ACCOUNTING
Sociologyindex, Sociology Books 2009, Ethnomethodology
Accounting is rationalizations that people provide for their
actions: justifications and excuses. Accounting is the process by which people offer
accounts in order to make sense of the world.
In ethnomethodology
the term accounting is used to refer to the practices of observation and reporting which
make objects and events observable and objective.
For example, if a teacher claims that a student is above
average, there are a set of things the teacher routinely does (setting tests and
assignments, grading participation etc. ) to give this claim foundation and demonstrate
the competence of the student in an objective and rational of the student is therefore
connected to these accounting practices.
Accounting is the process of describing or explaining social
situations or how members make sense of their everyday world. Ethnomethodologists are
interested in both the account and the method by which the account is made meaningful to
the recipient of the account, and tend to emphasize the latter. The interest is not in
determining if the account is accurate or otherwise judging the account but rather in
exploring how the account is conveyed. For example, the explanation given by a husband for
arriving home late at night is an account. The ethnomethodologist is interested in both
the account and the methods used to convey that account to the recipient, in this case,
the wife. Whether the account is factual or not does not interest the ethnomethodologist. From
Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection - Sociological Theory.
BRINGING CALCULATION BACK IN: SOCIOLOGICAL STUDIES IN
ACCOUNTING - By Andrea Mennicken - London School of Economics and Political
Science
Introduction - Accounting systems have come to play a key role in the organisation of
modern economies and societies. Today, in the economic sector as well as in the public
sector, organisational activities are structured around cost-benefit analyses, balanced
score cards, profit centres, discounted cash flow analyses, standard costing procedures,
value added accounting, financial risk calculations and many other numerical forms of
organisational representation and economic measurement. Against the background of these
developments, it is surprising how little attention accounting techniques have received in
contemporary sociological thinking. Although the founding fathers of economic sociology -
Weber - siswo.uva.nl/ES/esjun02art2.html
Foucault, Bakhtin, Ethnomethodology: Accounting for
Hybridity in Talk-in-Interaction
Shirley Anne Tate
Theorising hybridity within Postcolonial Studies is often done at a level which seems to
exclude the everyday with the exception of its relevance for the cultural productions of
migrants and dominant culture's "eating the other". This article uses the
exploration of hybridity as an everyday interactional achievement within Black "mixed
race" British women's conversations on identity to look at the production of an
analytic method as process based on the task of the analyst as translator. This method as
process thinks the links between FOUCAULT and BAKHTIN in the emergence of an
ethnomethodologically inclined discourse analysis (eda) which is called on to make sense
of a hybridity of the everyday where Black women reflexively translate discourses on
identity positions in order to construct their own identifications in conversations.
FOUCAULT's discourses and BAKHTIN's heteroglossia and addressivity allow us to theorise
this movement in the talk which ethnomethodological transcription and theory enables us to
first pinpoint occurring. The article begins by looking at first, how hybridity as
identification emerges in talk-in-interaction through both speaker and analyst
translations. Having established this, it then goes on to look at the theoretical
convergences and divergences between FOUCAULT and BAKHTIN on the subject, identity and
discourses in the eda enterprise. Looking at data through the lens of eda means that we
must be aware of the subject positions which speakers identify as having the effect of
constraining or facilitating particular actions and experiences and there is always the
possibility for challenge to subjectification
URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0702107
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