This paper explores how providing the inferential basis to argue for a range of equally plausible interpretations features as a way of managing issues of accountability in talk about armed confrontation. We examine conversation produced in open-ended interviews with diplomatic representatives of the United States and Great Britain in discussion about those countries'' involvement in the Persian Gulf conflict of 1990–91. By providing the inferential basis upon which to argue for a range of equally plausible interpretative scenarios, speakers attend to (...) the potential for any one account to be privileged over another. Further, in speculating upon the relationship between interpretative particulars and the inferential outcome to be drawn for some specific version of events in question, speakers work to establish the parameters of an admissible narrative trajectory with which to account for those events. In so doing, they manage the implications that excluded versions would otherwise make relevant. (shrink)

This article suggests a discourse analysis suitable for multi-dimensional processes. The exemplar in focus is a single narrative that travelled a long way through an English criminal pre-trial to the finalising Crown Court-hearing. The following case study asks how this story was mobilised by the defence to challenge the prosecution's case. The resulting sequential analysis of the story's career profits a good deal from Laboratory Studies. Like ethnographies in Science and Technology Studies, the analysis involves an extended production process—and the (...) productivities of the artefacts produced. It shows, furthermore, how the mobilisation of the alibi is at some points threatened by emerging potentialities to undermine it. All in all, the resulting micro-history on the story's career hinges on as well as exceeds common preferences in social constructivism: for collaborative and local accomplishments, for structural and antagonistic oppositions, and for success stories. (shrink)

This paper addresses a range of theoretical issues which are the topic of recent social psychological and related research concerned with the “new racism.” We critically examine examples of such research in order to explore how analyst concerns with anti-racist political activism are surreptitiously privileged in explanations of social interaction, often at the expense of and in preference to the work of examining participants' own formulations of those same activities. Such work is contrasted with an ethnomethodologically-informed, discursive psychology which seeks (...) to the explore how participants' talk is responsively oriented to foreclosing the same sort of critique implicitly made available in new racism research as a way for speakers to account for their own and others' activities within the controversy which that same body of research seeks to settle. More specifically, we examine how the rhetorical context of controversy surrounding race and racism is imminent to the situated activities whereby speakers provide for its relevance and not, as assumed in new racism research, some independent factor affecting that interaction. Finally, we conclude with an analysis of an episode of talk recorded in a social science interview having as its topic the nature of cross-cultural contact in which the participants take up the issue of racism as a way of managing the conflicting demands with which they are confronted in accounting for their involvement as Western expatriates living in the Middle East. Throughout our analysis of these materials, the issue of racism is approached for how it features as a participant concern, raised by speakers in the course of attending to the immediate situated interactional business in which they are engaged. (shrink)

The ambition of “scientific creationism” is to prove that science actually confirms religion. This is especially true in the case of Muslim creationism, which adopts a reasoning of a syllogistic type: divine revelation is truth; good science confirms truth; divine revelation is henceforth scientifically proven. Harun Yahya is a prominent Muslim “creationist” whose website hosts many texts and documentary films, among which “Evidence of the true faith in historical sources”. This is a small audiovisual production which, starting from some archeological (...) files, seeks to demonstrate that Qur’an truth precedes science but is equally proven by it. In this paper, we examine the organization of the scientific and religious argumentative repertoires and, in particular, what in each of them is taken as evidence and gets access to an authoritative status. It leads us to show how much this type of Muslim creationism constitutes a kind of scientism. (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 article begins with Derrida’s etymology of the word ‘archive’: a privileged site to which records are officially consigned and in which they are guarded by legal authority. It explores contemporary variations on the theme of archive. The cases presented include efforts to construct scholarly archives that stand as personal monuments, struggles over the collection and consignment of records during official investigations of government scandals, and the ‘popular archive’ produced by the media spectacle surrounding the O. J. Simpson trial. The (...) discussion orients to these archives not only as sources of documentary information but also as sites of historical struggle over the writing, collection, consignment, destruction and interpretation of writings. (shrink)

On July 27th, 2013, Sammy Yatim was shot and killed by Toronto Police Services’ Constable James Forcillo during a verbal confrontation on a streetcar as Yatim brandished a switchblade knife. Forcillo was charged, initially with second degree murder, and later attempted murder—a decision that confused media commentators as attempted murder is a lesser-and-included offense to second degree murder in Canadian law. In January 2016, Forcillo was found not guilty of second degree murder and guilty of attempted murder. Video evidence, recovered (...) from the streetcar’s onboard security cameras, was described by the presiding judge, Justice Edward Then, as proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Forcillo’s testimony was unreliable, especially in light of other evidence. This paper examines the use of video evidence to arrive at a ‘compromise verdict’ and the paradox of being convicted of attempting to murder someone who was killed. (shrink)

Analytical ethnography does not presume a principal analytical frame. It does not know (yet) where and when the field takes place. Rather, the ethnographer is in search for appropriate spatiotemporal frames in correspondence with the occurrences in the field. Accordingly, the author organizes a dialogue between conceptual frames and his various empirical accounts. He confronts snapshots of English Crown Court proceedings with models of event and process from micro-sociology and macro-sociology. A range of–more or less early or late, relevant or (...) irrelevant, contingent or predetermined–processual events serves as the vantage point to access event and process relations. In this line, Crown Court proceedings serve as an introductory and exemplary field for analytical ethnography, because they involve both: (strong) events and their process and (strong) processes and their events. (shrink)

Science is sometimes depicted, both in scholarly and lay accounts, as a consensual and orderly progression in the direction of truth; at other times, it is portrayed as an arena in which lone geniuses struggle against rivals and authorities to impose unconventional interpretations of reality. The paper introduces the concept of ‘order-conflict dichotomy’ to stabilize the content of these definitions. It then shows, through an in-depth analysis of the Irving trial, an English libel suit involving historical knowledge about World War (...) II and the Holocaust, how these definitions can be used as rhetorical devices to promote professional and situational goals. Six couples of opposing sub-definitions of science are identified by analyzing court records. As a tentative hypothesis derived from the case, it is argued that the conception of science actors deploy in this kind of controversies reflect the overall structure of the market for knowledge about nature and society rather than disciplinary culture. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this article, we conduct a discourse analysis of the testimony of the leaders of British banks during a UK public inquiry into the financial crisis. We examine the discursive devices that were used to handle the accountability of banking leaders, particularly their role in the events leading up to the collapse and subsequent state bail-out of the banks. Our analysis identifies two competing interpretative repertoires: an agentic repertoire and a structural repertoire. These repertoires are significant, we suggest, because they (...) inform understanding of what went wrong with the banking system and what should be done to reform and regulate the sector. We conclude by calling for the notions of agency and structure to be treated as an object of study within discourse analysis rather than a form of social scientific explanation. (shrink)

This paper responds to, and comments on, Coulter''s (1999) critique of discursive psychology with particular reference to how cognition is conceptualised theoretically and analytically. It first identifies a number of basic misreadings of discursive psychological writings, which distort and, at times, reverse its position on the status of cognition. Second, it reviews the main ways in which cognition, mental states, and thoughts have been analytically conceptualised in discursive psychology (respecification of topics from mainstream psychology, studies of the psychological thesaurus in (...) action, and studies of the way psychological issues are managed). Third, it considers two of Coulter''s substantive issues: the role of correct usage and the role of conceptual vs. empirical analysis. A series of problems are identified with Coulter''s development of both of these issues. (shrink)