ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the interactional and conversational basis of participant observation rather than the literary quality of ethnographic description as a textual artifact. It proposes a reflective analysis of the ethnographic description by inquiring into its hermeneutic possibility as an 'intelligible option'. The initial situation of inquiry is examined the arrival of the ethnographer, his erratic steps at the scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) lab, and members' initial circumspection. The chapter describes how lab members, when talked with, would instruct him as well as other third parties in formulating and recognizing orderly character of lab work. Lab work examined in its ordinary conduct, as lab members expressed and exhibited its motivated character, while presupposing its conventional procedure. Measurements of a particular kind were already identified, described, and documented as lab members' leitmotif, the central relevance of their routine work. Learning to recognize lab work in its orderly character and central motive required talking with lab members.
