Plan of the presentation

This presentation has two main parts.

The first part consists of the analysis of moments in the labor. It was written to be read in the order described below (and indicated by the PREV and NEXT arrows in the text of the individual pages themselves).

The second part is a discussion of the relevance of the analysis to various issues in ethnomethodology and social theory. Do note that the analysis itself is driven by these concerns.

  1. Part I The analysis
    1. a brief account of what first alerted us to the construction of one status as inconsequential, the paper proceeds to a detailed look at this construction
    2. an examination of "ordinary times" and the canonical structures that are the foundations of the labor as a distinct event.
    3. "extraordinary times" when v arious matters are negotiated in relative uncertainty.
    4. what is at stake , as well as how it is explicity put to the stake,
    5. what is not as stake even if it emerges and is systematically pushed to the interactional margins.
  2. Part II Theoretical considerations
In the process of this analysis, we argue that the classical distinction in ethnomethodology between what is interactionally "present" (accountable) and what is "absent" is not to be taken as an absolute. It might be said that the boundary is negotiable given the evidence that any participant can offer something for consideration, thereby making all accountable to reacting to it in some way, if only to reject it summarily as irrelevant to the task at hand. What must be said however is that the act of rejecting, reconstructing and otherwise bringing the group back into its frame reveals the social power of something that, at the same times, any if not all the individuals are somehow resistant to whether because they do not understand fully where they are, or because they understand it all too well and might wish to change it, either locally or overall. We are thus led back to massive joint action that produce "facts" constraining for all. From this point of view, the possible hegemony, or, better "authority," of an "American way of birthing" is maintained locally not so much by the individual internalization of an habitus as much as by the feedback that each participants gives to all others, thereby opening and closing doors to possible developments, or calling on to higher authorities.
January 30, 1999