[Air-l] Ethnomethodology and Internet Research

[Christian Nelson]

On Mar 30, 2005, at 8:37 PM, Denise N. Rall wrote:

> Assoc Prof Christian Nelson has been recently on this list.  He's a 
> great scholar of ethnomethodology. He offered a great reading list on 
> ethomethodology. He has emailed this website in the last few months so 
> check the archives for his email address.
>
> Cheers, Denise

Thanks for the promotion, Denise ;-) Unfortunately, I'm still an 
*assistant* professor ("Scholar in Residence" is Emerson's term for 
"visiting assistant prof."). Whatever the case, I know a bit about 
ethnomethodological (EM) investigations into computer research. There 
are two teams of EMists/CAists who frequently publish in this area: 1) 
Wes Sharrock, Graham Button, and Bob Anderson and 2) Paul Luff and 
Christian Heath. Their work is mainly on HCI, so you could look up 
their work using the www.hci.bib seach tool. I think Sharrock et al. 
have also done some work on software design in general--you could find 
out if they've done more general work using the EM/CA 
(ethnomethodology/conversation analysis) bibliography maintained by 
Paul ten Have at http://www2.fmg.uva.nl/emca/resource.htm (there are 
separate bibs for pre- and post-'89 works). In addition to this stuff, 
you should see Lucy Suchman's acclaimed EM work in the area of 
computers and computer use. Finally, you may already be aware of CA 
work by Angela Garcia and (E.) Sean Rintel on the participation 
structure of asynchronous chats and such. (Sean's work doesn't seem to 
be listed in ten Have's bib, so see Sean's CV at 
http://www.albany.edu/~er8430/work.html). Don Winiecki has also done 
interesting CA work in the area--search the AIR-l list archives for a 
list of his writing and a bib. he provided on the subject.

Please note that, despite suggestions to the contrary on this list, EM 
is NOT the same as ethnography. I've written a bit about 
this--specifically with regard to the relationship between ethnography 
and the sometime branch of EM known as conversation analysis in the 
following:
Nelson, C. K. (1994). Ethnomethodological positions on the use of 
ethnographic data in conversation analytic research. Journal of 
Contemporary Ethnography, 23,  307-29.

I should note that, while it is fairly easy to delineate the 
relationship between CA and ethnography, it is not so easy to delineate 
the relationship between ethnography and EM sans CA. (This is one 
indication of the fact that the relationship between CA and EM is not 
easy to specify, and the relationship between CAists and EMists has 
been very strained at times.) As for the difficulties in deliniation, 
EM is not easy to define--its practitioners even argue against doing 
so, and its founder, Harold Garfinkel has indicated that there are no a 
priori criteria for determining whether a piece of research is EMical 
or not. Ugh. Adding to the confusion, Garfinkel's recent book ("EM's 
Program") suggests that one must "go native" to do EM research, thus 
suggesting a link to some kinds of traditional ethnography; however, a 
lot of early EM argued that (traditional) ethnography was flawed in 
treating informants as "research adjuncts" (i.e., folks who were 
interested in/capable of disinterested reports of beliefs, etc.) rather 
than treating their responses to the researchers questions as 
interested "accounts" (see especially D. Lawrence Weider's "Language 
and social reality: the case of telling the convict code" for an 
extended and very instructive example of this argument).

Best,
Christian Nelson

Christian Nelson, Ph.D.
Scholar  in Residence
Dept. of Marketing and Health Communication
120 Boylston St.
Emerson College
Boston, MA 02116-4624