ABSTRACT
The use of description as a research technique depends on an understanding that a description is not the thing being described. Without the continual realization and rediscovery of the inadequacies of a description as its being produced, the technique comes to nothing interesting: "description" becomes another form of argumentation. One exercise the author has used to help cultivate this sensibility involves students each bringing an orange to lecture. In class, he asks them to write a description of their own orange. Faced with the impossibility of the assignment, some students pile one descriptive term on another. One of the author's students knew how to fix motorcycles. Some mechanism of a bike had broken; he had disassembled it, and for an assignment, he wanted to describe how he repaired it and put the motorcycle back together. The driving commitment when engaging in precise description is to remain faithful to the lived detail and developing organization of an activity.
