ABSTRACT
A stack is a collection of handwritten notes along with one fundamental stack policy: a stack grows in only one direction, up. Work on a problem, descriptions, reflections, formulations, illustrations, troublesome questions, and lists of potential topics find their way into a stack. In contrast, a stack is a practical device for finding why one is engaged in a particular study and for cultivating the skills of conducting it. A stack takes on whatever properties it has as an "emergent object." The stack entries reviewed give a sense of what a stack can look like. An appreciation of the stack as a practical research technique comes when a person is engaged in his or her own studies, is committed to the project of a sociology of the witnessable order, and begins to see that the research methods of disciplinary social science distort rather than bring oneself into the presence of a phenomenal domain of skill and reasoning.
