Studies of membership categorization: Ethnomethodology or constructive analysis?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26485/PS/2026/75.1/7Keywords:
Activity categorization, astronomy communication, constructive analysis, Harvey Sacks, omnirelevance, partitioningAbstract
Rejecting existing anthropological frameworks, Harvey Sacks developed membership categorization device (MCD) analysis to examine how people use ordinary categories in interaction, rather than analysts’ categories. MCD analysis was adapted progressively into membership categorization analysis (MCA), seeking to refine Sacks’s original MCD framework to counter the remaining cognitivism from its anthropological origins. Exploring members’ categorization activities during interactions in astronomy communication sessions – people looking at objects in the sky through telescopes and using the naked eye – convinced us that the state-of-the-art in MCA is insufficiently sensitive to account for category work within these sessions. Therefore, we propose a distinction between ethnomethodological MCA and constructive-analytic MCA. Extending arguments on formulaic studies of workplaces in ethnomethodology to studies in membership categorization, we suggest that studies in current MCA fail to realize its ethnomethodological potential and retreat into constructive analysis. This is due in part to the preservation of a key weakness within MCA, in the move from decontextualized to occasioned Devices and Categories. “Omni-relevance” was coined originally by Sacks yet it is used now at “analytic discretion”, a cognitivist template for being seen to “do MCA” rather than describing members’ practices.
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