[Air-l] Ethnomethodology and Internet Research
Christian Nelson
xianknelson at mac.com
Thu Mar 31 07:11:49 PST 2005
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
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