This interesting paper by Goodwin is concerned in the ways professionals perceive and structure their environment.
…investigates the discursive practices used by members of a profession to shape events in the phenomenal environment they focus their attention upon, the domain of their professional scrutiny,into the objects of knowledge that become the insignia of their profession: the theories, artifacts and bodies of expertise that are its special domain of competence and set it apart from other groups.Seeing is investigated as a socially situated, historically constituted body of practices through which the objects of knowledge which animate the discourse of a profession are constructed and shaped.
1) coding schemes used to transform the materials being attended to in a specific setting into the objects of knowledge that animate the discourse of a profession; 2) highlighting,making specific phenomena in a complex perceptual field salient by marking them in some fashion; and 3) the production and articulation of material representations. By applying such practices to phenomena in the domain of scrutiny, participants build and contest professional vision, socially organized ways of seeing and understanding events that are answerable to the distinctive interests of a particular social group.
At the same time Goodwin makes a case of the distributed character of cognition and the importance of mediating artefacts (see also Hutchins, 1995; Nardi, 1996; Wartofsky, 1973). Example of such an artefact, that mediates the professional’s vision and constitutes crystallized activity is the Munsell Color Chart used by archaeologist. This chart enables the archaeologist to encode and categorize a piece of dirt. This encoding is crucial as it is an abstraction from the messy world to professional discourse.
An event being seen, a relevant object of knowledge, emerges through the interplay between a domain of scrutiny (a patch of dirt, the images made available by the King videotape, etc.) and a set of discursive practices (dividing the domain of scrutiny by highlighting a figure against a ground, applying specific coding schemes for the constitution and interpretation of relevant events, etc.) being deployed within a specific activity (arguing a legal case, mapping a site, planting crops, etc.). The unit being investigated is thus analogous to what Wittgenstein 1957: §7) called a language game, a “whole, consisting of language and the actions into which it is woven.”
Goodwin then proceeds to analyze the court case of the LA Police beatings. What was interesting was the attempts by the defense to impose the professional vision of the policemen as primary. So which narrative was superior? The layman’s (and jurors’ ) or the expert’s?
<blockquote interaction.="" the="" controlled="" who="" party="" indeed="" co-participant,="" active="" very="" a="" was="" he="" which="" in="" victim,="" with="" discourse="" professional="" of="" form="" work,="" craft="" police="" careful="" example="" an="" constituted="" beating="" that="" proposed="" defense="" profession.="" life="" work="" within="" it="" on="" visible="" events="" embedding="" by="" only="" understood="" be="" could="" argued="" they="" instead="" itself.="" for="" spoke="" record="" as="" tape="" treat="" not="" did="" policemen="" defending="" lawyers="" however="" cite="(Goodwin, 1994)" /> <p>In the same sense, when analyzing a worksystem which vision should we use our own professional vision? The domain expert's? The worker's? This is the problem in choosing between the Normative and Interpreted system (Marmaras et <span>al</span>, 1999; Papantoniou et <span>al</span>, forthcoming) when analyzing the system. The only answer to the dilemma is mu: adopt both!</p>
References
Goodwin, C. (1994). Professional Vision. American Anthropologist, 96(3), 606-633.
Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the Wild. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Marmaras, N., & Pavard, B. (1999). A methodological framework for development and evaluation of systems supporting complex cognitive tasks. Cognition, Technology & Work, 1(4), 222-236.
Nardi, B. (Ed.). (1996). Context and Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Papantoniou, B., & Marmaras, N. (forthcoming). Transcending the Task-Artefact cycle through evolvable design: the concept of shearing layers.
Wartofsky, M. W. (1973). Perception, representation, and the forms of action: toward an historical epistemology. In M. W. Wartofsky (Ed.), Models (pp. 188-210). Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company.
Wittgenstein, L. (1957). Philosophical Investigations. London: Blackwell.
technorati tags:ethnography, ethnomethodology, Cognitive_Ergonomics
Leave a Reply