ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the characterization problem by illustrating the type of findings that make sense of it. Three of the four major themes of these studies have now been introduced. One is the directive to find reflexive phenomena, phenomena that are embedded in the situated practices of their production, which themselves consist of such practices, and which, in the ways they're locally produced, preserve the practices through which they are produced. The second is the primacy of the social—the directive to find the primordial, generative, social activity at the core of domain-specific skill and reasoning. The third is the attempt to identify the most ordinary, pervasive practices of a domain of a skilled activity and to find that ordinariness as an ordinariness produced by the practitioners of that domain. The fourth and last major theme—referred to as the characterization problem—brings all the themes together.
