Showing papers by "Richard Harper published in 1994"

Radicalism, beliefs and hidden agendas

Abstract: I have found it quite difficult to comment on Suchman's paper. There are a whole host of issues that I would like to say something on, each of varying complexity, and each worthy of much more time and consideration than is available. I confine myself therefore to making two sets of brief remarks. The first relates to what I think is a missed opportunity. For, her numerous references to ethnomethodology lead me to think, when I first looked at the paper, that she was going to offer an ethnomethodology of Coordinator use. But she does not and I think that was, as I say, a missed opportunity. The second set of remarks relates to a much more sensitive issue, namely the tenor of the Suchman paper. Suchman analyses what she argues are the beliefs, or rather the agenda as she calls it, of those who designed the Coordinator. But her analysis made me feel rather uneasy. Instead of being persuaded, I felt as if there was something more going on, as if Suchman had some kind of agenda of her own. But this agenda is not explained or justified. I will try and explain why I felt this. I want to say at the outset that I may be mistaken but that even if I am, in explaining this unease, then other readers of Suchman's paper can be more alert, and hence will not make the same mistake as I.