View article

Ethnomethodologists have observed that a striking feature of the sociology of work is its lack of interest in anything that looks like work itself. This absence goes some way toward explaining why it is that it is ethnomethodology, of all the sociological perspectives, that has forged a link with “design”, above all in the research arena of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). This is precisely because ethnomethodology has taken the phenomenon of “work” itself to be a topic of its enquiries. There is a small irony, then, in the fact that recent research begins to move enquiry away from traditional workplace studies and into public and private spaces. This is no surprise, for it associates with the spread of mobile telephony and wireless information devices, tele-and homeworking, assumptions about information use for private purposes and a general interest in what the affordances of new technology might be in …