Indexical ripples: tactics for qualitative sociological research

This event is part of the Sociology Seminar Series.

In this seminar I will discuss the challenges of doing qualitative research in sociology. Drawing on my recent and ongoing work on ‘technological sensemaking’ in educational settings (e.g., Perrotta and Eedelouei 2026), I will consider the continued relevance of methodological approaches that attend to the situational dimension of experience to develop a “rational accountability of practical actions and practical reasoning” (Garfinkel 1996). I will then illustrate two methodological tactics which, despite obvious flaws, retain empirical and theoretical usefulness and may aid those seeking to add an ethnomethodological dimension to their sociological inquiries. The tactics are:

1)      Trials of explicitness, during which a researcher introduces situational and cognitive elements during fieldwork to elicit explications of “what is going on” – explications which may be produced by humans, machines and by human-plus- machine “imbroglios” (Latour, 1994).

2)      Cultural “probes”, during which a researcher introduces arrangements and artefacts that test and expose relations within social settings and infrastructures.

The talk will also touch upon unresolved issues of objectivity and scale in qualitative research, discussing some provocations and counterintuitive approaches that pursue aesthetic and literary authenticity rather than traditional criteria of empirical rigour.

References

Garfinkel, H. (1996). Ethnomethodology’s program. Social psychology quarterly, 59(1), 5-21.

Latour, B. (1994). Pragmatogonies: A mythical account of how humans and nonhumans swap properties. American behavioral scientist, 37(6), 791-808.

Perrotta, C., & Eedelouei, S. (2026). ‘Whack the prompt in there and see what it says’: making sense of Communicative AI in education. Learning, Media and Technology, 1-15.

The Sociology Seminar Series for Hilary Term is convened by Zachary Parolin and Carlo Perrotta. For more information about this or any of the seminars in the series, please contact sociology.secretary@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.