ABSTRACT

Written by one of the most eminent scholars in the field, Ethnographies of Reason is a unique book in terms of the studies it presents, the perspective it develops and the research techniques it illustrates. Using concrete case study materials throughout, Eric Livingston offers a fundamentally different, ethnographic approach to the study of skill and reasoning. At the same time, he addresses a much neglected topic in the literature, illustrating practical techniques of ethnomethodological research and showing how such studies are actually conducted. The book is a major contribution to ethnomethodology, to social science methodology and to the study of skill and reasoning more generally.

part |30 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|7 pages

Reasoning in the Wild

chapter 2|10 pages

Formal Reasoning

chapter 3|10 pages

Psychological Experiments

part |90 pages

Exercises and Examples

chapter 4|9 pages

Tangrams

chapter 5|6 pages

Jigsaw Puzzles

chapter 6|9 pages

A First Ethnography

chapter 7|5 pages

Phenomenology

chapter 8|11 pages

A Toolic World, Part I

chapter 9|4 pages

Mapping the Infinite Plane

chapter 10|8 pages

Lawlike Properties of the Prismatic Field

chapter 11|8 pages

An Exercise in Origami

chapter 12|11 pages

An Embodied Correspondence

chapter 13|12 pages

Straightedge and Compass Constructions

part |76 pages

Projects and Techniques

chapter 14|7 pages

Sociologies of the Witnessable Order

chapter 15|8 pages

Found Objects

chapter 16|10 pages

The Stack

chapter 17|8 pages

The Doing of Things

chapter 18|6 pages

Precise Description

chapter 19|8 pages

Indirection

chapter 20|5 pages

Sketch Work

chapter 22|10 pages

Emergent Themes and Analogies of Practice

part |62 pages

Themes and Orientations

chapter 24|4 pages

Reflexivity

chapter 25|11 pages

The Primacy of the Social

chapter 27|15 pages

Praxeological Objects

chapter 28|16 pages

The Characterization Problem

part |3 pages

Epilogue

chapter 29|1 pages

Epilogue