Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Chapter 7 continues the previous chapter’s analysis of Milgram’s debriefing interviews, focusing on his attempts to change participants’ feelings about the experiment as well as how he organized the experiments to induce strong emotional... more
Chapter 7 continues the previous chapter’s analysis of Milgram’s debriefing interviews, focusing on his attempts to change participants’ feelings about the experiment as well as how he organized the experiments to induce strong emotional reactions. Whereas previous chapters dealt with how participants responded to the experiment, this chapter highlights the affective labor Milgram and his confederates put into their research. Drawing on recent scholarship in feminist science studies, the chapter analyzes the conduct of the experiment as a matter of care for Milgram. The emotional labor involved in the experiments is evident in Milgram’s efforts to retroactively transform the affective and moral meanings participants attached to them, as well as his constant tinkering with his setup. The chapter shows how Milgram, via the Experimenter, sought to achieve reconciliation with participants through practices of news delivery and assessment, in the process changing their negative and ambivalent pre-debriefing assessments of the experiment into positive ones. That debriefings were not merely informative but also transformative explains the puzzle of how participants could voice negative feelings toward the experiment prior to debriefing yet report positive feelings on surveys they filled out weeks or months later. Finally, the chapter considers Milgram’s use of science as a resource for persuading participants that they were contributing to something meaningful—the scientific enterprise.
Despite its dependency on common-sense knowledge, sociology as a field has yet to confront the fact that there simply is no time out from its use at any level of practical endeavor, including the most sophisticated theoretical and... more
Despite its dependency on common-sense knowledge, sociology as a field has yet to confront the fact that there simply is no time out from its use at any level of practical endeavor, including the most sophisticated theoretical and methodological efforts of scientific activity itself. The theme of this chapter is to suggest why the wider discipline could benefit from increased ethnomethodological inquiry, and to demonstrate just how such inquiry and its offshoot, conversation analysis (CA), contribute to the profession and larger society. Such endeavors were well within the realm of Garfinkel’s own ambitions. To get at the devices of commonsense, Garfinkel’s (1967: 37) stated preference was to “start with familiar scenes and ask what can be done to make trouble”—for example, directing his students to question what their friends, acquaintances, or partners meant by the most commonplace remarks. However, that strategy leaves uninvestigated more naturalistic breaches and the forms of reasoning on the part of so-called trouble-makers—i.e., those whose conduct threatens what we otherwise take for granted. Ethnomethodological studies of disability and atypical interaction may provide access to forms of reasoning that have an integrity in their own right. This chapter, with a specific focus on autism spectrum disorder, shows how the actions of children being tested and diagnosed may challenge the commonsense order of clinical reasoning. Such conduct provides opportunities for common-sense actors, whether professional or lay, to alter or expand their repertoires of reasoning. Entering and comprehending the world of the “other” also expands the parameters of local social arrangements themselves.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Recent decades have witnessed a dramatic upsurge in the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). As researchers have investigated the responsible sociohistorical conditions, they have neglected how clinicians determine the diagnosis... more
Recent decades have witnessed a dramatic upsurge in the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). As researchers have investigated the responsible sociohistorical conditions, they have neglected how clinicians determine the diagnosis in local encounters in the first place. Articulating a position “between Foucault and Goffman,” we ask how the interaction order of the clinic articulates with larger-scale historical forces affecting the definition and distribution of ASD. First, we show how the diagnostic process has a narrative structure. Second, case data from three decades show how narrative practices accommodate to different periods in the history of the disorder, including changing diagnostic nomenclatures. Third, we show how two different forms of abstraction—Type A, which is categorical, and Type B, which is concrete and particular—inhabit the diagnostic process. Our analysis contributes to the sociology of autism, the sociology of diagnosis, the sociology of abstraction, a...
Research Interests:
This article revisits W.E.B. Du Bois' (1943) conception of “The Submissive Man” in the context of a Black/White police–citizen encounter. Du Bois argued that submission to democratic principles that place the well–being of the whole... more
This article revisits W.E.B. Du Bois' (1943) conception of “The Submissive Man” in the context of a Black/White police–citizen encounter. Du Bois argued that submission to democratic principles that place the well–being of the whole over the individual is a Black American ideal, which offers a necessary counter–balance to the individualism of the dominant White “Strong Man” ideal. We contrast this preference for “submission” and “cooperation” in dealing with racism with White American individualism, referring to these as “preferences” in conflicting Black/White “Interaction Orders”. In the police–citizen encounter we analyze, what we call “Submissive Civility” by a Black citizen contributed to the use of excessive/unjustified force when it conflicted with the arresting officers' White expectations. Using Conversation Analysis, we document how the police enforced tacit and unconscious racial biases as if they were legal requirements, providing a framework for explaining how s...
Research Interests:
Haslam and Reicher (2018, Br. J. Soc. Psychol., 57, 292-300) offer a thoughtful rejoinder to our critique (Hollander & Turowetz, 2017, Br. J. Soc. Psychol, 56, 655-674) of their theory of engaged followership, currently the most important... more
Haslam and Reicher (2018, Br. J. Soc. Psychol., 57, 292-300) offer a thoughtful rejoinder to our critique (Hollander & Turowetz, 2017, Br. J. Soc. Psychol, 56, 655-674) of their theory of engaged followership, currently the most important explanation of 'obedient' behaviour in the Milgram paradigm. Our immersion in Milgram's archived audio recordings has led us to new findings about participants' perspectives, as well as to dissatisfaction with the theory in its present version. Following a brief discussion of our findings, which cast the theory in doubt, we respond to Haslam and Reicher's argument that these data may in fact be consistent with it. Our response identifies three limitations of engaged followership emerging from this debate. Despite the strengths of the theory and these authors' impressive re-analysis of our findings, important reasons remain for scepticism that engaged followership operated in Milgram's experiments in the way, and to the e...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This study, with an eye toward the social psychology of diagnosis more generally, is an investigation of how clinicians diagnose children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Responding to Hacking’s call for a Goffmanian mode of analysis... more
This study, with an eye toward the social psychology of diagnosis more generally, is an investigation of how clinicians diagnose children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Responding to Hacking’s call for a Goffmanian mode of analysis to complement and balance the emphasis on large-scale transformations and discourses, we examine the narrative way in which clinicians provide evidence to support a diagnostic position. Using recordings and transcripts of clinical visits across two eras, our findings about the interaction order of the clinic show distinct story types and components that contribute to diagnostic narratives for ASD. These include stories about concrete “instantiations,” stories that propose “tendencies,” and “typifications” or generalizations regarding a specific child. This work contributes to interaction order theory, methodology, and other domains of social psychological research.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Harold Garfinkel gave the title Parsons’ Primer to a manuscript of nine chapters that he wrote from1959 to 1963 to explain the importance of Talcott Parsons’ social theory and the significance of his move toward social interactionism in... more
Harold Garfinkel gave the title Parsons’ Primer to a manuscript of nine chapters that he wrote from1959 to 1963 to explain the importance of Talcott Parsons’ social theory and the significance of his move toward social interactionism in his later work. In this manuscript Garfinkel both explains Parsons’ developing interactionism in detail and relates it to his own studies in ethnomethodology. The relationship between the two scholars turns out to have been much closer than has been understood.
In her book Thinking in Pictures, Temple Grandin (2006, pp. 154–155) describes the problems that “rigid thinking” can create in the social lives of autistic adults. She recounts how one young man “became romantically interested in a girl... more
In her book Thinking in Pictures, Temple Grandin (2006, pp. 154–155) describes the problems that “rigid thinking” can create in the social lives of autistic adults. She recounts how one young man “became romantically interested in a girl and went to her house wearing a football helmet to disguise himself. He thought it would be alright to look in her windows. In his literal, visual mind he thought that since he would not be recognized, it was okay to stand outside and watch for her.”
Research Interests:
From his 1940–1942 studies of Race, through his 1967 study of an “inter-sexed” person called Agnes, Garfinkel’s research was always politically engaged. When Garfinkel was Parsons’ PhD student at Harvard (1946–1952) and later during a... more
From his 1940–1942 studies of Race, through his 1967 study of an “inter-sexed” person called Agnes, Garfinkel’s research was always politically engaged. When Garfinkel was Parsons’ PhD student at Harvard (1946–1952) and later during a period of collaboration with Parsons (1958–1964), both theorized culture as a domain of social interaction independent from social structure and resting on its own implicit social contract. This conception of culture grounded their respective “voluntaristic” and “reciprocity” based approaches to specifying assembly processes for making social categories in a way that put the empirical assembly of categories under a microscope and made social justice a scientific concern. Garfinkel emphasized the importance of social contract aspects of Parsons’ theory – adapted from Durkheim – and with his studies in ethnomethodology, planned to contribute an empirical foundation for aspects of Parsons’ position that were criticized for their abstraction. Nevertheless,...
Research Interests:
Garfinkel began developing his famous Trust argument, that a minimum of equality and reciprocity he called ‘Trust Conditions’ is a prerequisite for sense-making in interaction, while working with Parsons from 1946 to 1952. The argument... more
Garfinkel began developing his famous Trust argument, that a minimum of equality and reciprocity he called ‘Trust Conditions’ is a prerequisite for sense-making in interaction, while working with Parsons from 1946 to 1952. The argument grounds a social justice approach to social order and meaning with affinities to Durkheim’s ‘implicit conditions of contract’ and Du Bois’ ‘double consciousness’. Tracing the development of the Trust argument, we examine 14 unpublished PhD proposals from 1948 in which Garfinkel formulated his approach through studies of Jewish identity that, with his earlier research on Race and subsequent studies of the ‘pre-medical candidate’ and transgender identity, demonstrate how inequality disrupts normal ordinary practices of sense and self-making. As a social theory, Garfinkel’s position builds on approaches to social action, interaction and language by Parsons, Schutz and Wittgenstein. As a systematic research programme, however, Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Commentators on Milgram’s classic and controversial experiments agree that better integration of theories of “obedience to authority” with current archival research on participants’ viewpoints is essential in explaining compliance. Using... more
Commentators on Milgram’s classic and controversial experiments agree that better integration of theories of “obedience to authority” with current archival research on participants’ viewpoints is essential in explaining compliance. Using conversation analysis, we examine an archived data source that is largely overlooked by the Milgram literature, yet crucial for understanding the interactional organization of participants’ displayed perspectives. In hundreds of interviews conducted immediately after each experiment, participants received one of two types of debriefing: deceptive or full. Analyzing 56 full debriefings from three experimental conditions, we find they featured interactional structuring as news delivery sequences and that debriefing news could transform initially ambivalent or negative assessments of the experiment into positive ones. Such findings reveal limitations of engaged followership, the currently dominant theory of “obedience.” Following discussion of improved...
Research Interests:
Commentators on Milgram’s classic and controversial experiments agree that better integration of theories of “obedience to authority” with current archival research on participants’ viewpoints is essential in explaining compliance. Using... more
Commentators on Milgram’s classic and controversial experiments agree that better integration of theories of “obedience to authority” with current archival research on participants’ viewpoints is essential in explaining compliance. Using conversation analysis, we examine an archived data source that is largely overlooked by the Milgram literature, yet crucial for understanding the interactional organization of participants’ displayed perspectives. In hundreds of interviews conducted immediately after each experiment, participants received one of two types of debriefing: deceptive or full. Analyzing 56 full debriefings from three experimental conditions, we find they featured interactional structuring as news delivery sequences and that debriefing news could transform initially ambivalent or negative assessments of the experiment into positive ones. Such findings reveal limitations of engaged followership, the currently dominant theory of “obedience.” Following discussion of improved...
Research Interests:
Diagnosis is rarely a straightforward process. This is especially so in psychiatry, where diagnoses are not based on organic biomarkers (e.g., blood tests). Diagnosis can be particularly complicated for children, whose symptoms must be... more
Diagnosis is rarely a straightforward process. This is especially so in psychiatry, where diagnoses are not based on organic biomarkers (e.g., blood tests). Diagnosis can be particularly complicated for children, whose symptoms must be disentangled from typical developmental processes. In this paper, we examine how clinicians use narrative as a method for differentiating a child's autism from a possible co-morbid seizure disorder. Our approach is conversation analysis, and we show that narrative is a pervasive and endogenous practice for producing warrantable diagnostic knowledge about patients and, as such, forms part of what we term "the practical epistemology of clinical work."
In this paper, I examine how clinicians at a clinic for developmental disabilities in the United States determine whether children being evaluated for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) showed symptoms of that condition. Drawing on a... more
In this paper, I examine how clinicians at a clinic for developmental disabilities in the United States determine whether children being evaluated for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) showed symptoms of that condition. Drawing on a convenience sample of 61 audio and video recorded case conferences from two time periods (1985 and 2011-15), and combining Conversation Analysis with insights from Actor Network Theory, I find that clinicians describe (via a representational practice called "citation") children's conduct in ways that advance diagnostic claims. More specifically, they portray key actants in the assessment process in patterned ways: the test instrument is represented as a neutral tool of measurement, the clinician as administrator and instructor; and the child as the focal figure whose conduct is made to appear independent of the other participants and suggestive of diagnostic symptoms. These tacit representational conventions conform to and reproduce the assumptions of standardized testing, according to which clinicians and tests are to be neutral arbiters of the child's abilities, and thereby provide for objective, warrantable findings. At the same time, however, by designing representations around the child's symptomatic conduct in this way, clinicians may minimize or elide their own contributions, and those of the test instrument, to the child's performance, and thereby make the child alone appear responsible for what are, in fact, interactionally-occasioned behaviors.
Research Interests: Sociology, Medical Sociology, Anthropology, Social Science & Medicine, Social behavior, and 11 moreChild Behavior, Humans, United States, Female, Male, Developmental disabilities, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Public health systems and services research, Social Behavior, Psychological Models, and Child preschool
The practice of medicine involves applying abstract diagnostic classifications to individual patients. Patients present with diverse histories and symptoms, and clinicians are tasked with fitting them into generic categories. They must... more
The practice of medicine involves applying abstract diagnostic classifications to individual patients. Patients present with diverse histories and symptoms, and clinicians are tasked with fitting them into generic categories. They must also persuade patients, or family members, that the diagnosis is appropriate and elicit compliance with prescribed treatments. This can be especially challenging with psychiatric disorders such as autism, for which there are no clear biomarkers. In this paper, we explicate a discursive procedure, which we term category attribution. The procedure juxtaposes a narrative about the child with a claim about members of a clinically relevant category, in this case, either children with autism or typically/normally developing children. The attribution procedure carries the implication that the child does or does not belong to that category. We show that category attributions are organised in a recurrent interactional sequence. Further, we argue that category ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT
Research Interests:
Diagnosis is rarely a straightforward process. This is especially so in psychiatry, where diagnoses are not based on organic biomarkers (e.g., blood tests). Diagnosis can be particularly complicated for children, whose symptoms must be... more
Diagnosis is rarely a straightforward process. This is especially so in psychiatry, where diagnoses are not based on organic biomarkers (e.g., blood tests). Diagnosis can be particularly complicated for children, whose symptoms must be disentangled from typical developmental processes. In this paper, we examine how clinicians use narrative as a method for differentiating a child's autism from a possible co-morbid seizure disorder. Our approach is conversation analysis, and we show that narrative is a pervasive and endogenous practice for producing warrantable diagnostic knowledge about patients and, as such, forms part of what we term " the practical epistemology of clinical work. "