Instructed and Instructive Actions: The Situated Production, Reproduction, and Subversion of Social Order

The contributors to this volume take up the theme of instructed and instructive actions. Harold Garfinkel, the founder of ethnomethodology, initiated the study of instructed actions as a way to elucidate the embodied production of social order in real time. Studies of instructions and the actions of following them provide empirical content to the classical theoretical issue of how rules, norms, and other normative guidelines are conveyed, understood, and used for producing social actions and structures. The studies in this volume address novel technologies of instructed action and non-obvious ways in which ordinary actions turn out to be instructive for participants in immediate situations of action and interaction. In some cases, the studies address specialized practical, artistic, and recreational activities, and in others they address commonplace modes of action and interaction. In all cases, they focus on how the manifest organization of specific activities is organized with and without explicitly formulated instructions. This book will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in ethnomethodological approaches to research by contributing to understandings of how specific actions are instructed and instructive in the circumstances in which they are produced. Chapter 2 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

Table of Contents:
Foreword: A Brief ‘Backstory’ to Instructed Action Introduction: Instructed and Instructive Actions Part One: Foundational Issues 1. Praxeological Validity of Instructed Action 2. Detail, Granularity, and Laic Analysis in Instructional Demonstrations Part Two: Situated Action and Order Production 3. Phenomenal Fields Forever: Instructed Action and Perception’s Work 4. Joining the Queue as a Newcomer: The Instructably Visible Order of Queuing 5. Rules as Instructed Actions: The Case of the Surfers’ Lineup 6. The Use of Everyday Maxims and Proverbs in At-Sea Sailing Instruction Part Three: Instructively Reproducing Artful Activities 7. Artworks as Instructed Objects. An Ethnomethodological Approach to Artists’ Instructions 8. Ways of the Brush in Japanese Calligraphy Art Lessons 9. Performative Teaching and Learning: On the Instruct-ability of Kin/aesthetic Properties 10. Spirituality and Internal Movement as Embodied Work in Yoga and Taiji Practice Part Four: Improvisations and Subversions 11. Bricolage in Astronautics: Talk-in-Interaction in the Construction of Apollo 13’s DIY CO2 Scrubber 12. When Someone Walks Apart: Instructed Action and its Fragilities 13. Protocol Subversion: Staging and Stalking "Machine Intelligence" at School Afterword: Instructed Action as Wayfinding