ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I present a research strategy that provides concrete steps detailing how the background knowledge of boundary work can be reconstructed from practices. I will first discuss how reconstruction proceeds with a view to Karl Mannheim’s ‘documentary method of interpretation’, which the ethnomethodologist Harold Garfinkel revived for his own studies. Second, I shall introduce abduction as a specific logic of enquiry that encourages the researcher to engage in the discovery and construction of new concepts. In a third step, I advance a three-fold method of ‘zooming in’ on practices. To that end, I suggest focusing on (1) b/ordering sites, (2) the carriers of practices and (3) crisis moments. Finally, I provide insights into the methods used to generate and analyse my empirical data. I provide an overview of suitable interview questions for tapping background knowledge, delineate the method of interview sampling and finally introduce a text-hermeneutic technique of data analysis.
