a particular time and place where members of the household will

unproblematically

see it for what it

is..Slide15

Reading is a Feature of How Social Relations within a Household are Accomplished

M picking up book to sit down as S reaches out to her …

M puts arm round S …

M Straightening out book and resting hand on top of S’s head …

M: ‘Don’t move’ breathed a voice in

Torak’'s

ear (

stroking S’s head

) …

M: Pardon me. (

Laughingly as continuing to stroke S’s head

) He couldn’t see anything. He was huddled in a rotten smelling blackness with a knife pressed at his throat. He gritted his teeth to stop them chattering. (

Shifting arm to put round S

)

S puts her hand on M’s …

M strokes S’s head and rests her hand on her head, holding the book with one hand, as she continues

S raises her arms to take hold of M’s hand …

M moves her hand down and puts it on S’s knee

S lifts her hand to hold M’s hand on her knee and M glances down and strokes her knee

Kisses her on top of her head

What things like bedtime reading do is they quite neatly provide

licence

for those kinds of contact to happen without fuss or account and on a regular basis.

Thus

bedtime reading is not just an opportunity for intimacy to occur or a place where, amongst other things, intimacy happens to be present. It is a

mechanism

for

intimacy

Slide16

Another Example: Garfinkel’s

Bastards Eat

Tarte

Tatin

Cooking is a mundane feature of everyday life, done by people around the world as a matter of necessity and, for some at least, as the business of pleasure

until relatively recently largely neglected by Sociology

Where cooking and eating has featured in sociological analysis it is often as an instantiation of some wider social process, such as the ‘

civilising

process’ (Elias 1969), or class and social structure (Goody 1982) or patriarchy and the subjection of women (Charles and Kerr 1988;

Murcott

1983).

Our focus - explicating the mundane work involved in making a meal and the enjoyment members who do cooking for pleasure find in the enterprise. Slide17

Mundane Competencies

figuring out what to eat ..

considerations that are brought to bear upon this most ordinary of daily concerns, including matters of domestic routine, lifestyle, diet, work-home-life balance, etc.

the sourcing of food and the different orders of working knowledge implicated in finding foodstuffs and assembling ingredients.

Cooking - the skilful use of heat, knives, pans, spices, herbs and seasoning; the subtle art of working with

colour

, texture, taste, smell and even sound, to transform base ingredients

..Slide18

Making a List – Checking it Twice

A:.

Tearing sheet from pad on

noticeboard

and holding it up

: That’s what I've already got on there this week.

A

takes the list to a chopping board on side and rests on it with pen poised

:

Er

: right, I want some chicken breasts don’t I? (

writes under previous items on list

) I want some

er

(

pen poised for a moment

) Some chicken breasts. Puff pastry (

writes underneath other items on list

)

Erm

.

A: How am I doing for sugar (

walks over towards shelves on other side of kitchen

) (

peers in jar and in packet

). Got some more there, great.

A writes on list under prior items

A: Yeah, so let me check that then, have we got everything we need?

A: I might actually buy some bloody onions to save me going and fucking about on a dirty horrible day and getting stuff from the allotment.

Adds onions to the list

A: (

Looking around kitchen

)

Er

, I think that’s it isn’t it?Slide19

Using the Senses

Sniffing the pears

A sniffs at pan on hob.

A: (

To P

) Get your nose in that.

P sniffs pan, then M has a sniff.

M: You can smell the sugar can’t you.

A: And you’re starting to smell the fruit.

A has another sniff.

A: Can you smell the pear in there? Coming through now?

M comes over and has another sniff.

M: Yes. There’s butter – The smell of butter is quite strong.

A: Yes.

A: It’s starting to come through. The sweetness is there and then the fruit is just percolating through in it. And that just becomes stronger and stronger as you go. So here’s a thing, with S.

Y’know

, one of the first things she often says is –

er

when she comes in the door is. That smells good.Slide20

Watching the pears

A: (

gesturing to pan

) Now basically what you’re doing there is to – because all together it gets cooked for about forty-five minutes – you’re just making a caramel sauce. You’re just doing fruit in a caramel sauce with a lump of pastry on top, soaking it all up,

y’know

? It

ain’t

complicated.

Leans over pan and studies it.

Leans further in and sniffs.

A shifts the position of the pan on the hob again and shakes it a little.

Bends down and peers at it closely.

A shaking pan then turning heat down a little.

A: Let’s turn the heat up again (.) to get a bit more (.) It’s starting to need a little bit more

colour

.Slide21

: the sound of food

A stirring contents of saucepan with a wooden spoon.

A: Can you hear that? (.) it’s going too fast.

Stirs contents of pan again.

A: Too busy.

Turns down heat under pan. Stirs contents of pan around again. Leaves wooden spoon in pan …

Stirring pan with spoon.

A: That’s a nicer sound now.Slide22

So What?

‘Implications for Design’?

Reading and the ‘affordances’ of Technology

Cooking, shopping

understanding Users..Slide23

“

New Technologies will succeed or fail based on our ability to minimise the

incompatabilities

between the characteristics of people and the characteristics of the things we create and use

” (Casey)

“..it’s the source for the failures of technocratic dreams, that if only we introduced some fantastic new communication machine the world will be transformed. Where

what happens is that the object is made at home in the world that has whatever organisation it already has

.” (Sacks)Slide24

Thank You Kindly – Questions?