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Bringing together one of the most important bodies of research into people's working practices, this volume outlines the specific character of the ethnomethodological approach to work, providing an introduction to the key conceptual resources ethnomethodology has drawn upon in its studies, and a set of substantive chapters that examine how people work from a foundational perspective. With contributions from leading experts in the field, including Graham Button, John Hughes and Wes Sharrock, Ethnomethodology at Work explores the contribution that ethnomethodological studies continue to make to our understanding of the ways in which people actually accomplish work from day to day. As such, it will appeal not only to those working in the areas of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, but also to those with interests in the sociology of work and organisations.
This book outlines the specific character of the ethnomethodological approach to 'play'; that is, to everyday sport and leisure activities that people generally engage in for enjoyment, at home or as a 'hobby'. With chapters on cooking, running, playing music, dancing, rock climbing, sailing, fly fishing and going out for the day as a family, Ethnomethodology at Play provides an introduction to the key conceptual resources drawn upon by ethnomethodology in its studies of these activities, whilst exploring the manner in which people 'work' at their everyday leisure. Demonstrating the breadth of ethnomethodological analysis and showing how no topic is beyond ethnomethodology's fundamental respecification, Ethnomethodology at Play sets out for the serious reader and researcher the precise contribution of ethnomethodology to sociological studies of sport and leisure and ordinary domestic pastimes. As such this groundbreaking volume constitutes a significant contribution to both ethnomethodology and sociology in general, as well as to the sociology of sport and leisure, the sociology of domestic and daily life and cultural studies.
The issue of 'leadership', the need for good, insightful and decisive leaders is a prominent theme in Education. Yet few can define exactly what leadership is. This book examines the phenomenon of leadership in post-compulsory education through the careful description and analysis of a long-term observational study of college principals at work. In contrast to other, more theoretical, attempts to understand leadership, this book develops an understanding of leadership by pointing to specific examples of what leaders actually do as they go about their everyday work of resolving organisational issues. Instead of presenting leaders as charismatic heroes this book investigates a number of famili...
Ethnography is now a fundamental feature of design practice, taught in universities worldwide and practiced widely in commerce. Despite its rise to prominence a great many competing perspectives exist and there are few practical texts to support the development of competence. Doing Design Ethnography elaborates the ethnomethodological perspective on ethnography, a distinctive approach that provides canonical 'studies of work' in and for design. It provides an extensive treatment of the approach, with a particular slant on providing a pedagogical text that will support the development of competence for students, career researchers and design practitioners. It is organised around a complementary series of self-contained chapters, each of which address key features of doing the job of ethnography for purposes of system design. The book will be of broad appeal to students and practitioners in HCI, CSCW and software engineering, providing valuable insights as to how to conduct ethnography and relate it to design.
In Design for Services, Anna Meroni and Daniela Sangiorgi articulate what Design is doing and can do for services, and how this connects to existing fields of knowledge and practice. Designers previously saw their task as the conceptualisation, development and production of tangible objects. In the twenty-first century, a designer rarely 'designs something' but rather 'designs for something': in the case of this publication, for change, better experiences and better services. The authors reflect on this recent transformation in the practice, role and skills of designers, by organising their book into three main sections. The first section links Design for Services to existing models and studies on services and service innovation. Section two presents multiple service design projects to illustrate and clarify the issues, practices and theories that characterise the discipline today; using these case studies the authors propose a conceptual framework that maps and describes the role of designers in the service economy. The final section projects the discipline into the emerging paradigms of a new economy to initiate a reflection on its future development.
Presenting original research studies by leading scholars in the field, Orders of Ordinary Action considers how ethnomethodology provides for an 'alternate' sociology by respecifying sociological phenomena as locally accomplished members' activities. Following an introduction by the editors and a seminal statement of ethnomethodology's analytic stance by its founder, Harold Garfinkel, the book then comprises two parts. The first introduces studies of practical action and organization, whilst the second provides studies of practical reasoning and situated logic in various settings. By organizing the book in this way, the collection demonstrates the relevance of ethnomethodological investigations to established topics and issues and indicates the contribution that ethnomethodology can make to the understanding of human action in any and all social contexts. Both individually and collectively, these contributions illustrate how taking an ethnomethodological approach opens up for investigation phenomena that are taken for granted in conventional sociological theorizing.
‘User-designer relations’ concerns the sorts of working relationships that arise between developers and end users of IT products - the different ways designers of IT products seek to engage with users, and the ways users seek to influence product design. It is through the shifting patterns of these relations that IT products are realised. Although it has generally been accepted that achieving better user-designer relations will improve the quality of IT products, there has been little consensus on how this might be achieved. This book aims to deepen our understanding of the relationships between users and designers both as they emerge in the wild and as a consequence of our attempts to intervene. Through a series of case studies the book juxtaposes in-depth explorations of different perspectives and approaches to thinking about - and doing - user-designer relations, considering important implications for design and computer science more generally.
Financial organizations, like many others, are undergoing radical change. This is affecting both their organizational processes and the technology that supports those processes. This book reports on the use of sociological ethnography in helping guide these changes, both in terms of helping better understanding and redraw work processes and through providing more accurate and flexible understanding of the role technology plays. It places the reported research in context by contrasting it with those approaches more commonly associated with change, including business process engineering, participative design and soft systems methodologies. The book explains what are the benefits of ethnography...
Respecifying Lab Ethnography delivers the first ethnomethodological study of current experimental physics in action, describing the disciplinary orientation of lab work and exploring the discipline in its social order, formal stringency and skilful performance - in situ and in vivo. Drawing upon extensive participant observation, this book articulates and draws upon two major strands of ethnomethodological inquiry: reflexive ethnography and video analysis. In bringing together these two approaches, which have hitherto existed in parallel, Respecifying Lab Ethnography introduces a practice-based video analysis. In doing so, the book recasts conventional distinctions to shed fresh light on methodological issues surrounding the descriptive investigation of social practices more broadly. An engaged and innovative study of the encountered worksite, this book will appeal not only to sociologists with interests in ethnomethodology and the sociology of work, but also to scholars of science and technology studies and those working in the fields of ethnography and social science methodology.
This book provides insight into the everyday activities co-produced by teachers and young children, demonstrating the fine details of teaching and learning as knowledge is shared through the everyday activities of talk-in-interaction. Adopting an ethnomethodological perspective, together with conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis, it reveals how teaching and learning are jointly accomplished during activities such as pretend play episodes, during disputes, managing illness and talking about the environment.