What do a seventeenth-century mortality table (whose causes of death include "fainted in a bath," "frighted," and "itch"); the identification of South Africans during apartheid as European, Asian, colored, or black; and the separation of machine- from hand-washables have in common? All are examples of classification -- the scaffolding of information infrastructures. In Sorting Things Out, Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star explore the role of categories and standards in shaping the modern world. In a clear and lively style, they investigate a variety of classification systems, including the International Classification of Diseases, the Nursing Interventions Classification, race classification under apartheid in South Africa, and the classification of viruses and of tuberculosis. The authors emphasize the role of invisibility in the process by which classification orders human interaction. They examine how categories are made and kept invisible, and how people can change this invisibility when necessary. They also explore systems of classification as part of the built information environment. Much as an urban historian would review highway permits and zoning decisions to tell a city's story, the authors review archives of classification design to understand how decisions have been made. Sorting Things Out has a moral agenda, for each standard and category valorizes some point of view and silences another. Standards and classifications produce advantage or suffering. Jobs are made and lost; some regions benefit at the expense of others. How these choices are made and how we think about that process are at the moral and political core of this work. The book is an important empirical source for understanding the building of information infrastructures.

https://www.reciis.icict.fiocruz.br/index.php/reciis/article/download/794/1436

Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences

(1995). Interaction Analysis: Foundations and Practice. Journal of the Learning Sciences: Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 39-103.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1466849.pdf

Interaction Analysis: Foundations and Practice

In this article I elaborate and codify the extended case method, which deploys participant observation to locate everyday life in its extralocal and historical context. The extended case method emulates a reflexive model of science that takes as its premise the intersubjectivity of scientist and subject of study. Reflexive science valorizes intervention, process, structuration, and theory reconstruction. It is the Siamese twin of positive science that proscribes reactivity, but upholds reliability, replicability, and representativeness. Positive science, exemplified by survey research, works on the principle of the separation between scientists and the subjects they examine. Positive science is limited by “context effects” (interview, respondent, field, and situational effects) while reflexive science is limited by “power effects” (domination, silencing, objectification, and normalization). The article concludes by considering the implications of having two models of science rather than one, both of which are necessarily flawed. Throughout I use a study of postcolonialism to illustrate both the virtues and the shortcomings of the extended case method. Methodology can only bring us reflective understanding of the means which have demonstrated their value in practice by raising them to the level of explicit consciousness; it is no more the precondition of fruitful intellectual work than the knowledge of anatomy is the precondition of “correct” walking.

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The extended case method

This article provides one example of a method of analyzing qualitative data in an objective and quantifiable way. Although the application of the method is illustrated in the context of verbal data such as explanations, interviews, problem-solving protocols, and retrospective reports, in principle, the mechanics of the method can be adapted for coding other types of qualitative data, such as gestures and videotapes. The mechanics of the method are outlined in 8 concrete steps. Although verbal analyses can be used for many purposes, the main goal of the analyses discussed here is to formulate an understanding of the representation of the knowledge used in cognitive performances and how that representation changes with learning. This can be contrasted with another method of analyzing verbal protocols, the goal of which is to validate the cognitive processes of human performance, often as embodied in a computational model.

/pdf/quantifying-qualitative-analyses-of-verbal-data-a-practical-3pidr8itv1.pdf

Quantifying Qualitative Analyses of Verbal Data: A Practical Guide

Recently, there has been a proliferation of measures responding to demands for accountability and transparency. Using the example of media rankings of law schools, this article argues that the methodological concept of reactivity—the idea that people change their behavior in reaction to being evaluated, observed, or measured—offers a useful lens for disclosing how these measures effect change. A framework is proposed for investigating the consequences, both intended and unintended, of public measures. The article first identifies two mechanisms, self‐fulfilling prophecy and commensuration, that induce reactivity and then distinguishes patterns of effects produced by reactivity. This approach demonstrates how these increasingly fateful public measures change expectations and permeate institutions, suggesting why it is important for scholars to investigate the impact of these measures more systematically.

/pdf/rankings-and-reactivity-how-public-measures-recreate-social-4fbnkl974i.pdf

Rankings and Reactivity: How Public Measures Recreate Social Worlds

(1990). Interactional Troubles in Face-to-Face Survey Interviews. Journal of the American Statistical Association: Vol. 85, No. 409, pp. 232-241.

Interactional Troubles in Face-to-Face Survey Interviews

The use of remote communication technologies to carry out daily work is becoming increasingly common, and their use in certain settings is already commonplace. Yet, in spite of the fact that significant sums are being spent on the acquisition of technologies to support distributed work, we are only beginning to understand the intricacies of these interactions. This paper identifies and analyzes one particular limitation of video-based teleconferencing, the impact of an audio and video delay on distributed communication. It offers a detailed microanalysis of one distributed team's use of videoconferencing to support remote teamwork. We explore through this analysis the impact which technology-generated delays may have on shared meaning-making between remote participants. We draw conclusions about the significance of our findings for understanding talk, interaction and collaboration across remote links, and conclude with recommendations for designers, users and implementers.

Co-Constructing Non-Mutual Realities: Delay-Generated Trouble in Distributed Interaction

Organizations increasingly carry out their work by relying on complex, distributed activities supported by a wide range of technologies for synchronous and asynchronous communication and collaboration. How do we capture complex, distributed activities? What tools do we use in settings where even a team of trained ethnographers could not comprehend, much less record, all the interplays between team members, the subtleties of a look or tone, the shifts in orientation to people or objects in the workspace? In this paper, we explore the use of video-based Interaction Analysis to extend the ability of traditional ethnographic methods for data collection and analysis. We draw on a study of a distributed organization’s use of remote meeting technologies to illustrate how this approach contributes to the depth of insights to be garnered from workplace ethnography.

/pdf/capturing-complex-distributed-activities-video-based-5e57b4nv53.pdf

Capturing complex, distributed activities: video-based interaction analysis as a component of workplace ethnography

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses s ethnographic workplace studies and computer-supported cooperative work A community of practice (COP) approach allows focusing on the way work is accomplished as a collaborative enterprise The communities of practice are naturally occurring groups that arise more or less spontaneously around a particular task, technology, or enterprise COPs are ubiquitous and every person is a member of multiple communities, at work and elsewhere, dipping in and out of them as the situation requires COP members may be co-located in face-to-face interaction, or they may work together remotely through a variety of communication technologies A COP view of the work environment implies some shifts in the ways work practices are usually looked at It means that attention is paid to the ways in which knowledge and meaning are constructed and distributed in particular work situations A distinguishing feature of ethnographic work is that it is concerned with understanding what the world looks like from the point of view of participants The distinction between emic and etic data is useful because much of work practice studies among management consultants is based on a purely etic framework that assumes certain structures and relationships without understanding what the work looks like from the point of view of participants

Brigitte Jordan

Papers

Interaction Analysis: Foundations and Practice

Interactional Troubles in Face-to-Face Survey Interviews

Co-Constructing Non-Mutual Realities: Delay-Generated Trouble in Distributed Interaction

Capturing complex, distributed activities: video-based interaction analysis as a component of workplace ethnography

Chapter 3 Ethnographic workplace studies and CSCW