On Sacks

<p>This book is devoted to the reintroduction of the remarkable approach to sociological inquiry developed by Harvey Sacks. Sacks’s original analyses – concerned with the lived detail of action and language-in-interaction discoverable in members’ actual activities – demonstrated a means of doing sociology that had previously seemed impossible. In so doing Sacks provided for highly technical detailed yet stunningly simple solutions to some of the most trenchant troubles for the social sciences relating to language culture meaning knowledge action and social organisation. In this original collection scholars working in a range of different fields including sociology human geography communication and media studies social psychology and linguistics outline the ways in which their work has been inspired influenced and shaped by Sacks’s approach as well as how their current research is taking Sacks’s legacy forward in new directions. As such the collection is intended to provide both an introduction to and critical exploration of the work of Harvey Sacks and its continued relevance for the analysis of contemporary society.</p>