Collins-Evans2014

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Collins-Evans2014
BibType ARTICLE
Key Collins-Evans2014
Author(s) Harry Collins, Robert Evans
Title Actor and analyst: A response to Coopmans and Button
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, actors’ categories, analysts’ categories, commonsense, ethomethodology, expertise, interactional expertise, taxonomy
Publisher
Year 2014
Language
City
Month
Journal Social Studies of Science
Volume 44
Number 5
Pages 786–792
URL Link
DOI 10.1177/0306312714546242
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

We question the logic of Coopmans and Button’s critique of our analysis of expertise on three grounds. First, their critique depends on a clear distinction between actor and analysts that we show cannot be maintained. Second, we question their reticence to allow the use of taxonomies in the analysis of expertise, suggesting that it is contradicted by their own descriptions of expert work, and we accuse them of making a mistake in the way they relate commonsense to specialist skills. Finally, we express our puzzlement at the antiseptic-like precautions that some ethnomethodologists apply to analysts’ categories, especially given that – as we show – analysts’ categories sometimes provide a superior resource for understanding and can change the actors’ world as well as describing it.

Notes

A response to Coopmans-Button2014