Jonathan Hindmarsh

Embodied reference: A study of deixis in workplace interaction

Abstract This paper contributes to a growing body of work concerned with the empirical investigation of referential practice in everyday settings. It uses audio-visual recordings of work within a telecommunications control centre to explore the ways in which colleagues establish, if only momentarily, mutual orientation towards ‘objects’, such as (features of) documents and computer screens. The paper addresses three key themes. Firstly, it highlights the ways in which visual conduct, in concert with talk, is used to accomplish demonstrative reference — an often overlooked feature of referential practice. Secondly, it examines the interactional production of demonstrative reference, noting the ongoing and dynamic co-ordination of actions in the collaborative achievement of mutual orientation. Thirdly, it reflects on the ways in which the production and intelligibility of referential actions are grounded in the activities, or common business, in, through and for which they emerge.

Sharing the Tools of the Trade The Interactional Constitution of Workplace Objects

Despite a growing body of work across the social and cognitive sciences concerned with the relations between inanimate objects and sociality, we still have relatively little understanding of the ways in which participants themselves characterize and discriminate objects in the course of practical activities. This article examines how personnel in a telecommunications control center display their understanding of objects, such as computer screens and documents, and achieve, if only momentarily, some shared sense of (features of) those objects with colleagues. In this way, the article is concerned with interweaving an interest in the interactional constitution of the “interindividual” object with a concern with the organization of collaborative work. The article draws on field observations augmented by audiovisual recordings of “naturally occurring” activities and events.

Creating Assemblies in Public Environments: Social Interaction, Interactive Exhibits and CSCW

This paper examines the use of a series of three low tech interactive assemblies that have been exhibited by the authors in a range of fairs, expositions and galleries. The paper does not present novel technical developments, but rather uses the low tech assemblies to help scope out the design space for CSCW in museums and galleries and to investigate the ways in which people collaboratively encounter and explore technological exhibits in museums and galleries. The bulk of the paper focuses on the analysis of the use of one interactive installation that was exhibited at the Sculpture, Objects and Functional Art (SOFA) Exposition in Chicago, USA. The study uses audio–visual recordings of interaction with and around the work to consider how people, in and through their interaction with others, make sense of an assembly of traditional objects and video technologies. The analysis focuses on the organised practices of ‘assembly’ and how ‘assembling’ the relationship between different parts of the work is interactionally accomplished. The analysis is then used to develop a series of ‘design sensitivities’ to inform the development of technological assemblies to engender informal interaction and sociability in museums and galleries.

Reenactments at Work: Demonstrating Conduct in Data Sessions

Reenactments (introduced by Sidnell, 2006) are embodied demonstrations of past events or scenes. In this article we explore how reenactments are deployed in the course of, and indeed support work in, collaborative data analysis sessions among groups of social scientists (and primarily conversation analysts). The data used to build the analysis are drawn from audiovisual recordings of a range of data sessions involving formal and informal groupings of social scientists who themselves are analyzing video data. One way in which participants discuss and discriminate on-screen conduct is through imitating or enacting that conduct. This article examines how participants, having noticed something on-screen, set about having others see it (or see it in a particular way) through the use of reenactments, which are not a reproduction of the actions on-screen but a version of events that inevitably selects and often exaggerates certain features. In doing so we highlight some of the key differences in the design of reenactments in these data sessions, in comparison to those that feature in everyday conversational settings. These differences concern the relationship of the design of the reenactments to visible artifacts in the scene, the configuration of the interactional huddle, and the opportunities for coparticipants to progressively shape and reshape the reenactment. These all reveal the distinctive characteristics and demands of deploying reenactments in developing analytic claims.

Work to make simulation work: ‘Realism’, instructional correction and the body in training

This article explores the organization of instructional corrections in pre-clinical dental education. The students are practising manual skills using a simulator and tutors are inspecting and evaluating their progress. Simulators and simulation are critical to the organization of contemporary healthcare training, and the academic literature that explores forms of simulation in healthcare tends to consider the ‘fidelity’ (or ‘realism’) of systems and the extent to which they match the clinical situations that they are designed to mimic. In contrast, this article considers how tutors and students explicitly attend to matters of realism in the course of instructional sequences. We highlight the ways in which tutors routinely invoke ‘real life’ in instructional corrections and we discuss how these sequences reveal the work that tutors undertake to compensate for the ‘chronic insufficiency’ of the simulator. We show how tutors emphasize the reasoned character of manual bodily skills, reasons linked to the complexities and contingencies of clinical practice. To explore these issues and concerns, the article draws on the analysis of audio-visual data of everyday instruction.

(Im)materiality, virtual reality and interaction: Grounding the 'virtual' in studies of technology in action

This paper explores the organisation of social interaction amongst participants ‘in’ Virtual Reality. Despite the wide-ranging sociological interest in ‘virtual’ technologies, there is rather little detailed sociological investigation of user experiences of the virtual technology par excellence, namely multi-user Virtual Reality. Interestingly the discourses that underpin discussions of more mundane virtual technologies (eg email, the Web, mobile phones, etc.) tend to draw on design visions for Virtual Reality, such as the opportunities for social life freed from the constraints of the physical body. This paper contributes to a growing number of empirical studies that provide a critique of this view, but maybe more importantly, provides a detailed analysis of action and interaction in virtual worlds. It considers the organisation of interaction within VR with particular emphasis on the ways in which visual features of the digital domain are seen and shared by participants. The paper describes the ways in which the abilities to share views on the virtual world requires participants to overcome problems associated with the very material character of the VR interfaces. The study is based on the analysis of recordings of a Virtual Reality system that enables participants to talk to one another and see one anothers actions within a virtual environment.

The order problem: Inference and interaction in interactive service work

This article analyses the work of issuing tickets to queuing customers, thereby contributing to the literature on interactive service work. It draws analytical attention to artful practices through which employees infer ticket orders from local configurations of talk, gesture and bodily movement. It reveals not only the practical reasoning deployed by the service worker, but also the agency of the customer in the course of encounters. Drawing upon video recordings of over 200 separate transactions, the demands of remedying problem orders are analysed to reveal how staff infer and clarify social ‘facts’, such as the customer’s age, their nationality, employment status and willingness to pay the higher ‘Gift Aid’ price. An image of interactive service work emerges that emphasizes the peculiar and skilful articulation of sociological categories in the course of apparently routine low-level work. The concept of ‘inferential labour’ is introduced to capture these processes, which resonates with studies of categorization and emotional labour in interactive service work.

Video in Sociomaterial Investigations: A Solution to the Problem of Relevance for Organizational Research

This article considers the application of video-based research to address methodological challenges for organizational scholars concerned with the sociomaterial foundations to work practice. In particular the claim that “all practices are always sociomaterial” raises a “problem of relevance”—that is, on what grounds can we select material to include in the analytic account when there is a vast array of material in each setting? Furthermore, how can we grasp the sociality of material objects that are often taken for granted and that drift in and out of view? We address these methodological questions drawing on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, and by making use of video recordings of everyday work and organizing. We demonstrate the approach with data from two service settings and explore the analysis both of single cases and collections. To conclude, the article considers the distinctive contributions that these video-based studies have for our understanding of sociomateriality and organizational practice more generally.

Work and the Moving Image: Past, Present and Future

This article explores some of the similarities and differences between two approaches to the study of work that use moving images. The first approach, most notably practised by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, ‘dissected’ the movement of workers’ bodies in the pursuit of efficiency. The second approach has emerged in the last few decades from ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. The ar ticle notes how shared technologies for data collection and shared interests in work practice belie more fundamental differences in analytic orientation. The article uses this comparison to highlight the potential contributions that the more recent corpus of studies can make to our understanding of work; an understanding that prioritizes the methodic practices in and through which members of society accomplish, experience and constitute work and organization.