ABSTRACT
The theme of instructed actions has been prominent in ethnomethodological studies of work for many years. It is featured in such studies in both obvious and non-obvious ways. Organized activities often rely upon recipes, manuals, instructional videos, and coaching demonstrations, but participants in such activities also use many less obvious ways to produce, convey, pick up, and figure out how to perform routine and non-routine actions. The purpose of this volume is to focus on novel technologies of instructed actions and non-obvious ways that ordinary actions are instructive, even when they do not include a distinct instructional component or agenda. Ongoing actions can be instructive in the way they display to participants what to do or what to say in an immediate situation. Service lines (queues), for example, are instructive in the way their manifest production and embodied organization “instructs” recipients on what to do, and what to do next. Contributions to this volume endeavor to show just how specific actions are instructed and instructive in the circumstances in which they are produced.
