This paper examines Alfred Schutz’s insights on types and typification. Beginning with a brief overview of the history and meaning of typification in interpretive sociology, the paper further addresses both the ubiquity and the necessity of typification in social life and scientific method. Schutz’s contribution itself is lacking in empirical application and grounding, but examples are provided of ongoing empirical research which advances the understanding of types and typification. As is suggested by illustrations from scholarship in the social studies of (...) social science, studies of social identity associated with membership categorization analysis, and constructionist social problems theory, typification can be found to be central to social research whether it is taken up as a largely unacknowledged resource or whether it is addressed by different names. The overview and illustrations suggest the continuing, widespread, and indeed foundational relevance of Schutz’s insights into types and typification. (shrink)

Inquiry teaching can be viewed as an approach for communicating the knowledge and practices of science to learners. In its various forms inquiry offers potential learning opportunities and poses constraints on what might be available to learn. Philosophical analysis offers ways of understanding inquiry, knowledge, and social practices. This chapter will examine philosophical problems that arise from teaching science as inquiry. Observation, experimentation, measurement, inference, explanation, and modeling pose challenges for novice learners who may not have the conceptual and epistemic (...) knowledge to engage effectively in such scientific practices in inquiry settings. Science learning entails apprenticeship and socialization into a legacy of conceptual knowledge and epistemic practices (Kelly. Inquiry, Activity, and Epistemic Practice. In R. Duschl & R. Grandy (Eds.) Teaching Scientific Inquiry: Recommendations for Research and Implementation (pp. 99–117; 288–291). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2008). Modern science increasingly relies on abstract and computational models that are not readily constructed from the student-driven questions that often function as an early step in inquiry approaches to instruction. Thus, engaging students in the epistemic practices of science poses challenges for educators. -/- The argument developed in this chapter draws from an epistemological position that makes clear the need for building from extant disciplinary knowledge of a relevant social group in order to learn through inquiry. Establishing a social epistemology in educational settings provides opportunities for students to engage in ways of speaking, listening, and explaining that are part of constructing knowledge claims in science (Kelly and Chen. Journal of Research in Science Teaching 36, 883–915, 1999). This perspective on epistemology emphasizes the importance of dialectical processes in science learning. Thus, an inquiry-oriented pedagogy needs to attend to developing norms and practices in educational settings that provide opportunities to learn through and about inquiry. By considering the situated social group as the epistemic subject, inquiry teaching and learning can be viewed as creating opportunities for supporting the conceptual, epistemic, and social goals of science education (Duschl. Review of Research in Education, 32, 268–291, 2008; Kelly. Inquiry, Activity, and Epistemic Practice. In R. Duschl & R. Grandy (Eds.) Teaching Scientific Inquiry: Recommendations for Research and Implementation (pp. 99–117; 288–291). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2008). -/- The chapter addresses the philosophical considerations of inquiry in science education by identifying the epistemological constraints to teaching science as inquiry, reviewing the potential contributions of philosophy of science to discussions regarding inquiry, considering how social epistemology aligns with developments in psychology of learning with understandings about science, and offering ways that philosophical analysis can contribute to the on-going conversations regarding science education reform. (shrink)

In this paper, we respond to a critique by Erik Thorstensen of the ‘Deepening Ethical Engagement and Participation in Emerging Nanotechnologies’ project concerning its ‘realist’ treatment of narrative, its restricted analytical framework and resources, its apparent confusion in focus and its unjustified contextualisation and overextension of its findings. We show that these criticisms are based on fairly serious misunderstandings of the DEEPEN project, its interdisciplinary approachand its conceptual context. Having responded to Thorstensen’s criticisms, we take the opportunity to clarify and (...) develop our approach to narrative. We articulate the need for novel, theoretically robust approaches to the formation of public attitudes which transcend the limitations of both survey-based approaches—which remain wedded to methodological individualism and which presume that individuals hold distinct and relatively stable attitudes and preferences—and interactionist approaches to public talk, which focus too strongly on individuals-in-interaction as reasoning agents and which ignore the constitutive role of culture and discourse in the formation of public opinion. We suggest that our use of narrative can help to better understand the process through which public attitudes to emerging technology develop out of interactive an engagement with wider cultural arguments and accounts of science and technology. We finish by pointing to parallel developments in social thought—from Charles Taylor’s treatment of social imaginaries to recent developments in post-Bourdieuian cultural sociology—as related projects in understanding the cultural resources and grammars that provide the conceptual infrastructure for modern social life. (shrink)

This inaugural handbook documents the distinctive research field that utilizes history and philosophy in investigation of theoretical, curricular and pedagogical issues in the teaching of science and mathematics. It is contributed to by 130 researchers from 30 countries; it provides a logically structured, fully referenced guide to the ways in which science and mathematics education is, informed by the history and philosophy of these disciplines, as well as by the philosophy of education more generally. The first handbook to cover the (...) field, it lays down a much-needed marker of progress to date and provides a platform for informed and coherent future analysis and research of the subject. -/- The publication comes at a time of heightened worldwide concern over the standard of science and mathematics education, attended by fierce debate over how best to reform curricula and enliven student engagement in the subjects There is a growing recognition among educators and policy makers that the learning of science must dovetail with learning about science; this handbook is uniquely positioned as a locus for the discussion. -/- The handbook features sections on pedagogical, theoretical, national, and biographical research, setting the literature of each tradition in its historical context. Each chapter engages in an assessment of the strengths and weakness of the research addressed, and suggests potentially fruitful avenues of future research. A key element of the handbook’s broader analytical framework is its identification and examination of unnoticed philosophical assumptions in science and mathematics research. It reminds readers at a crucial juncture that there has been a long and rich tradition of historical and philosophical engagements with science and mathematics teaching, and that lessons can be learnt from these engagements for the resolution of current theoretical, curricular and pedagogical questions that face teachers and administrators. (shrink)

In general, in our ordinary life, we manage to make the difference between “strange” behavior and error or extravagant beliefs. The question is here to know how we do so, and against what background. There are also specialized contexts for evaluating whether certain types of behavior or discourse are normal or abnormal: courts of law and psychiatric hospitals are two examples. In these contexts, judgments are formed against a background of technical or scientific knowledge, but they also result from epistemic (...) means of evaluation that are similar to habitual ones. The paper seeks to highlight this similarity with respect to recognizing mental disturbance. Starting from Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, it attempts at extending it by drawing on notions of reciprocal perspectives and of judgments of incongruity. It documents its investigation by analyzing sequences from Malek Bensmail’s documentary, Aliénations, which examines the treatment of mental suffering in contemporary Algeria. (shrink)

This article examines two approaches to the analysis and critical assessment of scientific argumentation. The first approach employs the discourse theory that Jurgen Habermas has developed on the basis of his theory of communicative action and applied to the areas of politics and law. Using his analysis of law and democracy in his Between Facts and Norms as a kind of template, I sketch the main steps in a Habermasian discourse theory of science. Difficulties in his approach motivate my proposal (...) of an alternative approach that starts not with a theory of communicative action but with some broad categories drawn from argumentation theory. Using these categories, one can survey the various conceptions of scientific argumentation that have already emerged in the multi-disciplinary field of science studies. The more flexible, open-ended theoretic categories put one in a better position to'develop cooperative interdisciplinary studies that can inform the critical assessment of scientific argumentation. (shrink)

The study “Psychoanalysis—its image and its public” intimates that common sense is increasingly informed by science. But common sense asserts its autonomy and, in turn, may affect the trajectory of science. This is a process that leads to many differentiations—in common sense, in scientific innovation and in political and regulatory structures. Bauer and Gaskell's toblerone model of triangles of mediation provided a distillation of their reading of “La Psychanalyse.” Here it was argued that representations are multi-modal phenomena necessitating the use (...) of multiple methodologies .In this paper we briefly summarise these arguments and elaborate ways in which social representation theory can be considered a progressive research programme. “Progressive” because as the theory has developed it has extended the range and depth of its conceptual basis; it provides a new synthesis for the social scientific understanding of the phenomena of common sense and of representation; it acts as an antidote to the reductionism of public opinion and, finally, it is a stimulus to depart from disciplinary silos. However, there remain unresolved issues: how to segment the relevant social milieus and how to close the feedback loop from common sense to science? (shrink)

The administration of psychological tests is highly regulated. Test manuals prescribe the instructions to the test subject, the time the test should take, where it should take place, whether and how the test administrator should answer questions from the test subject, and other aspects of the testing situation. Through the manual, the behaviour of test administrator and test subject is disciplined so that the subject may become measurable. The manuals of four tests are analysed, and the disciplinary mechanisms that operate (...) in the administration of these tests are described. Attention is then given to the question whether the discipline of the test is repressive or productive. It is concluded that test manuals, while being central to the production of a psychological subject, also articulate an excess subjectivity in the measures they prescribe to exclude it from the testing situation. (shrink)

In this article I intend to explore the conception of science as it emerges from the work of Husserl, Schutz, and Garfinkel. By concentrating specifically on the issue of science, I attempt to show that Garfinkel’s views on the relationship between science and the everyday world are much closer to Husserl’s stance than to the Schutzian perspective. To this end, I explore Husserl’s notion of science especially as it emerges in the Crisis of European Sciences, where he describes the failure (...) of European science and again preaches for a return to the “things themselves”. In this respect I interpret ethnomethodology’s most recent program as an answer to that call originating from a sociological domain. I then argue that the Husserlian turn within ethnomethodology marks the split between Garfinkel and Schutz. In fact I try to show that Schutz’s epistemological work is only partially inspired by phenomenology and that his conception of science retains a rationalist stance that ethnomethodology opposes. In the final section I briefly discuss Garfinkel’s most recent program as a way of closing the gap between theory and experience by linking the topics of science to the radical experiential phenomena. (shrink)

This paper discusses ethnomethodology's program in relation to the phenomenological life-world analysis of Alfred Schutz. A recent publication of Garfinkel's early writings sheds new light on how he made use of phenomenological reflections in order to create a new sociological approach. Garfinkel used Schutz's life-world analysis as a source of inspiration, called for 'misreading' in the sense of an alternate reading and developed a new, empirical approach to the analysis of social order which he called 'ethnomethodology'. Ethnomethodologists usually acknowledge the (...) historical importance of Schutz but emphasize that Garfinkel succeeded to overcome the limitations of phenomenological analyses and moved beyond. This view has spread above all in the Anglosaxon countries. In German sociology, Schutz's life-world analysis still has a much stronger standing than ethnomethodology and is interpreted as a systematic whole. Following Luckmann, it is discussed as a protosociological foundation of the methodology of social sciences or, following Srubar, as a philosophical anthropology with two poles: a subjective and a social, pragmatic pole. Both versions claim to analyze the meaningful constitution of the social world, to serve as a foundation of sociological methodology and to provide guidelines for an `adequate' sociology. While Garfinkel used phenomenological concepts for sociological analysis, Luckmann clearly distinguishes the two: you either do phenomenology (protosociology) or you do sociology (a theoretically guided, empirical sociology of knowledge). This paper describes the present-day debate in German sociology and compares ethnomethodology's program with these interpretations of Schutz's life-world analysis. (shrink)

The concept of tacit knowledge is widely used in social sciences to refer to all those knowledge that cannot be codified and have to be transferred by personal contacts. All this literature has been affected by two kind of biases : (1) the interest has been focused more on the result (tacit knowledge) than on the process (implicit learning); (2) tacit knowledge has been somehow reduced to physical skills or know-how; other possible forms of tacit knowledge have been neglected. These (...) two biases seem interconnected one with each other. A greater consideration of the role and relevance of implicit learning allows us to consider tacit knowledge as something more than pure physical skills or know how. This is the first step in order to develop more detailed categorisation of the different forms that tacit knowledge can assume. (shrink)

This paper examines Alfred Schutz’s insights on types and typification. Beginning with a brief overview of the history and meaning of typification in interpretive sociology, the paper further addresses both the ubiquity and the necessity of typification in social life and scientific method. Schutz’s contribution itself is lacking in empirical application and grounding, but examples are provided of ongoing empirical research which advances the understanding of types and typification. As is suggested by illustrations from scholarship in the social studies of (...) social science, studies of social identity associated with membership categorization analysis, and constructionist social problems theory, typification can be found to be central to social research whether it is taken up as a largely unacknowledged resource or whether it is addressed by different names. The overview and illustrations suggest the continuing, widespread, and indeed foundational relevance of Schutz’s insights into types and typification. (shrink)

Ethnomethodology is in trouble, its conceptual apparatus prone to indifference or misunderstanding both from "conventional" sociologists and from its own practitioners. This article describes some of these loci of confusion and suggests that they have a common root in the relationship between ethnomethodology and conventional sociology. Ethnomethodologists' desire to find a principled theoretical framework for dealing with this relationship is shown to be the common basis for subsequent confusion, and some of the corollaries of their putative solution(s) are elaborated with (...) regard to their philosophical and programmatic implications. Key Words: ethnomethodology • social constructionism • situated action • social structures. (shrink)

During the past hundred years or so, those scholars studying science have isolated themselves as much as possible from scientists as well as from workers in other disciplines who study science. The result of this effort is history of science, philosophy of science and sociology of science as separate disciplines. I argue in this paper that now is the time for these disciplinary boundaries to be lowered or at least made more permeable so that a unified discipline of Science Studies (...) might emerge. I discuss representative problems that stand in the way of such an integration. These problems may seem so formidable in the abstract that no one in their right mind would waste their time trying to bring about a unified field of Science Studies. However, those of us who limit ourselves to the study of the biological sciences have already formed a society in which workers from all disciplines can share their expertise -- the International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science. (shrink)

This paper provides a conceptual analysis of the notion of interests as it is used in the social studies of science. After describing the theoretical background behind the Strong Program's adoption of the concept of interest, the paper outlines a reconstruction of the everyday notion of interest and argues that this same notion is used also by the sociologists of scientific knowledge. However, there are a couple of important differences between the everyday use of this notion and the way in (...) which it used by the sociologists. The sociologists do not use the term in evaluative context and they do not regard interests as purely non-epistemic factors. Finally, it is argued that most of the usual critiques of interest explanations, by both philosophers and fellow sociologists, are misguided. (shrink)

The discovery of social phenomena by a discipline whose roots are abidingly psychological has been a singular development in American educational research. Formulations of situatedness are emblematic of this rethinking, and depending on our understanding of it, we have in situatedness the possibility of a distinctive set of analytic commitments. This paper discusses these possibilities and their development in the educational research literature, in the particulars of the Brown, Collins and Duguid (1989) publication Situated Cognition. In the end, situatedness is (...) understood as a unifying formulation. And while it opens a huge domain of topics for inquiry, it also proves, as its inclusiveness, of no use whatsoever as a parsing device. Situated cognition, for example, could not be, nor has ever been, otherwise. (shrink)

A recurrent theme in ethnomethodological research is that of instructed actions. Contrary to the classic traditions in the social and cognitive sciences, which attribute logical priority or causal primacy to instructions, rules, and structures of action, ethnomethodologists investigate the situated production of actions which enable such formulations to stand as adequate accounts. Consequently, a recitation of formal structures can not count as an adequate sociological description, when no account is given of the local production ofwhat those structures describe. The natural (...) sciences can be described as a domain of practical action in whichthe use of methods enables the intersubjective reproduction of naturalistic observations and experiments. As numerous sociological studies of laboratory practices have shown, the achievement of intersubjective order cannot be reduced to formal methods; instead, it arises from the work of custom-fitting relevant methods to the local circumstances of the research. In this paper we discuss a possible extension of this idea to cover two intertwined aspects of molecular biology: (1) the work of following instructions on how to perform routine laboratory procedures, and (2) the relationship between cellular orders and the encoded instructions contained in the DNA molecule. We suggest that a classic conception of scientific action is implied by the way formal instructions are treated as a primary basis, both for molecular biologists' actions and the cellular functions they study, and we envision an ethnomethodological alternative to those conceptions of social and biological order. (shrink)

In his writings Alfred Schutz identifies an artificiality in the concept of life-world produced by Edmund Husserl's method of reduction. As an alternative, he proposes to assume intersubjectivity as a given of everyday life. This eradicates Husserl's distinction between life-world and natural attitude. The subsequent phenomenological project appears to center upon sociological descriptions of the structures of the life-world rather than on a search for apodictic truth. Schutz, however, actually retains Husserl's emphasis on the subject. A tension then arises between (...) the assumption of intersubjectivity and individual experience. Rather than clarifying the concept of intersubjectivity, this further problematizes it. Drawing upon Max Weber's work, Schutz responds by developing a rigorous methodology for studying the social world. But having rejected Husserl's reduction and conflated life-world and natural attitude, Schutz's analysis moves at the level of daily life itself. Consequently, the explanatory categories he proposes appear as abstractions rather than as a way of describing lived experience. Schutz, it is concluded, initiates a scientistic sociology in which the commonsense structures of the natural attitude of everyday life are subverted and replaced by the more rigorous knowledge of the scientific attitude. Schutz's version of phenomenology is ultimately untrue to the spirit of Husserl's original project; and deploying his work as a clear-cut alternative to scientistic tendencies within sociology is not as straightforward as it might at first seem. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to give a self-reflective account of the building of Galileo's pendulum in order to discover what were the practical contingencies of building and using the pendulum for demonstrating the law of isochronism. In doing this, the unique Lebenswelt structures of Galilean physics are explicated through the ethnomethodological concepts developed by Harold Garfinkel. The presupposition is that the practical logic of Galilean physics is embedded in the instruments themselves. In building the pendulum and recovering its (...) original use, Galilean physics becomes for ethnomethodologists a first-hand practical discovery. This is not a reconstruction of the mind of the historical Galileo but, rather, an explication of Galileo's practical perspective on the instrument as an intersubjective and interchangeable standpoint available for ethnomethodological analysis. This enables us to study historical facts from the standpoint of the practical logic of the original practice with a pedagogical eye for the instructive reproducibility of science. (shrink)

: This paper explores models of reflexive feminist science studies through the work of Donna Haraway. The paper argues that Haraway provides an important account of science studies that is both feminist and constructivist. However, her concepts of "situated knowledges" and "diffraction" need further development to be adequate models of feminist science studies. To develop this constructivist and feminist project requires a collective research program that engages with feminist reflexivity as a practice.

Whereas “professional vision” has been mostly analyzed in apprenticeship and other settings where knowledge is made explicit or reflected upon, I focus on how expertise tacitly plays out in task-oriented interaction among practitioners. The paper considers orientation both to the coworker’s and one’s own expertise in the collaborative accomplishment of airport security work. I show how screeners recruit action from colleagues in largely underspecified ways, based on shared access to the visibility field and expected professional vision. Requesting is tacitly accomplished (...) via “highlighting,” which also accounts for one’s request. Accepting is silently achieved via locomotion, which also serves as a display of understanding. Embodied action is systematically preferred to verbal one. Talk is employed in larger proportions when the domain of scrutiny is not equally accessible to interactants, and when “face-work” is required. (shrink)

When radiocarbon dating techniques were applied to archaeological material in the 1950s they were hailed as a revolution. At last archaeologists could construct absolute chronologies anchored in temporal data backed by immutable laws of physics. This would make it possible to mobilize archaeological data across regions and time-periods on a global scale, rendering obsolete the local and relative chronologies on which archaeologists had long relied. As profound as the impact of 14C dating has been, it has had a long and (...) tortuous history now described as proceeding through three revolutions, each of which addresses distinct challenges of capturing, processing and packaging radiogenic data for use in resolving chronological puzzles with which archaeologists has long wrestled. In practice, mobilizing radiogenic data for archaeological use is a hard-won achievement; it involves multiple transformations that, at each step of the way, depend upon a diverse array of technical expertise and background knowledge. I focus on strategies of triangulation and traceability that establish the integrity of these data and their relevance as anchors for evidential reasoning in archaeology. (shrink)

This article argues that Gilbert Simondon’s philosophy of technology is useful for both science and technology studies and critical theory. The synthesis has political implications. It offers an argument for the rationality of democratic interventions by citizens into decisions concerning technology. The new framework opens a perspective on the radical transformation of technology required by ecological modernization and sustainability. In so doing, it suggests new applications of STS methods to politics as well as a reconstruction of the Frankfurt School’s “rational (...) critique of reason.”. (shrink)

Andrew Webster proposes that science and technology studies align itself more thoroughly with practical policy contexts, actors and issues, so as to become more useful, and thus more a regular actor in such worlds. This commentary raises some questions about this approach. First, I note that manifest influence in science or policy or both should not become-by default, or deliberately-a criterion of intellectual quality for STS research work. I distinguish between reflective historical work, which delineates the contingent ways in which (...) existing policy and technoscientific cultures have become entrenched as such inscribed and perhaps dysfunctional institutional habit; and, work of the kind that Webster's three case studies exemplify, that is, geared to influence policy-decision outcomes. I suggest that many of the important issues facing STS-and "policy"-are not explicit "policy-decision issues" as such, but implicit "policy syndromes" that need naming, diagnosing and open, if enforced, institutional reflection. (shrink)

This article has four aims. First, it will consider explicitly, and polemically, the hierarchical relationship between conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis. Whilst the CA ‘juggernaut’ flourishes, the MCA ‘milk float’ is in danger of being run off the road. For MCA to survive either as a separate discipline, or within CA as a focus equivalent to other ‘generic orders of conversation’, I suggest it must generate new types of systematic studies and reveal fundamental categorial practices. With such a goal (...) in mind, the second aim of the article is to provide a set of clear analytic steps and procedures for conducting MCA, which are grounded in basic categorial and sequential concerns. Third, the article aims to demonstrate how order can be found in the intuitively ‘messy’ discourse phenomenon of membership categories, and how to approach their analysis systematically as a robust feature of particular action-oriented environments. Through the exemplar analyses, the final aim of the article is to promote MCA as a method for interrogating culture, reality and society, without recourse to its reputed ‘wild and promiscuous’ analytic approach. (shrink)

Algorithms have become a widespread trope for making sense of social life. Science, finance, journalism, warfare, and policing—there is hardly anything these days that has not been specified as “algorithmic.” Yet, although the trope has brought together a variety of audiences, it is not quite clear what kind of work it does. Often portrayed as powerful yet inscrutable entities, algorithms maintain an air of mystery that makes them both interesting and difficult to understand. This article takes on this problem and (...) examines the role of algorithms not as techno-scientific objects to be known, but as a figure that is used for making sense of observations. Following in the footsteps of Harold Garfinkel’s tutorial cases, I shall illustrate the implications of this view through an experiment with algorithmic navigation. Challenging participants to go on a walk, guided not by maps or GPS but by an algorithm developed on the spot, I highlight a number of dynamics typical of reasoning with running code, including the ongoing respecification of rules and observations, the stickiness of the procedure, and the selective invocation of the algorithm as an intelligible object. The materials thus provide an opportunity to rethink key issues at the intersection of the social sciences and the computational, including popular concerns with transparency, accountability, and ethics. (shrink)

In 2016, Discourse Studies published a special issue on the ‘epistemics of epistemics’ comprising six papers, all of which took issue with a strand of my research on how knowledge claims are asserted, implemented and contested through facets of turn design and sequence organization. Apparently coordinated through some years of discussion, the critique is nonetheless somewhat confused and confusing. In this article, I take up some of more prominent elements of the critique: my work is ‘cognitivist’ substituting causal psychological analysis (...) for the classic conversation analytic focus on the normative accountability of social action, my work devalues and indeed flouts basic tenets of CA methodology such as the ‘next-turn proof procedure’, my analysis of epistemic stance introduces unwarranted themes of conflict and hostility into CA thinking, various concepts that I have introduced involve the invocation of ‘hidden orders’ of social conduct that is inimical to the traditions of our field and that my work rests on an unwarranted ‘informationism’ – the discredited idea that much of human interaction is driven by a need to traffic in information. In this rebuttal, I refute all of these commentaries and correct many other ancillary mistakes of representation and reasoning that inhabit these papers. (shrink)

A rise of academic capitalism over the past four decades has been well documented within many research-intensive universities. Largely missing, however, are in-depth studies of how particularly situated academic groups manage the uncertainties that come with intermittent and fickle commercial funding streams in their daily research practice and problem choice. To capture the strategies scientists adopt under these conditions, this article provides an ethnographically detailed (and true) story about how a single project in Artificial Intelligence grew over several years from (...) a peripheral idea to the very center of an academic lab’s commercial portfolio. The analysis theorizes an epistemic form—nimble knowledge production—and documents three of its lab-level features: 1) rapid prototyping to keep sunk costs low, 2) shared search for “real world problems” rather than “theoretical” ones, and 3) nimble commitment to research problem choice. While similar forms of academic knowledge transfer have been lauded as “mode 2,” “innovative,” or “hybrid” for initiating cross-institutional collaboration and pushing science beyond disciplinary silos, this case suggests it can rely on fleeting attention to problems resistant to a quick fix. (shrink)

This article deals with science content “in the making” and in particular the role of the body in producing scientific phenomena. While accounts of scientists’ work have repeatedly demonstrated, how producing phenomena requires immense amounts of time and effort, involving tinkering and manual labor, this is a little empirically studied content in science education. Seeking to shed light on how the body is involved with materiality to produce physics phenomena, and in what terms this is learning physics content, the article (...) first examines how bodily tinkering is a necessary part of knowing physics through reviewing major accounts of science studies and research in science education. Secondly, drawing on phenomenology and pragmatist ideas, the article examines how students’ bodies need to be educated in the transactional process with material and artifacts to produce phenomena in the context of science learning in lower secondary physics education. Demonstrating that embodied phenomena production is an inescapable part of learning scientific inquiry, and that bodies are just as much a part of the subject physics as conceptual knowledge, we suggest that the education of students’ bodies needs to be made an explicit content. This is important not only for making tacit content accessible to all, but also for addressing epistemological understandings of what science and technology is about. (shrink)

This paper compares Harold Garfinkel’s phenomenologically informed “radical” ethnomethodology and Emanuel Schegloff’s “classical” Conversation Analysis, by focusing on their treatments of a ringing telephone as a summons. In their diverging accounts, Garfinkel and Schegloff use similar yet different terminologies in relation to the action of hearing. Garfinkel speaks of the “hearability” of the ringing phone, while Schegloff speaks of a recipient’s “hearership”. This lexical distinction is not irrelevant. “Hearership” stresses the obligations of parties to a phone call to speak and (...) listen to each other while co-producing conversation. In contrast, for Garfinkel an analysis limited only to the parties’ work of speaking and listening to each other from within the hearable world glosses over the pervasive presence of the “hearability-structures” of the ordinary world. His “radical” version is predicated on the claim that the ordinary world is a hearable world. Accordingly, a phone summons is a familiar sound in which “hearability” is inseparable from the “hearability-structures” endogenous to the Lebenswelt. (shrink)

In America in the 1960s, ethics was out of fashion. Scientists tended to think it was as wooly and "ideological" as religion, and many philosophers agreed. But advances in the biosciences and biotechnologies made the need for ethical reflection hard to ignore. Ethics needed what today we would call rebranding.The new field devoted to questions arising with advances in the biosciences and biotechnologies would be called "bioethics." As theologian Warren Reich put it when reflecting back on the birth of bioethics (...) in the late 1960s, The field of bioethics started with the word bioethics because the word is so suggestive and so powerful; it suggests a new focus, a new bringing together of disciplines in a new way with... (shrink)

The goal I pursue is to redefine the study of religious epistemology on the basis of an ethnomethodological extension of Wittgenstein. This approach shows that the nature of religious belief and its relation to facts, proofs, and empirical reality are matters that are dealt with by ordinary members of society. The examination of this lay epistemology reveals that -- far from being a settled and established entity -- religious belief is a polymorphous phenomenon. Religious belief is a pragmatic resource whose (...) configuration is shaped to allow the accomplishment of interactional moves within specific contexts. I defend this thesis by analyzing accounts pertaining to a contemporary religious apparition claim. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the everyday practice of authority and knowledge in a group home for adults with intellectual disability. Based on fieldwork, the group home is understood as a workplace, which provides a model of organizational participation as a dilemma of freedom rather than a problem of power. Three kinds of work are observed in the everyday know-how of counselors and residents. First, Michael Lipskys concept of street-level bureaucracy is used to understand the inherently indeterminate and conflictual nature (...) of counselor work. Second, the competent participation of residents is also organized as work, often explicitly, as the work they must do to become more independent. The group home is therefore understood as a setting of governmentality because it reflects the indirect practice of authority characteristic of contemporary liberal societies. Finally, the ethnomethodological insight about the accomplished character of local order is the basis for the observation of everyday life itself as a third kind of work. (shrink)

This essay is about Houdini’s escapes and ethnomethodology’s studies.1 By accomplishing what appears to be impossible, Houdini leaves his audience considering not only how did he manage to do that, but also just what is it that we consider to be possible. Magicians and escapologists warn us off an interest in the mechanics of their tricks that might spoil the thrill of what they dramatically present to us: a sense of the limits to whatwe can apprehend as an audience. While (...) marking out the differences in their projects, this essay brings out the sharedurge of escapologists and ethnomethodologists to question our senses, openmembers to particular phenomena, and awaken us tothe wonder of the world.In reflecting on what happens when magicians reveal the devices that constitute their tricks, I ask whether the purpose of studying methodologies canonlyreside in revealing how they are practically produced as intelligibleactions. What more might ethnomethodology’s invitation be? (shrink)

The statement that an important dualism runs throughout sociological literature belongs to what can be called extended “sociological common sense”. In this context, Alfred Schutz’s phenomenology is often used critically as a paradigmatic example of subjectivism, as it supposedly places exclusive emphasis on actors’ “subjective” interpretations, thereby neglecting “objective” social structures such as power relationships. This article proposes that not only do those characterizations have dualistic grounds, but they also disregard the explicit intention of phenomenology to overcome the dualism between (...) subjectivism and objectivism. The various criticisms directed at the Schutzian paradigm will be confronted with an analysis of the phenomenon of power based on Schutz’s theory of the life-world, in particular his theory of relevance. This theoretical perspective will be replenished by reflections on power as a meaning selection, which specifically allow the hiatus of subjectivism and objectivism to be overcome. (shrink)

This chapter considers Wittgenstein’s philosophy, particularly as elaborated in Philosophical Investigations and later works, as it has obtained relevance in science education research. The specific focus is on contributions related to students’ learning of science. Wittgenstein’s writings have been used in science education in several ways: to argue for an alternate conception of rationality in theories of learning science, to support theories examining the discursive and social nature of learning, to advocate for investigations of science classrooms that parallel ethnographic and (...) sociological investigations of professional science labs, and to develop alternative research methodologies. An examination of this influence in science education necessitates discussion of the frequent implicit attempts made to reconcile Wittgenstein’s analytic philosophy with empirical habits firmly grounded in a cognitivist tradition. Particular attention is given to the way in which a typical focus in science education on students’ “meaning making” is likely at odds with Wittgensteinian philosophy. It is argued that the exemplars provided in his later work suggest that conceptual clarity is necessary for coherence in asking empirical questions and interpreting results and that they imply an alternative, descriptive orientation for researchers. (shrink)

My remarks in this brief commentary focus on Chris Calvert-Minor’s (2014) article on Karen Barad’s philosophical writings, and are only indirectly relevant to an assessment of Barad’s work. I have limited acquaintance with Barad’s writings, and even less with Nils Bohr’s. Barad explicitly borrows from Bohr’s theoretical writings when developing her version of feminist epistemology. Barad’s recruitment of Bohr to support her philosophy creates a dilemma for me and other readers who are not conversant with Bohr’s physics/philosophy. To my understanding, (...) the general lessons that Barad draws from Bohr about physical phenomena seem roughly in line with Husserl’s conception of phenomena or Merleau-Ponty’s account of “the intertwining,”Barad is not the first to identify a phenomenological position with a feminist standpoint (see Smith 1992). Although she refers to the tendency to feminize “nature” as the passive object of science, she distinguishes her feminist view of “nature as agent” from. (shrink)

In this chapter I investigate the prospects of integrated history and philosophy of science, by examining how philosophical issues raised by “hidden entities”, entities that are not accessible to unmediated observation, can enrich the historical investigation of their careers. Conversely, I suggest that the history of those entities has important lessons to teach to the philosophy of science. Hidden entities have played a crucial role in the development of the natural sciences. Despite their centrality to past scientific practice, however, several (...) of them (e.g., phlogiston, caloric, and the ether) turned out to be fictitious. For this reason, they have figured prominently in recent debates on scientific realism. The issues I explore in this paper are entangled with those debates. I argue that our understanding of hidden entities and their role in experimental practice can be enhanced by adopting an integrated historical-cum-philosophical approach. On the one hand, philosophical reflection on the reality of those entities has a lot to gain by examining historically how they were ntroduced and investigated. On the other hand, the historical reconstruction of the careers of those entities may profit from philosophical reflection on their existence. (shrink)

This study identifies some of the ethical issues that arise in the everyday practice of researching in collecting interactional data. A form of conceptualizing ethics in research is proposed as awareness of the social dimension of research practices and their transformative nature. The collection of ethnographic data—including interviewing, observing, audiovisual recording, and other methods—is achieved by means of social interactions that necessarily imply issues of face, relevance, appropriateness, politeness, and identity, to name a few. Research activities have an impact on (...) both the setting and the participants in the study, in fact, they become part of the setting studied. At times, participants may be using the research activity for their own ends. It is important for researchers to be aware of and responsible for the impact they have on the setting under study. Some ethical problems encountered conducting actual research activities are discussed as an illustration: issues related to negotiation of consent in semipublic settings and to the protection of informants’ anonymity. The actual resolution of these problems is presented as research findings from the everyday practice of doing research. Systematic reflection on the social and interactional dimension of how ethical decisions are taken during actual research activities could make legislation on the protection of research participants and ethical guidelines more realistic and useful. (shrink)

In this paper recent research involving interdisciplinary ethnography is presented as an exploration of its contribution to studies of people and technology in the workplace. Three main patterns of interaction between ethnography and ‘the others’ are examined. First, the influence of ethnography in promoting people-oriented perspectives of technology is discussed with reference to workplace studies in manufacturing. Second, ethnography contribution to the development of hybrid methods for the design and implementation of technology for use in the workplace is illustrated by (...) several examples of such frameworks. Third, the influence of ethnographic research to providing a theoretical basis for computer-mediated communication is explored and documented by analyses of design teams working together as part of construction projects. From a practical point of view, this exploration has resulted in a brief discussion of the broad range of ‘users’ in the real-life workplace who benefit from ethnographic research. Future work in this area will rely on a reflexive stance on the part of the ethnographer in relation to both users of technology and users of ethnography. (shrink)

This paper considers the utility of Ethnomethodology (EM) for the study of healthcare ethics as part of the empirical turn in Bioethics. I give a brief introduction to EM through its respecification of sociology, the specific view on the social world this generates and EM's posture of ‘indifference’. I then take a number of EM concepts and articulate each in the context of an EM study of healthcare ethics in professional practice. Having given an overview of the relationship and perspective (...) EM might bring to the professional practice of healthcare ethics I consider whether and how such an approach could be deployed. Whilst an ethnographic study might be problematic I suggest a number of alternative methods through which such EM research could be accomplished. I conclude with the suggestion that, as a particular approach to sociological research, EM offers good deal of potential for the empirical study of healthcare ethics in practice which could result in an improved reflexive understanding of professional ethical practices in bioethics. (shrink)

In their examination of elementary science classrooms, Amerine and Bilmes (1988) found that following instructions requires students to understand the relationship between the projected outcome and the corresponding course of actions. One of the most important resources for instructions is the lesson plan, which prescribes the sequence of teaching. However, there is often a gap between what is planned and what actually happens in the classroom. This raises the question of how teachers come to terms with contingent variants and unexpected (...) outcomes that real-time interactions occasion and how lesson plans are configured into these processes. This study examines a teacher education program that uses lesson plans as a central resource for teaching mathematics. The results suggest that classroom teachers use lesson plans as communicative resources to identify problems, specify assumptions about their teaching and act on the evolving contingency of classroom interaction. The interactional contingency is the locus of teaching practices, not an obstacle to the application of procedures in lesson plans. (shrink)

This paper proposes an approach to the question of meaning and understanding based on the idea of constitutive rules and their relationship to the social objects they are used to create. This approach implicates mutual attention as an essential aspect of the social processes constitutive of social objects and mutual intelligibility. Social objects as such include the meaning, perception and coherence of things, identities and talk, etc. There is a relatively unexplored but important line of argument in sociology that has, (...) from the beginning, explained the coherence and mutual intelligibility of social objects and associations in terms of constitutive practices and social facts. This line of argument begins with Emile Durkheim (1893) and carries through the work of Harold Garfinkel to current studies of work and interaction, human computer interaction and talk. The argument is that we use constitutive practices (Constitutive rules or constitutive background expectancies) to create social objects and make coherent and shared meanings. To act is in this sense for Garfinkel ([1948]2006) to “mean”. Explaining the consistency of social objects and orders in terms of constitutive orders, rules, or practices is an approach that meets the challenges posed to social science and philosophy by Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953), Peter Winch (1958) and Paul Grice (1989). (shrink)

This article presents an ethnomethodological respecification of the philosophical problem of the hermeneutics of ancient texts. I analyze an interactional practice, namely, noticing an aspect of the Bible text in Seventh-day Adventist Bible study. I show how noticings are used to make the text “speak” to the participants of the Bible study and discuss how the participants show their orientation to this action in the next turn and how they rely on various cultural resources to make sense of the text. (...) The article shows how the actions of the participants are contextual, cultural and moral in nature. Cultural resources and morality are embedded in the locally produced hermeneutical achievement. I discuss how this analysis can be instructive for philosophical hermeneutics. (shrink)

In developing an "internal" sociology of science, the sociology of scientific knowledge drew on Wittgenstein’s later philosophy to reinterpret traditional epistemological topics in sociological terms. By construing scientific reasoning as rule following within a collective, sociologists David Bloor and Harry Collins effectively blocked outside criticism of a scientific field, whether scientific, philosophical, or political. Ethnomethodologist Michael Lynch developed an alternative, Wittgensteinian reading that similarly blocked philosophical or political critique, while also disallowing analytical appeals to historical or institutional contexts. I criticize (...) these Wittgensteinian sociologies and argue for the historical and contemporary significance of methodological criticisms of scientific practice that conjoin epistemological and political categories. I consider two such cases briefly: the Baconian criticism of Scholastic science in the early Royal Society and the criticism of AIDS drug testing protocols by activists. Key Words: Wittgenstein • sociology of scientific knowledge • ethnomethodology • scientific method • interpretive sociology. (shrink)

Louis Sass disputes that schizophrenia can be understood successfully according to the hitherto dominant models--for much of what schizophrenics say and do is neither regressive (as psychoanalysis claims) nor just faulty reasoning (as "cognitivists" claim). Sass argues instead that schizophrenics frequently exhibit hyper-rationality, much as philosophers do. He holds that schizophrenic language can after all be interpreted--if we hear it as Wittgenstein hears solipsistic language. I counter first that broadly Winchian considerations undermine both the hermeneutic conception of interpreting other humans (...) in general and Sass's hope of interpreting schizophrenics in particular. I then go on to argue that even if these Winchian considerations are not accepted, Sass in any case doesn't take sufficiently seriously Wittgenstein's use of nonsense as a term of criticism. Solipsism is not something we can understand so as to be able to understand analogically the schizophrenic's "world"--for there is no such thing as understanding it. Solipsism is nonsense, is nothing--there is no "world" there, in solipsists (as I show by reference to Cora Diamond's reading of Wittgenstein). Nor in any actually analogous cases of schizophrenia. Their "alienness" is the alienness of nothingness; roughly, of the fantasy of "logically alien thought". (shrink)