Koschmann2014

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Koschmann2014
BibType INCOLLECTION
Key Koschmann2014
Author(s) Timothy Koschmann, Alan Zemel
Title Instructed objects
Editor(s) Maurice Nevile, Pentti Haddington, Trine Heinemann, Mirka Rauniomaa
Tag(s) EMCA, Instructed Action
Publisher John Benjamins
Year 2014
Language English
City Amsterdam/Philadelphia
Month
Journal
Volume
Number
Pages 357–378
URL Link
DOI 10.1075/z.186.16kos
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title Interacting with Objects: Language, Materiality, and Social Activity
Chapter

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Abstract

This chapter develops an ethnomethodologically-informed view regarding the sociality of objects, building upon Garfinkel’s various descriptions of object constitution. We examine a particular case of diagnostic reasoning produced in the course of carrying out a surgical procedure at a teaching hospital. Our interest is in the methods employed by the surgeons in resolving certain incongruities in the case as it presents itself. Through an occasioned process of inquiry, the case at hand comes to be seen in a new light. This revised clinical picture is the oriented object under consideration here and it is produced as a discovered matter. We describe it as an instructed object to emphasise that perception is a kind of action and can too be taught. For us, as for Garfinkel, instruction is a fundamental feature of how social order is created and shared understanding sustained. In the analysed example, the methods by which a new appreciation of the case is achieved are public and inspectable. Instructional settings are, in this way, ‘perspicuous sites’ for investigating how “a world of meant objects” is produced.

Notes