Ethnographies of Reason

Written by one of the most eminent scholars in the field, Ethnographies of Reason is a unique book in terms of the studies it presents, the perspective it develops and the research techniques it illustrates. Using concrete case study materials throughout, Eric Livingston offers a fundamentally different, ethnographic approach to the study of skill and reasoning. At the same time, he addresses a much neglected topic in the literature, illustrating practical techniques of ethnomethodological research and showing how such studies are actually conducted. The book is a major contribution to ethnomethodology, to social science methodology and to the study of skill and reasoning more generally. Contents: Preface; Introduction: Reasoning in the wild; Formal reasoning; Psychological experiments. Exercises and Examples: Tangrams; Jigsaw puzzles; A first ethnography; Phenomenology; A toolic world, part 1; Mapping the infinite plane; Lawlike properties of the prismatic field; An exercise in origami; An embodied correspondence; Straightedge and compass constructions. Projects and Techniques: Sociologies of the witnessable order; Found objects; The stack; The doing of things; Precise description; Indirection; Sketch work; Structures of inquiry and corpus-relevant skills; Emergent themes and analogies of practice. Themes and Orientations: Themes, orientations and research directives; Reflexivity; The primacy of the social; The ordinariness of practical action and its production; Praxeological objects; The characterization problem. Epilogue; Appendices; Index of examples.