Sormani (2014). Respecifying Lab Ethnography

Respecifying Lab ethnogRaphy

Directions in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis

Series Editors:stephen hester, honorary senior Research fellow, bangor University, UK

Dave francis, Department of sociology, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

ethnomethodology and conversation analysis are cognate approaches to the study of social action that together comprise a major perspective within the contemporary human sciences. ethnomethodology focuses upon the production of situated and ordered social action of all kinds, whilst Conversation Analysis has a more specific focus on the production and organisation of talk-in-interaction. of course, given that so much social action is conducted in and through talk, there are substantive as well theoretical continuities between the two approaches. focusing on social activities as situated human productions, these approaches seek to analyse the intelligibility and accountability of social activities from within those activities themselves, using methods that can be analysed and described. such methods amount to aptitudes, skills, knowledge and competencies that members of society use, rely upon and take for granted in conducting their affairs across the whole range of social life. as a result of the methodological rewards consequent upon their unique analytic approach and attention to the detailed orderliness of social life, ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis have ramified across a wide range of human science disciplines throughout the world, including anthropology, social psychology, linguistics, communication studies and social studies of science and technology. This series is dedicated to publishing the latest work in these two fields, including research monographs, edited collections and theoretical treatises. as such, its volumes are essential reading for those concerned with the study of human conduct and aptitudes, the (re)production of social orderliness and the methods and aspirations of the social sciences.

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Respecifying Lab ethnographyan ethnomethodological study of experimental physics

phiLippe soRManiUniversity of Vienna, Austria

II

printed in the United Kingdom by henry Ling Limited, at the Dorset press, Dorchester, Dt1 1hD

philippe sormani 2014

all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

philippe sormani has asserted his right under the copyright, Designs and patents act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

published by ashgate publishing Limited ashgate publishing companyWey court east 110 cherry streetUnion Road suite 3-1farnham burlington, Vt 05401-3818surrey, gU9 7pt Usaengland

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Dataa catalogue record for this book is available from the british Library

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:sormani, philippe, author. Respecifying lab ethnography : an ethnomethodological study of experimental physics / by philippe sormani. pages cm. -- (Directions in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis) includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-1-4094-6586-7 (hardback) -- isbn 978-1-4094-6587-4 (ebook) -- isbn 978-1-4724-0771-9 (epub) 1. physics--experiments--Methodology. 2. ethnomethodology. 3. ethnography i. title. Qc33.s6746 2014 530.072'4--dc23

2014004999

isbn 9781409465867 (hbk)isbn 9781409465874 (ebk pDf)isbn 9781472407719 (ebk epUb)

Contents

List of Figures viiList of Transcripts ixList of Excerpts xiAcknowledgments xiiiList of Abbreviations xvii

Introduction 1

Part I SocIologIcal reaSonIng: SeeIng SocIal order

1 STM of CSC: Its Measurement Motive in and as Project Work 25

2 Learning to Listen, Learning to Observe: The Interpretive Availability of Measuring as Lab Works Leitmotif 61

Part II Self-InStructIon: from SeeIng to doIng

3 Do it Yourself! Self-instruction in STM, Trials and Tribulations in Topography 105

Part III reSearch PractIce: doIng mIcroScoPIc exPerImentS

4 From Instructional Activity to Expert Practice: Tutorials in STM and Low-Temperature STM of CSC 139

5 Unique Adequacy: The Local Production of a Physics Discovery* 191

Respecifying Lab Ethnographyvi

Conclusion 231

Appendix: Transcription Conventions 251

Bibliography 253Index 271

1.1 The Basic Operating Principle of STM 291.2 Atomically Resolved Graphite Topography 301.3 Spectrum of Superconductivity in PbMo6S8 311.4 Fast Helium-3 HV STM Aurora 371.5 Haystack Search Procedure 521.6 Autonomously Running STM Measurements (Pictures of the

STM Facility Mesoscaphe (a) and of its Ongoing Pyrochlore Spectroscopy (b)) 53

2.1 The Instructed Observation of Lab Work: Two Contrasting Examples 79

2.2 Warning Signs on Entrance to STM Working Area 96

3.1 Clearing up the Lab Bench, Before (Left) and After (Right) 1073.2 Electron Tunneling Chances 1133.3 In-course Graphite Topography 1153.4 A Black Pile of Something 1203.5 The Required Phenomenon 1213.6 Sample and Tape Inspection 1243.7 Irregularly Cut Tip 1263.8 Whats This? 1293.9 This Looks Better! 1323.10 Atomically Resolved Graphite Sample Surface Scan 133

4.1 Drenched Paper Tissue, Dangling Alcohol Drop 1514.2 Alcohol Drop Depositing 1534.3 Sample Surface Drying 1554.4 Tip Crash 1594.5 Optimal Tip Position 1604.6 Sample Cleaving 1704.7 Schematic Side View of Sample Cleaving 1714.8 Surface Inspection 1744.9 Inclined [[Surface Inspection]] with the Microscope Lamp 1754.10 The Manual Approach on Aurora 1834.11 The Manual Approach on Aurora (Continued) 1844.12 Schematic View of Aurora Manual Approach from Within 185

List of Figures

Respecifying Lab Ethnographyviii

4.13 Fine Small Sample [[Manual Approach]], Two Contrasting Methods 186

5.1 Vertical Helium Level Probe (HLP) 1955.2 Horizontal HLP 1965.3 The [Tip Approach] and its Oscilloscopic Monitoring

(the Authors Attempt, Filmed from Within) 2135.4 The [Tip Approach] and its Oscilloscopic Monitoring

(the Experimentalists Achievement Re-examined) 2155.5 The First [Local Spectroscopy] and its Appropriate Monitoring

(the Authors 1st Attempt) 2175.6 The First [Local Spectroscopy] and its Monitoring Procedure

(the Experimentalists 1st Attempt) 2195.7 The Second [Local Spectroscopy] and its Appropriate Monitoring

(the Authors 1st Attempt) 2215.8 The Second [Local Spectroscopy] and its Monitoring Procedure

(the Experimentalists 1st Attempt) 222

4.1 easyscan Tutorial Opening 1414.2 Accomplishment of [Sample Cleaning] Procedure 1484.3 Task Achievement: The [[Manual Approach]] 1574.4 [[Sample Cleaving]], Followed by [[Surface Inspection]] 1654.5 [[Surface Inspection]], Followed by Positive Assessment of

[[Sample Cleaving]] 1664.6 Achievement of [[Manual Approach]] (1st Part) 1774.7 Achievement of [[Manual Approach]] (2nd Part) 179

5.1 [Tip Approach] 2035.2 First Attempt at [Local Spectroscopy] (Failure) 2055.3 Second Attempt at [Local Spectroscopy] (Success) 208

List of Transcripts

This page has been left blank intentionally

2.1 (NB 1, First Day at the STM Lab) 642.2 (NB 1, First Day at the Lab) 652.3 (NB 1, Second Day at the Lab) 652.4 (NB 1, Sixth Day at the Lab) 662.5 (NB 1, Tenth Day at the Lab) 662.6 (NB 1, Twelfth Day at the Lab) 682.7 (IT-DC 2) 712.8 (IT-DC 2) 762.9 (Sequel to Excerpt 2.8) 772.10 (NB 16) 832.11 (NB 14) 852.12 (IT-JN 12) 862.13 NB 1, Fifth Day at the Lab) 90

3.1 (NB, 1st STM session) Toms easyscan Instructions, Thin Films Lab (Next to the STM Lab) 110

3.2 (NB, 1st STM Session) First STM Trials with easyscan (Thin Films Lab) 111

3.3 (NB, 1st STM Session) First STM Trials at Establishing It with easyscan (Afternoon) 113

3.4 (NB, 1st STM Session) First STM Trials on HOPG with easyscan (Afternoon, Continued) 115

3.5 (NB, 2nd STM Session) 1193.6 (NB, 3rd STM Session) 1233.7 (NB, 4th STM Session) 1253.8 (NB, 5th STM Session) 1293.9 (NB, 5th STM Session) 132

4.1 (NB, Opening to Low T STM, Chevrel Cluster Experiments) 1434.2 Logbook Entry Unpack the Measurement Gloss

(Aurora Logbook as of Tuesday, November 4, 2008, Verbatim Transcription) 145

4.3 [[Q-tip Drenching]] as a Tutorial Problem 1514.4 [[Alcohol Drop Depositing]] as a Tutorial Problem 1534.5 [[Sample Surface Drying]] as a Tutorial Problem 1554.6 The [[Manual Approach]] as a Tutorial Problem 159

List of Excerpts

Respecifying Lab Ethnographyxii

4.7 The Regular [[Manual Approach]] in its Seemingly Enigmatic Success 160

4.8 [[Sample Cleaving]] as a Tutorial Problem 1694.9 [[Surface Inspection]] as a Tutorial Problem 1734.10 The [[Manual Approach]] on Aurora as a Tutorial Problem 182

5.1 (NB, Low T STM) 1945.2 (NB, Low T STM) 1955.3 (NB, Low T STM) 1975.4 (NB, Low T STM) 198

Acknowledgments

This book offers a sustained ethnomethodological investigation of contemporary experimental physics something that apparently has not been attempted before. It soon turned out that a pilot study of this kind involved laying aside academic impatience and (ethno-)methodological dogmatism. Indeed, to capture the animal a current domain of experimental physics in its natural habitat required not only a long-term ethnography, based on a three-year stay at the laboratory, but also required the author to chart a new course in ethnomethodology, which may be best characterized as a practice-based video analysis (or, as I quipped at one point, video acrobatics). The book serves this dual purpose. The books title Respecifying Lab Ethnography hints in turn at its potential interest for science and technology studies. The book indeed delivers not only a critique of analogical shortcuts in the laboratory studies tradition, but also develops a distinctively ethnomethodological and thus alternatively heuristic inquiry.

To make this contribution, I have incurred many debts. Without the physicists who granted me laboratory access and gave me tutorial instruction, the inquiry could simply not have been conducted. I remain deeply indebted to them for giving me permission to use visual representations of their experimental work, its technical facilities, and eventual results. I hope that this study matches their specialty. What are they doing? Wes Sharrock deserves credit for having coffee with me, asking the tricky question, and insisting on its detailed answer. Together with Rod Watson, he taught me what a Manchester school answer might look like, eventually taking the shape of a PhD thesis. I thank both Wes and Rod for their critical advice and continuing support. Alain Bovet, Park Doing, Esther Gonzlez Martnez, Christian Greiffenhagen, Michael Lynch, Alex Petrovi, Bernard Revaz, and Ignaz Strebel are to be thanked for having read previous drafts of the ensuing chapters. Their detailed comments helped me to improve the manuscript. Many of the analyzed materials were first presented at workshops, data sessions, and conferences. I wish to thank their organizers and participants, including Martin Aranguren, Michel Barthlmy, Duan Bjeli, Marija Brajdi Vukovi, Phil Brooker, Mathias Broth, Monika Buscher, Andrew P. Carlin, Peter Eglin, Jac Eke, Giolo Fele, John Heritage, Jon Hindmarsh, Stefan Hirschauer, Nozomi Ikeya, Sara Keel, Tim Koschmann, Eric Laurier, Ivan Leudar, Ken Liberman, Michael Liegl, Yuwei Lin, Oskar Lindwall, Michael Mair, Fabienne Malbois, Doug Maynard, Martina Merz, Lorenza Mondada, Barbara Olszewska, Michi Penkler, Jean-Franois Perret, Dave Randall, Marc Relieu, David Ross, Bernt Schnettler, Vronique Servais, Wendy Sherman, Tanya Stivers, Dirk vom Lehn, and Patrick Watson. Their comments and observations helped me to improve my analyses.

Respecifying Lab Ethnographyxiv

This book leads to a critique of Scientific Practice and Ordinary Action, Michael Lynchs seminal book on ethnomethodology and social studies of science. Along the way, laboratory studies, conversation and multimodal video analysis, as well as prior studies in ethnomethodology, receive their (hopefully) fair share of criticism and, now and then, ironic commentary. Yet this book could not have been written without the criticized approaches. This is particularly true for Lynchs book, which when I first read it convinced me like many others that there were actually quite a few exciting things to be done for a sociology student. As ever, in order to have those quite a few exciting things actually tackled, a material basis and collegial environment must be found. The Observatoire Science, Politique & Socit at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (now at the University of Lausanne) offered me such an environment. Martin Benninghoff and Jean-Philippe Leresche afforded me with various opportunities for stimulating collaborations, including a Swiss National Science Foundation project, which initially made Martins and my move into the world of laboratory science possible. In this context, we also collaborated with the late Jean Widmer, whose acumen, wit, and generosity are sorely missed.

Over the last two years, I have found a new home at the Department of Science and Technology Studies lead by Ulrike Felt at the University of Vienna, Austria. Ulrike and her team at the Department not only entrusted me with teaching S&TS, while facilitating all organizational aspects of academic life; they literally also left me to my own devices so that this manuscript could be brought to completion. I am immensely grateful to them. The same holds for Stefanie Schrz, who supported me with reviewing my line of argument, my writing in English, and my formatting of the text. Dave Francis, the late Stephen Hester, and two anonymous reviewers are to be thanked for recommending this study as a next contribution to Directions in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis. At Ashgate, Neil Jordan, Carolyn Court, Brenda Sharp, and Caroline Spender are to be especially acknowledged for their patient and professional support. The same holds for Jon Lloyd, as he carefully copy-edited the final manuscript. To write this book not only took its toll on the author but also on his wife. I thank Karla for her love, curiosity, patience and encouragement. My parents, brothers and sister, and my parents-in-law are to be thanked inter alia for keeping up my morale. So too are my close friends, some of whom have already been mentioned.

As readers will notice, the study makes the case for technical self-instruction as the relevant precedent for ethnomethodological inquiry rather than the scholarly understanding of the literature. That said, previous studies facilitated exactly this line of argument. In particular, I would like to thank (in alphabetical order) the following institutions and publishers for giving me permission to use materials owned by them and/or under their copyright.

Harvard University Archives for their kind permission to publish from their collection and use as an epigraph (in the conclusion to Chapter 1) the sentence quoted from pp. 267 of H. Garfinkel (1952) The Perception of the Other:

Acknowledgments xv

A Study in Social Order. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Cambridge, MA: Department of Social Relations, Harvard University.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company for their kind permission to use as an epigraph (in Chapter 5) the partial entry discover quoted from p. 203 of The American Heritage Dictionary, Second College Edition.

Kiseido Publishers for their kind permission to use as an epigraph (in the conclusion) the sentence quoted from p. 24 of T. Kajiwara (1979) The Direction of Play. Tokyo: Kiseido.

Pearson Education for their kind permission to use as an epigraph (heading Part I) the sentence quoted from p. 95 of H. Garfinkel (1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Presses Universitaires de France (PUF) for their kind permission to use for a reanalysis (in Chapter 4) two excerpts and two screenshots previously published as extracts 1 and 3 on p. 175 and p. 184 in P. Sormani (2010) Lordinaire dans lsotrique: laction instruite comme phnomne instructif, in B. Olszewska, M. Barthlmy and S. Laugier (eds). Les donnes de lenqute. Paris: PUF (CURAPP-ESS UMR 6054), pp. 16795.

Rowan & Littlefield Publishers for their kind permission to use as epigraphs (heading Part III and in Chapter 5, respectively) the sentences quoted from note 2 on p. 264 and from p. 95 of H. Garfinkel (2002) Ethnomethodologys Program: Working out Durkheims Aphorism. Edited by A.W. Rawls. Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers.

SAGE Publications for their kind permission to use:

as an introductory epigraph the sentence quoted from p. 181 of H. Garfinkel and D.L. Wieder (1992) Two Incommensurable, Asymmetrically Alternate Technologies of Social Analysis, in G. Watson, R.M. Seiler (eds), Text in Context: Studies in Ethnomethodology. Newbury Park, CA and London: Sage, pp. 175206.

as an epigraph (heading the conclusion of Chapter 2) the sentence quoted from pp. 1018 of C. Heath and J. Hindmarsh (2002) Analysing interaction. Video, Ethnography and Situated Conduct, in T. May (ed.), Qualitative Research in Action. London: Sage, pp. 99121.

as an epigraph (heading Part II) the sentence quoted from p. 18 of W. Sharrock and A. Dennis (2008) That We Obey Rules Blindly Does Not Mean that We are Blindly Subservient to Rules, Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 3350.

Springer Science+Business Media B.V. for their kind permission to use:

as an epigraph (in the introduction) the sentence quoted from note 1 on p. 4 of H. Garfinkel and K. Liberman (2007) Introduction: The Lebenswelt Origins of the Sciences, Human Studies, Vol. 30, p. 37.

Respecifying Lab Ethnographyxvi

for a reanalysis (in Chapter 2) an excerpt previously published on pp. 1212 in M. Benninghoff and P. Sormani (2008) Culture in Interaction: Academic Identities in Laboratory Work, in J. Vlimaa and O.-H. Ylijoki (eds), Cultural Perspectives on Higher Education. Berlin: Springer, pp. 10926.

Transaction Publishers for their kind permission to use as an epigraph (in the introduction) the sentence quoted from p. 187 of R. Turner (1974) Words, Utterances and Activities, in J. Douglas (ed.), Understanding Everyday Life. Chicago: Aldine Publishing, pp. 16587.

Walter de Gruyter GmbH for their kind permission to use as an epigraph (heading Chapter 2) the sentence quoted from p. 42 of D.L. Wieder (1974) Language and Social Reality: The Case of Telling the Convict Code. The Hague: Mouton.

A considerable effort has been devoted to locate copyright holders. Should, despite this effort, any copyrights have been missed or source materials have been unfairly used, I would be thankful to have this brought to my attention and the relevant information given to me or directly communicated to Ashgate.

Many parties some of whom I might have failed to mention thus contributed to facilitating the publication of this book. They are all to be thanked for their invaluable assistance. Yet none of them can be held responsible for the books content, research direction, or any remaining mistake(s). As usual, this responsibility lies with the author. While I was finalizing the manuscript, I was informed of a tragic event the lab director had suffered a stroke from which he didnt recover. I wish to dedicate this study to his memory.

Philippe Sormani, Vienna

List of Abbreviations

BISSCO bismuth strontium copper oxideCA Conversation analysisCSC complex superconducting compound(s)DMI documentary method of interpretationEASST European Association for the Study of Science and TechnologyEM Ethnomethodology, ethnomethodological(ly)H magneticfieldHigh Tc high critical temperatureHLP helium level probeHOPG highly ordered pyrolytic graphiteHTS high-temperature superconductivityHV High VacuumIt tunneling currentIT interviewLDOS local electron density of statesNB notebookNS electron density of states of sample (electronic properties of sample)NT electron density of states of tip (electronic properties of tip)PbMo6S8 lead-molybdenum-sulphideSnMo6S8 tin-molybdenum-sulphideSTM scanning tunneling microscopy (or microscope)STS scanning tunneling spectroscopyS&TS Science and technology studiesTc critical temperature, the temperature at and below which an inspected sample becomes superconductingUHV Ultra High VacuumVA Video analysisYBCO yttrium barium copper oxide

Introduction

EM findings are to be treated as corrigible claims written as sketch accounts. (Garfinkel and Wieder 1992: p. 181)

How is scanning tunneling microscopy conducted in current experimental physics? Just how does its competent conduct, when successful, allow one to probe complex superconducting compounds in disciplinarily relevant specifics? What can actually be learned on science and technology in action in particular from tackling the stated questions from an ethnomethodological perspective, as well as for an ethnographic investigation? This third question hints at the primary project and incidental interest of the ensuing inquiry. Its primary project was a new study in ethnomethodology, for the first time dedicated to the sustained investigation of a current domain in experimental physics. This book delivers that pilot study. It describes the domain under scrutiny scanning tunneling microscopy of complex superconducting compounds in its own terms, tricks, and techniques. The study, more specifically, makes explicit the distinctive ethno-methods of practicing experimental physics in (and as) the highlighted domain, so that it might lend itself to an ethnographic report in the first place. Incidentally, the study thus contributes to a respecification of lab ethnography.1

The epigraph hints at the studys thrust as a pilot study, namely to make available in and through its findings, which should amount to prosaically ethnomethodological ones, the very grounds upon which it may be discussed and criticized, if not corrected. Those findings, in other words, are articulated in terms of a first set of possible descriptions (Sacks 1972a) and offered to any readers critical inspection. The delivered study therefore aims at throwing into relief issues that should (or, at least, might) prove of analytic relevance beyond ethnomethodology and ethnography, including the intricate relationship between sociological reasoning, technical self-instruction, and research practice be it as a lab members or a participant observers concern.2

1Respecifying Lab Ethnography, the studys title and broader rationale, was found in and as part of the studys course. In that sense, the studys potential interest beyond ethnomethodology (EM) proves and should prove incidental (as further developed below). The term respecification was coined by H. Garfinkel to pinpoint EMs central concern: to recover the local production of social order in and as its manifest expression prior to any theoretical rendition or misplaced abstraction of its produced orderliness and technical specifics (cf. Garfinkel 1991; Lynch 1993: p. xi, note 1; Rawls 2002: pp. 267, 51).

2The intricacies of this relationship, now and again, have been dealt with in previous books of this series (e.g., Hester and Francis 2007; Livingston 2008a; Watson 2009) yet

Respecifying Lab Ethnography2

The remainder of this introduction outlines the studys main theme: the disciplinary orientation of lab work, its measurement motive, and experimental pursuit, in and as scanning tunneling microscopy of complex superconducting compounds (henceforth STM of CSC) (section I.1). The introduction then locates that topic with respect to the current situation of ethnomethodological inquiry into the natural sciences and experimental physics in particular (section I.2). The studys distinctive outlook its original take as well as the studys broader relevance (the delivered respecification of lab ethnography) are outlined against this background (section I.3). Finally, the investigated worksite, the STM lab, is briefly presented (section I.4).

I.1Lab Work / STM of CSC: Disciplinary Orientation, Measurement Motive, and Experimental Pursuit

a science does not merely exist in its practices, it exists as its practices. (Garfinkel and Liberman 2007: p. 4, note 1)

STM has become, over the last 30 years, a widespread technique of electronic probe microscopy in the nanometer range (c. 0.1 nm to 100 nm, or 0.1 10-9 m to 1 100-9 m). Its major interest within experimental physics is twofold. On the one hand, STM affords any skilled experimentalist with atomic resolution in the topographic inspection of selected sample materials (typically metallic, semi- or superconducting sample materials). In the early 1980s, the technique had opened up the unprecedented possibility of visual representation of atomic surface structures, atom by atom. On the other hand, STM allows the trained experimentalist to proceed with local conductance measurements, allowing him or her to probe the electronic properties of the inspected sample at different bias voltages (via scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS)). The systematic deployment of the latter technique constitutes the research direction of the laboratory investigated in what follows and the core interest of its members. Most lab members conducted STM inquiries of CSC in order to probe their electronic properties. Although their inquiries were typically based on prior surface characterization, spectroscopy, not topography, would constitute their central measurement motive.3

not in terms of a sustained EM inquiry into contemporary experimental physics.3The principal defining feature of superconductivity, occurring at temperatures below

c. 30K / 243C, is the loss of all electric resistivity in a given material (e.g., Tinkham 1996; Waldram 1996). Notwithstanding their continuing relevance to contemporary physics, neither STM nor CSC, let alone STS, has retained much detailed attention by sociologists or historians of science (see however Nowotny and Felt 1997). For recent accounts of STM, its imaging power, popularized images, and yet restricted commercialization, see De Ridder-Vignone and Lynch 2012; Hennig 2011; Mody 2011. Historical accounts have mostly been offered by physicists and/or in terms of their achievements: on the contingencies surrounding

Introduction 3

The principal topic of this study, in a nutshell, is the disciplinary orientation of lab work in the examined domain, STM of CSC, with particular reference to accurate measurement and microscopic experimentation (e.g., leading to a successful spectroscopy of a superconducting compound). The study describes lab members at work, as and how they proceed with measuring in and through distinctive experiments the disciplinarily relevant properties of their sample materials. How, in more technical terms, do members operate their experimental facilities so that their actual operation will come to fit the model equation of their required routine operation (that is, Equation I.1, below)? How do they manifestly secure this ever locally achieved fit, allowing them to generate accurate measurements and novel findings? Just how?

(I.1)

Its up to the study, not its introduction, to answer that question. The same holds for the physical significance and disciplinary relevance of the stated equation (exposed in section 1.1.1 of Chapter 1). Suffice to indicate for the moment that this type of question, minimal as it may appear, has not been addressed yet, let alone answered, by any ethnomethodological study of contemporary science and technology in action. As a recent literature review suggests, the same holds for lab ethnography (see Doing 2008). This double blind spot, then, sets the stage for the present pilot study.4

Devised as an ethnomethodological inquiry, the study describes lab members distinctive, practical methods of measurement and microscopy, as those (ethno-) methods appear to be drawn upon at the worksite, in and as the examined domain of experimental physics (the prefix ethno- alluding to the communal, yet not

the invention of the STM, see the Nobel Prize lecture by its inventors (Binnig and Rohrer 1987); on the 20th-century development of the field of superconductivity and its protagonists, see Blundell 2009; Dahl 1992; Matricon and Waysand 1994; its early days are revisited by De Bruyn Ouboter 1997; Van Delft 2007; the recent twentieth anniversary of so-called high-temperature superconductivity, which remains an unsolved mystery in terms of a theoretical explanation (Cho 2006), has been marked by a special issue of Science (2006). To gain a first appreciation of the technical complexity and sophisticated discipline of STS in the current field of superconductivity, see Fischer et al. 2006.

4Spotting blind spots in ethnomethodology, lab ethnography, or any other domain of social inquiry is not necessarily difficult, nor is it always much appreciated. At a first public presentation of this monograph, it was greeted with a certain unease. To tackle the indicated blind spot, an established colleague in science and technology studies intimated, would be average behavior at best. An apt rejoinder, which I failed to deliver, would have been to acknowledge that, indeed, virtually anyone in the field could have spotted this blind spot (though perhaps not with P. Doings dedication, as we shall see below in section I.3.2) yet, and that is the crux, next to nothing seems to have been done to have it fixed (set aside B. Latours ironic refusal of a mea culpa; see Latour 2004). For a recent, related, and similarly introduced investigation in the field of science education, see Lindwall 2008.


always shared character of the methods studied). The above model equation sums up the minimal requirement in terms of a relationship of proportion ( ) to be met for a valid measurement in STM to be obtained. This study, in turn, makes explicit just how lab work was conducted in situ, through which particular methods, by taking into account which circumstances and by mastering what contingencies, so that its results came to match the stated equation manifestly so. The studys outlook, simply put, may be expressed as follows: coupled with sufficiently detailed examples, the idea that ethnomethodology is, in some anthropological sense, the study of common, everyday methods of practical action and practical reasoning is enough to get started (Livingston 1987: p. 4) however complex, we may add, the presently investigated domain of experimental physics, its disciplinary orientation and attendant practices of measurement and microscopy, and measurement through microscopy, might be imagined.5

The study opens up the indicated topic for empirical inquiry by addressing the following questions:

a) How does any working experimentalist proceed to have his or her instrumental practices in STM measure their intended phenomenon: a distinctive spectrum of a selected CSC (exhibiting its superconducting properties as a detectable, disciplinarily relevant, physical phenomenon)?

b) How do the observed practices prove recognizable to the analyst? How, when and where, as well as to whom, are those practices made recognizable by the involved practitioners, in terms of their oriented character and intelligible project (i.e., the spectroscopic measurement, via STM, of the electronic properties of a CSC)?

c) How is any single experiment conducted, on the basis of the progressive mastery of its constitutive routines, as well as in the unique course of a particular run, matching the initiated microscopic experimentation with an intended measurement of physical interest (regarding, e.g., the unknown properties of the examined compound)?

The listed questions sketch out the multifaceted characterization problem to be dealt with and suggest a possible solution: the attempt to characterize an activity [STM of CSC], in its identifying lived detail, as the recognizable work

5Readers unfamiliar with ethnomethodology, and its studies of (scientific) work in particular, have a choice of excellent introductions: Francis and Hester 2004a; Livingston 1987; Lynch 1993; Lynch and Sharrock 2003a, 2003b; Rawls 2002; Sharrock 2003; Sharrock and Anderson 1986. The appreciation of this study, however, does not hinge upon their consultation, since the concepts, notions, and techniques drawn upon will, if judged necessary, be explained when used. The same holds true with respect to STM of CSC except for the initial statement of its model equation, which is deliberately suggestive to give the reader an idea of its self-explicating (Pollner 1979), yet initially strange character (Lynch 1985: p. 12).

Introduction 5

of its production (Livingston 2008a: p. 246). That solution, as announced so far, will take the form of an ethnomethodological study of lab work. Why? The answer lies in the double meaning of the expression ethnomethodological. On the one hand, the adjective characterizes lab members own manifest tenacity, their sustained efforts to find practical, reliable, and reproducible methods in and for accurately measuring the specific, if not curious, physical phenomena under scrutiny. This unmatched perseverance provides the very topic of this study (not as a psychological puzzle, but as a practical matter). On the other hand, the adjective ethnomethodological stands for a distinctive approach of descriptive analysis and empirical inquiry into the natural sciences, an approach that still lacks a sustained investigation of a contemporary domain of experimental physics where that lack, as already pointed out, is to be filled by this study. By the same token, the study is respecifying lab ethnography that is, it makes explicit a distinctive domain of experimental physics in and as its (ethno-)methodical pursuit, so that it can be talked, written, and thought about at all (e.g., ethnographically).6

The studys principal topic, then, may be summarized in terms of the concise, schematic expression of its key phenomenon, a phenomenon of a paired kind: [lab work/model equation]. Used as a notational convention (see Lynch 1993: p. 289), the brackets allow us to indicate the disciplinary orientation of laboratory work, namely the technical requirement for lab work to be conducted so as to fit the model equation of its experimental routine, where the former has to be achieved in order to meet the requirement set by the latter (the model equation, in other words, sets a categorical imperative to be met). In ethnomethodology, the achieved fit between practice and formula has received a fancy name: its (i.e., the fits) Lebenswelt pair structure (see Livingston 1986 and, more recently, Bjeli 2003 and Burns 2012). Pursuing that EM approach, the prosaic emphasis of this study is the procedural description of just how lab work was conducted by its entitled practitioners so as to lend itself to that mathematical formalization (Equation I.1), thereby opening up STM of CSC as the contemporary domain of experimental physics it appears to be.7

In Harold Garfinkels terms, the studys pedagogical relevance is to specify the first and second segments of [the highlighted] Lebenswelt pair, thus potentially filling the gap in the literature of physics libraries, too if not

6For further discussion of the double sense of ethnomethodological, see Lynch 2001: pp. 1323. For further discussion of the studys potential to respecify lab ethnography, see below (section I.3).

7This is not to imply that a (more) real physics is to be found behind the scenes. On the contrary, the witnessable order (Livingston 2008a: pp. 1239) of manifest realities is the key phenomenon of any anti-essentialist inquiry in and as ethnomethodology (cf. Garfinkel and Liberman 2007: p. 4, note 1). The expression in and as (of) encapsulates the gist of such an inquiry (ibid.), hence the pervasive use of that or similar expressions in the course of this study.


around the world, then at least at UCLA (see Garfinkel 2002a: p. 131; Garfinkel and Wieder 1992: p. 188)!

I.2The Current Situation of Ethnomethodological Inquiry into the Natural Sciences and Experimental Physics

Since the early 1980s, EM studies of scientific work have constituted the priority on the topical agenda of their founding figure and initial advocate, H. Garfinkel (e.g., Garfinkel et al. 1981, 1989; Garfinkel 1986, 2002a, 2002c, 2002d, 2007b), as well as on the closely related agendas of leading practitioners within the field, sometimes in association with Garfinkel, sometimes not (e.g., Livingston 1986, 1995, 2007; Lynch 1982, 1985, 1987, 1993; Lynch et al. 1983). A recent, emphatic statement of that common, topical priority reads as follows:

Ethnomethodological studies of work and science respecify the lebenswelt origins of the sciences as these are made accountable in instructable discipline-specific details. Their redescription is an exhibition of the lebenswelt origins of the sciences as the lived practices of scientists. (Garfinkel and Liberman 2007: p. 6)

In other words, the mundane, practical origins of the natural sciences a topic traced back to E. Husserls phenomenological inquiries (ibid.; see also Husserl 1996) are not only to be investigated in vivo that is, in their lively performance by entitled practitioners but also to be demonstrated in their ad hoc disciplinary specifics (where that demonstration affords their descriptive investigation in the first place). E. Livingston, most notably, has developed a demonstrative sociology in and of mathematics by engaging himself in the lived work of mathematical demonstrations and thereby making that work investigable and teachable in terms of its particular, methodical, practical accomplishment (e.g., Livingston 1986, 1999). In the early 1990s, Garfinkel, in collaboration with D.L. Wieder, had formulated this self-instructive and instructional move in terms of a so-called unique adequacy requirement of methods the requirement for the analyst to himself or herself become a competent practitioner, if not a teacher and professional, of the activity under scrutiny (see Garfinkel and Wieder 1992: pp. 1824). Ever since, the requirement has generated more academic discussion about its reasonable or unreasonable character (e.g., Pollner 2012; Qur 2012; Widmer 2010 [2001]; Wilson 2003) than actual attempts to put it into practice (e.g., Sudnow 1978). The present attempt is outlined below (see section I.3).8

8The academic discussion, in turn, has led some analysts to formulate a reasonable adequacy requirement (cf. Dupret and Ferri 2008; emphasis added). This formulation, so it seems, finds fault with Garfinkel and Wieders requirement as an incongruously wild method at least with respect to regular canons of sociological inquiry. Yet, in doing so, the formulation overlooks the initial purpose of the requirement, its articulation of (and as)

Introduction 7

The specific implications of the quoted statement and paraphrased requirement, however, should vary from case to case (as research practices in the natural sciences may, if not must, vary from one domain to another). A general contrast between the repeated emphasis on the heuristic interest of the descriptive investigation of the natural sciences (of which the quoted statement is only a recent expression), on the one hand, and the relatively scarce number, type, and basis of studies delivered so far, on the other hand, may nevertheless be noted.9

The contrast seems particularly prominent as far as ethnomethodological studies of experimental physics are concerned. Most studies available today bear indeed on experimental practices and measuring activities as found in pedagogic contexts and/or associated with classic experiments/demonstrations (e.g., Bjeli 1992, 1995, 2003; Bjeli and Lynch 1992; Garfinkel 2002d; Livingston 1995, 2007; Lynch and Macbeth 1998). Measurement in any current, scientific practice of experimental physics remains unstudied. Two decades ago, an extensive review of EM studies of measuring activities did not mention a single study of doing measurements in experimental physics (cf. Lynch 1991). The situation does not seem to have changed. The same holds for microscopic experimentation as an instrumentally equipped achievement: detailed studies of its actual conduct, in situ and in vivo, are lacking even though video analysis may offer us a microscope of interaction (more on this below). M. Lynchs study of lab work in neurobiology, for example, dealt with records-under-analysis (Lynch 1985: p. 12) rather than microscopes-in-experimentation (to borrow his figure of speech).10

This, of course, is not to deny the continuities or the discontinuities for that matter between the technical instruction to any natural science or its classic exposition and its contemporary developments. Yet, if a contemporary domain of research, such as experimental physics, is to be investigated on its own terrain that is, in and through its own terms and techniques, circumstances and contingences, involving high-precision measurement and probe microscopy then there seems little reason to postpone, excuse, hint at (e.g., Livingston 2008b: p. 842), or place this investigation elsewhere (e.g., Garfinkel 2002d, Chapter 9)

a strategy for capturing a wild phenomenon, namely: the local production of social order which typically escapes the invoked canons at least according to Garfinkel and Wieder (e.g., 1992: p. 108).

9The bulk of EM studies of scientific work dates back to the late 1970s and early 1980s. For an important review of selected studies from that period, see Lynch et al. (1983). For more recent collections, see Lynch 2011a; Lynch and Sharrock 2003a, Vol. IV, Part 7; and Sormani et al. 2011a. On teaching advanced mathematics, see Greiffenhagen 2014.

10In Representing and Intervening, I. Hacking noted that philosophers had not paid much attention to the actual uses of microscopes in scientific practice (cf. Hacking 1983, Chapter 11). Forty years on, the same observation can, somewhat ironically, still be made on the current situation of ethnomethodological inquiry.


than at physicists typical, domain-specific worksite: the research lab. The present study, at least, has pursued this research direction.11

From a methodological point of view, the current situation of ethnomethodological inquiry into the natural sciences proves ambivalent in another respect (at least from the perspective of this study). One crucial development is the growing recourse to the portable technology of video recording to capture the lived work of unfolding research, a technology which opens research-in-the-making to repeated, descriptive, and disciplined inspection (a tendency by no means restricted to science studies; e.g., Broth et al. 2014; Goodwin 2000a, 2000b; Heath and Hindmarsh 2002; Heath et al. 2010; Knoblauch et al. 2006; Macbeth 1999). This possibility of video analysis, when exploited carefully, constitutes an invaluable, if not indispensable, means to describe lab work in its situated, progressive achievement, and to do so from a position which, presumably, allows one to specify its constitutive features as they are taken for granted, modified, or elaborated upon, by the involved practitioners (see, e.g., Ala 2011; Goodwin 2007; Greiffenhagen 2008; Lindwall 2008; Lindwall and Lymer 2008; Mondada 2005, 2007; Sherman 2011).12

Yet, even though video analysis is recurrently presented as inspired by, conducted in line with, or instantiating an EM take (as the listed studies do), the question remains open as to how video-based analysis of research practice relates to the other, if not the most important, development within present-day EM, namely the invitation for the analyst to engage himself or herself practically in the technical activity he or she sets out to study (e.g., Livingston 2008a), echoing Garfinkel and Wieders notorious unique adequacy requirement of methods mentioned above. The question points to the risks associated with the instrumental reliance upon a methodology (such as video recording and textual transcription) prima facie external to the work practice under scrutiny in our case, STM of CSC. Those risks may be termed phenomenological and characterized as resulting from the reliance upon a simple technique operating on already constituted objects (Levinas 1998: p. 74, quoted in Liberman 2007: p. 97). Any instrumental reliance of the indicated, methodological kind, in other words, begs the question of the methodic self-constitution of the intended phenomena: just how are valid measurements achieved in STM of CSC? Conversely, to opt for an abstract technique of investigation abstract with respect to the phenomenon or

11The study is thus similar to Lynchs (1985). Lynchs study, however, didnt make explicit the tutorial character of his own technical involvement (set aside his introductory comments: ibid., pp. 13). This omission has led to discussions about the studys actual ethnomethodological and/or ethnographic status (e.g., Garfinkel et al. 1989; Pollner and Emerson 2001) a discussion that Lynch himself has recently taken up (Lynch 2013a).

12As Garfinkel himself acknowledged, audiovisual documents are premier resources (Garfinkel 2002a: p. 148).

Introduction 9

practice under scrutiny appears as a particularly misleading exercise, even (and, perhaps, especially) if it is applied carefully.13

This is not to say that the (ethno-)methodological emphasis put on tutorial exercises in, and hands-on experience with, experimental practice does not pose its own problems (e.g., Garfinkel 2002b). Three such problems regarding the descriptive analysis of experimental practice as presently envisaged may be indicated here (in addition to the focus on classic experiments rather than contemporary developments).

1. The just mentioned emphasis has led the involved analysts to (re-)enact physical experiments by following textual instructions, as provided by classic accounts of those experiments (e.g., Galileos inclined plane demonstration, in Garfinkel 2002d). Yet the (re-)enactement of any particular experiment or measurement, though it irremediably presents the involved analyst with the practical problems of experimentation, begs the question of the descriptive analysis of the initiated course of action: in what ways, if at all, does its lived experience allow us to recover its practical accomplishment (see also Livingston 2008a: p. 131)?

2. The principled emphasis on the irreducibility of the (re-)enactment of any instructed action to its prior textual instruction (or subsequent discursive rendition) not only aggravates the problem of descriptive analysis, it may also lead one to forget the constitutive character of language for that self-same action in its actual unfolding, through the conversational articulation of its technical achievement, be it textually mediated and/or instrumentally equipped (see also Suchman 2007: p. 115).

3. If EM respecification is cast as an encompassing project of re-examination of the problem of social order a priori, as exposed and elaborated upon in the academic literature (see Garfinkel 1991), then the question may be asked if the problem, as available through the selected literature, does not postpone, obscure, or otherwise impair the procedural description of practitioners concerns in the first place, as both Livingston (2008a, 2008b)

13Even though it has been raised repeatedly, especially with respect to conversation analysis (e.g., Livingston 1987, Chapters 10 and 11; Lynch 1993, Chapter 6; Lynch and Bogen 1994), standing practitioners of video analysis have remained rather silent on this issue (for initial discussion, see Greiffenhagen 2008; Mondada 2006, 2014). For instance, a recent manifesto in favor of video-based studies of pedagogical practices (Koschmann et al. 2007) locates itself in continuity with Garfinkels EM (as outlined in its foundational studies: Garfinkel 1967), while omitting to discuss his later work, let alone to draw out its implications for video-based studies (notably regarding the requirement of self-instructive engagement with the practice under scrutiny; e.g., Garfinkel 2002a). Video analysis, most prominently, continues to proceed under conversation analytic auspices (via real-time recording, episode selection, minute transcription, repeated inspection, and descriptive interaction analysis; e.g., Mondada 2008). On multimodal CA, as the most recent expression of this tendency, see Deppermann 2013.


and Sacks (1992a: p. 472) have pointed out. Doesnt (or shouldnt) any EM clarification of scholarly elaborated concepts (such as Durkheims social facts or Husserls Galilean physics) miss out on the practical minutiae, including their own conceptual expression, as manifestly relevant to the involved experimentalist(s) (e.g., Bjeli 1995)?14

That being said, the indicated problems, whenever encountered, shouldnt lead to a subjectivist misreading of the Garfinkelian requirement of tutorial engagement by the analyst himself or herself in the work practice to be studied (e.g., Pollner and Emerson 2001: p. 132, note 7; Wilson 2003). On the contrary, the requirement, if fulfilled, may give rise to a demonstrative EM, to adapt Livingstons expression that is, a descriptive analysis which exhibits rather than stipulates or speculates about the identifying particulars of an unfolding action, as those particulars (rather than the subject, participant, or actor that the action may involve) appear and are taken into account in and as its analyzable course. Garfinkel has alluded to the shifting, yet identifying particulars of an unfolding action as its phenomenal field properties, while calling for the instructive description of its methodic conduct, constitutive of and oriented to those self-same particulars (e.g., Garfinkel 2002a, 2007a).15

Garfinkels allusion, however, leaves the problem of description intact, as Husserls initial reminder of the mundane origins of the natural sciences did (cf. Garfinkel and Liberman 2007: p. 4). More positively put, Garfinkel invites us to work out an instructive description each time fitted (if not conducive) to the particular action or phenomenon under scrutiny his allusion, understood as a heuristic suggestion, should thus not be faulted too hastily. Be that as it may, Livingston has recently acknowledged a problem of description with respect to the EM investigation of experimental physics in particular:

The reflexive formulation of the finding that as a practical matter, the adequacy of an experimental demonstration of physics consists of the analysability of that experiment in terms of the witnessable, accountable work of its own production only raises the question of what, in any specific experimental setting, such a relationship consists of as observable practice. The praxeological characterization

14The present study is written in the vein of this Schutzian line of argument, emphasizing the distinction between theoretical interests and practical relevancies (cf. Garfinkel 1952, Chapter 5; Sharrock 2004; Sormani forthcoming). Accordingly, Lynchs alternative program, outlined in Scientific Practice and Ordinary Action (1993), shall be discussed in the conclusion of this book.

15M. Merleau-Pontys chapter on the phenomenal field (Merleau-Ponty 1945) and A. Gurwitschs phenomenological investigations of Gestalt contextures (Gurwitsch 1964) were referred to by Garfinkel as his key inspirations to be misread and respecified that is, reappraised in the light and for the purpose of the analysts own tutorial engagement in a practical activity (e.g., Garfinkel 2002a: pp. 1678).

Introduction 11

of an experimental demonstration is the new beginning, rather than the end of a continuing course of inquiry. (Livingston 2008a: p. 234; emphasis in original)

As this brief exposition of the current situation of EM inquiry suggests, the present investigation of lab work should constitute a distinctive contribution to (and, hopefully, an instructive clarification of) that situation. No EM study of a contemporary domain of experimental physics, let alone of its distinctive practices of measurement and microscopy, is presently available. The envisaged investigation fills that gap in the literature. The pursuit of this task, from the outset, promised to lead to an original, substantial contribution in topical terms. Yet, as uncharted territory was to be investigated, realizing this main task soon required innovating in matters of (ethno-)methodology too. This book, in consequence, should deliver a pilot study both in topical and methodological terms, in accordance with Livingstons recent, if tacit suggestion.16

That second, methodological task has been pursued on the basis of long-term participant observation (see section I.4, below). Its eventual realization required the devising of a cogent combination between the self-instructive engagement in microscopic experimentation, on the one hand, and its procedural description by means of video analysis, on the other hand thus bringing to bear on each other the two prominent developments, having remained parallel or even mutually exclusive so far (at least in the fragmented field of ethnomethodology). The EM cogency of the sketched combination, however, hinged (and hinges) upon its ability to make explicit the investigated domain, STM of CSC, in its own terms, tricks and techniques, rather than to promote an abstract, off-the-shelf methodology, presumably applicable to any other domain one of [Garfinkels] greatest fears (Liberman 2007: p. 101). The following outline of the study gives an introductory idea of the pursued research direction.17

16While ethnomethodology has illuminated the inner dynamics of disciplinary sociology and has opened up the world of practical action and reasoning for re-examination, it has been less successful in developing anything like an alternative technology for conducting studies of domain-specific skill and reasoning (Livingston 2008a: p. 261).

17Lynch (1993: p. 314, note 5) referred to EM, combined with CA, as an unlikely candidate for a hybrid study of work. At present, long-term participant observation seems to have made that combination less unlikely (especially as far as video analysis under CA auspices is concerned). For related discussion, see inter alia Clayman and Maynard 1995; Garfinkel 2002a; Liberman 2007, Chapter 5; 2013; Lynch 2000a; Rawls 2002: pp. 2530; Sharrock 2000, 2003; Wieder 1999. Most recently, see Macbeth (2014).


I.3The Studys Outlook and Broader Relevance

The task of the analyst in analyzing naturally occurring scenes is not to deny his [members] competence in making sense of activities, but to explicate it. (Turner 1970: p. 187; emphasis in original)

Even though this study will not solely rely upon naturally occurring scenes for analysis, the above quote, in an important respect, captures the studys key task, namely: to develop and make explicit the analysts vernacular understanding, as a becoming lab member, of the experimental domain under scrutiny: STM of CSC. What is meant, however, by the analysts vernacular understanding, as a becoming lab member? And why should it be of EM interest to make explicit that evolving understanding? The ensuing study has been conducted under the assumption that its author, upon accessing the physics laboratory, had entered a self-explicating setting (Pollner 1979). Upon arrival, lab members would let him know, in various ways, how they organized their practical affairs, if only to keep him off from those affairs. That setting-immanent pedagogy, then, may be (and, in fact, has already been) drawn upon to instruct present readers in how lab work was conducted in situ in that sense, the investigated setting should be considered self-explicating, while the present study affords readers with its incidental extension.18

Hands on!, as regards your own work, versus hands off!, as regards that of your colleagues, proved to be a distinction of central import to lab members. The studys articulation is introduced in its terms below, followed by a formulation of the studys broader relevance.19

I.3.1The Studys Outlook: One Step Back, Two Steps Forward, and a Twist In-between

Lab work, as encountered on the shop floor, exhibited a distinction between any lab members practical engagement in his or her own work, on the one hand, and his or her incidental orientation to any colleagues parallel line of work, on the other. This distinction, exhibited in and through lab members everyday conduct, proved expressible and sometimes had to be expressed in terms of alternative maxims of conduct: hands on! versus hands off! Accordingly, and put in general terms,

18On the self-explicating features of social settings, see also Button and Sharrock 1991: p. 141; Francis 2005: pp. 27980; Garfinkel et al. 1977: pp. 1415.

19H. Sacks, in conversation with H. Garfinkel, identified members distinctions, respectively their situated use, as a starting point for the EM study of work (see Garfinkel 2002a: p. 182). Sacks move, adopted here, aims at engaging the descriptive analysis of work by trading upon and making explicit its conceptual distinctions and practical procedures rather than by introducing an external a priori definition (Watson 2006: p. 159) of its supposed character.

Introduction 13

when one is engaged in the accomplishment of an activity visual orientations are distributed otherwise than when one is witnessing various courses of embodied activities (Qur 2012: p. 15). That is, alternative procedures of interpretation and action production [seem to] operate (Sudnow 1972: p. 262).20

Trivial as it may appear to be, the lab members distinction is of particular interest with respect to the methodological puzzle in the current field of EM: the unclear relationship between demonstrative inquiry, based upon practical engagement in technical self-instruction, and descriptive analysis, via a detached mode of video analysis, as discussed in the previous section. Indeed, the contrast alluded to invites us to reconsider, perhaps to dissolve, the methodological puzzle by studying the indigenous distinction to start with: lab members distinction between practical involvement (in their own work) and incidental attendance (to their colleaguess work). This study, at any rate, has been organized accordingly.21

Part I, entitled Sociological Reasoning: Seeing Social Order, proposes a reflexive ethnography. The ethnography exposes the studied domain of experimental physics in its own first-order concepts: those concepts and distinctions embedded in and used by lab members, in various circumstances, to characterize their domain (Chapter 1). The reflexive move of the proposed ethnography then consists in making explicit how that exposition was possible, as an analysts achievement, and what place similar expositions by lab members occupy with respect to the practical, day-and-night accomplishment of their work in line with its central motive: spectroscopic measurements on complex superconductors (Chapter 2). The ethnography makes one step back with respect to any theoretical position, abstract methodology, or philosophical concern, insofar as it works out the vernacular understanding of typicalized courses of action (Schegloff 1996: pp. 21112), as those courses of action could and can be recognized in, and as part of, the examined domain. The first part of the study, in other words, documents lab work in terms of its measurement motive (i.e., lab members central concern) and then examines the documentary method of interpretation drawn upon for the descriptive purposes of motive

20The ability to grasp the sense of an activity at a glance, without being engaged in that activity, reminds us of the difference between the instant recognition of its typical features and the unfolding production of the instantly recognized activity, where the former, as Sudnow noted, short-circuit[s] [the procedures of] retrospectiveprospective observation and inference involved in the latter (Sudnow 1972: p. 262). This distinction seems to have been overlooked in later discussions of praxiology of perception (Coulter and Parsons 1991).

21In the introduction to Laboratory Life, a similar lab members distinction was noticed (see Latour and Woolgar 1979: pp. 217), yet without being turned into an (ethno-)methodological resource. The main reasons for this are elaborated upon in the next section (section I.3.2).


attribution (see Garfinkel 1967: pp. 946), be it by the incidental ethnographer or lab members themselves.22

Part II, entitled Self-instruction: From Seeing to Doing, is pivotal, not only insofar as it reports the authors technical self-instruction in STM, but, because a narrative format has been chosen, it will also afford the reader with a provisional description of any lab members distinction between hands on! involvement and hands off! retreat, as well as the related modalities of doing it yourself and seeing others doing it, of producing and recognizing lab work in its experimental pursuit. Part II is made up of one single chapter (Chapter 3). This chapter marks a twist in-between. On the one hand, it is worked out from within the domain investigated by prior chapters, STM of CSC, as it (re-)appropriates lab members working maxim, everyone for himself, in practical terms (and not only interpretive ones). On the other hand, the chapter affords the reader with a provisional understanding of the distinctive practices constitutive of STM experimentation. Practicing these practices proved indispensable to have STM of CSC described in its own terms. Part II, in sum, homes in on those actions through which the phenomenon is seen, as well as produced and monitored, in (and as) the examined domain of experimental physics that is, its praxiom[s] or practical axiom[s] (Bjeli 2003: p. 90, emphasis in original).23

Part III, entitled Research Practice: Doing Microscopic Experiments, proceeds by video analysis of a distinctive kind, a video analysis based upon, whilst exposing and describing, the praxioms constitutive of the contemporary domain of experimental physics under scrutiny: STM of CSC. Two steps forward are made in the descriptive analysis of lab work (see Chapters 45). The first step, in each chapter, consists in the delivery of a video analysis of a conventional kind (via the textual transcription of the filmed activity and its detailed inspection). The second step consists in the development of a video analysis of an experimental kind, an EM development of STM pedagogy, conducted under the leitmotif film it, whilst you do it! The leitmotif, as curious or incongruous as it may sound, proved decisive to recover the disciplinary orientation of STM of CSC, as (re-)enacted in situ and in vivo. By bringing the video camera to the bench level, Part III marks the hybrid character of this EM study of lab work: descriptions are provided for and readable interchangeably as pedagogies (Garfinkel 2002a: p. 101).24

22By examining the mutual elaboration of observed activities and their conversational formulation, the reflexive ethnography thus proceeds in a similar way as Wieders classic study (see Wieder 1974), a similarity which marks it off from prior lab ethnographies, including their textually reflexive uptake (e.g., Ashmore 1989; Woolgar 1988a, 1988b).

23A key source of inspiration for Part II is E. Livingstons Ethnographies of Reason (2008a).

24In sum: Part III = Part I + II, that is: when Wieder (1974) meets Livingston (2008a). For a programmatic exposition of the underlying Schutzian/phenomenological rationale, see Sharrock 2004; and, more recently, Qur 2012; and Sormani forthcoming.

Introduction 15

Part I (Chapters 12), in a nutshell, focuses on the recognizable character of lab work, in terms of its measurement motive, under its typical auspices of project work. Parts II and III (Chapters 35), in turn, describe particular situations of microscopic experimentation in the course of distinctively productive runs (including the local production of a physics discovery: Chapter 5). The study, by consequence, answers the initial question (a), raised in the first section of this introduction, by breaking it down into the two subsequently stated ones (b and c). To have introduced the studys outlook in terms of the lab members distinction, hands on! versus hands off!, is thus more than a promiscuous wordplay, or a playful, yet unwelcome confusion between ethnographic topic and analytic resource. The distinction, on the contrary, proves doubly heuristic: it expresses the self-explicating character of lab work, whilst offering a research direction for its EM investigation (from its hands off! recognition to its hands on! production).25

The outlined combination of practical involvement and video analysis takes the form of both a reminder and a development. A reminder is offered, insofar as video analysis (similarly to CA) is shown to depend upon practical engagement in the phenomenon under scrutiny, and be it only a vernacular, discursive, or ethnographic understanding of its typical features in a passive mode (where the aim of the analysis, conversely, is to make explicit that understanding and the phenomenon it yields). A development is proposed, insofar as the constitutive practices of STM experimentation are exhibited in their active mode, by having them produced, filmed, and described from within by the involved experimentalist cum video analyst. This development may be best termed a practice-based video analysis.26

25The same may be said with respect to the organization of the study, cast in terms of a one step back, two steps forward, and a twist in-between sequence. That organization encapsulates the authors vernacular understanding as a becoming lab member, as progressively evolved in situ, notably via technical self-instruction, and retrospectively exposed by this study.

26By addressing lab work both in terms of its appropriate recognition and accurate production, the outlined study recalls the double sense, given by Garfinkel and Wieder, to the unique adequacy requirement of methods. Indeed, they distinguish between its weak and strong version (Garfinkel and Wieder 1992: p. 182). The former, simply put, asks of the analyst to gain a vulgar competency in the practice or phenomenon he or she sets out to study, notably to be able to recognize, follow, and talk about it (ibid.). The latter, on the other hand, invites the analyst to specify the (ethno-)methods internal to and constitutive of any given practice under scrutiny (ibid.). To accept that invitation requires of the analyst to engage himself or herself in its actual conduct, at least tentatively so, as a novice practitioner (see Livingston 2008a: p. 132). See also Garfinkel 2007a: pp. 223; Sudnow 1978, 1979, 1983.


I.3.2The Studys Broader Relevance: Respecifying Lab Ethnography

What might the incidental interest of the outlined study, if not its sociological relevance, consist in for a wider audience, for instance, in science and technology studies (S&TS)? A comprehensive review of the field is not only beyond the scope of this study (for such a review, see Hackett et al. 2008a, 2008b) but also beside the point, since the studys principal field of interest and intervention is EM, as reviewed in the previous section. With the benefit of hindsight, however, the study can be seen to make a critical intervention in this field hence also the studys title: Respecifying Lab Ethnography. The study, in particular, takes on a task that a central development in S&TS promised to address, but, in a critical sense, failed to achieve. That development, now well known under the name of laboratory studies, was based upon the ethnographic investigation of different laboratories, technical activities, and rhetorical moves in the natural sciences (see, e.g., Knorr-Cetina 1994). Its arguable failure, notwithstanding its empirical claims and their massive echo within and beyond S&TS, may be characterized as the failure to describe any particular discipline of the natural sciences in its constitutive practices, in the sense of its praxioms (Bjeli) or Lebenswelt pair structure (Livingston), both introduced above (see also Garfinkel et al. 1989). As a recent review of lab studies concludes:

The first thing any new lab study should do is go directly for what laboratory studies have missed a particular fact and wrestle with how its endurance obtains within the in situ world of practice. Lets make detectable the dark matter in S[&]TS lab studies and get the books straight. I do not know just what such accounts will look like, but I do know that they should not begin with the ironic line, Laboratory studies have shown. In a recent article wrestling with the politically oppressive uptake of deconstructivist claims in S[&]TS, Bruno Latour asked, is it enough to say that we did not really mean what we said? [Latour 2004]. Well, perhaps we should say, at least for now, that we did not really do what we said. (Doing 2008: pp. 2912; emphasis added)

In what sense, more specifically, may the constitutive practices of the natural sciences be said to have been missed? The question shall be briefly discussed on the basis of a (if not the) seminal study in lab ethnography: Latour and Woolgars Laboratory Life (1979). The brief discussion of Laboratory Life, a paradigm [case] of constructivism (Sismondo 1993: p. 532), should allow us to highlight the change in outlook and orientation accomplished by the present study, as well as its EM advances, especially in terms of description. This study, in sum, has been devised to dissolve the mystery of description suggested by the quoted review even though the study starts out with an experimental domain, STM of CSC, rather than a particular fact, say, a single spectrum of disciplinary relevance. The study, in other words, is taking Professor Qurs invitation seriously il faut sauver les phnomnes! (we need to save the phenomena!) by answering

Introduction 17

his doubting question: Mais comment? (but how?) (see Qur 2004). To some readers, the sketched task may sound belated, incongruous, or both. There are two short, idiomatic, combinable, and thus apposite answers to such a concern: better late than never! Wait and see!27

The indicated failure, to begin with, may be specified in programmatic terms. The pioneering lab ethnographies, and Laboratory Life in particular, had been devised under analogical auspices, the analogy of construction having offered the virtually ubiquitous, interpretive assumption: as Collins, Latour, and Woolgar each acknowledge, the relativist or constructivist emphases in their studies are matters of methodological policy. Their studies do not empirically demonstrate that scientific facts are constructed, since this is assumed from the outset (Lynch 1993: p. 102, emphasis added; see also Francis and Hester 2004a: p. 186). There is a lingering problem, however, with that (now popular?) assumption and analogy of construction, at least from a descriptive stance: the use of analogy stipulates a similarity of order between the related terms, yet without having described either of them (see Sacks 1992a: p. 107). The construction analogy, in other words, begs the question of how lab work was intelligibly organized so as to lend itself to be interpreted under its auspices. Early on, K. Knorr-Cetinas The Manufacture of Knowledge (1981) offered a telling example of the indicated problem, each chapter being headed by a title of the form the scientist as X, rather than, say, the scientist as scientist or, better, X as X to start with.28

27The longer answer would acknowledge the crisis in relativist and constructivist studies (Lynch 1993: pp. 1025) that, quite effectively, had stalled further developments in (rather than beyond; e.g., Latour 1983) the subfield of lab ethnography early on. The initial ethnographies, by consequence, still provide a relevant point of departure for current discussion (see Collins 1985; Knorr-Cetina 1981; Latour and Woolgar 1979; Lynch 1985; Pickering 1984; Pinch 1986; Traweek 1988). For notable exceptions to the outlined situation of inquiry, see Collins 2004; Doing 2004, 2009; Merz and Knorr-Cetina 1997. At present, the hermeneutic emphasis is put on Laboratory Life, since that study epitomizes the programmatic outlook and methodological attitude which cover up, rather than exhibit, the practical basis of any distinctive natural science; an outlook and attitude which most other lab studies, if implicitly, share or, at least, havent found a radical alternative to (at the possible exception of Lynch 1985s study). Lab study reviews prior to the latest one (Doing 2008) include, in chronological order, Woolgar 1982; Knorr-Cetina 1983, 1994; Lynch 1993: pp. 90105; Hess 2001; Merz 2004; and Zammito 2004, Chapter 6. Not only does the current number of reviews top the number of actual studies, but those studies, by and large, also remain predicated on their authors philosophical concerns rather than the studied members practical relevancies. For an instructive if ironic discussion of the consequences resulting from the recent turn to ontology for S&TS (lab) ethnography, see Lynch 2013b.

28This passion for proxies, including superorganisms (Knorr-Cetina 1995), is further cultivated in Epistemic Cultures (Knorr-Cetina 1999). This later book, indeed, develops the authors interest not in the construction of knowledge but in the construction of the machineries of knowledge construction (ibid.: p. 3).


Though the construction analogy may have had and possibly still has the advantage of nurturing subversive interventions in philosophy of science (against its alleged nave realism; see Friedman 1998), the analogy also had the awkward upshot of leading constructivist ethnographies into a promotional paradox: the promotion of participant observation of research practice could only appear as inconsistent, if not self-defeating, where the construction analogy had first been drawn upon to call into question the very idea of observation (Francis and Hester 2004a: pp. 1856).29

More importantly, perhaps, the practical basis of any distinctive natural science has also been missed for methodological reasons. (Re-)consider, in that respect, the key choices of Laboratory Life. First, the decision, again, to interpret virtually any mundane laboratory practice in terms of concepts alien to it the twin notions of inscription and inscription device, lifted from Derridas philosophical reflections (see Latour and Woolgar 1979: pp. 889, notes 2 and 5) begs the question of practitioners own technical and untechnical notions of, and as part of, their activities in short, their first-order concepts (Schutz 1973), concepts such as STM, measurement, or spectroscopy, in the present case. Incidentally, Hackings ironic footnote on the second edition of Laboratory Life has perhaps not received the attention it should have:

[The authors] have an extraordinarily inscriptional attitude to laboratory science. Between scientists and chaos, there is nothing but a wall of archives, labels, protocol books, figures and papers. Even insecure bureaucrats and compulsive nominalists are less obsessed by inscriptions than scientists (Latour and Woolgar 1986a: p. 245). Virtually all apparatus is seen as a collection of inscriptional devices. I am afraid I regard this as a symptom of the now outdated

29The subsequent flight into the consideration of discursive reflexivities (e.g., Ashmore 1989; Woolgar 1988a, 1988b) only displaced, but didnt solve, the paradox. That reflexive move attempted to confront, as K. Burke put it in a similar context, the paradox of substance in a terminology unsuited to the illumination of this paradox (Burke 1989a: p. 159). To some commentators, then, this move proved a most instructive dead end in science studies (Zammito 2004: p. 242). On the other hand, it may well be the case that a constructivist vocabulary can be used for writing detailed descriptions of scientific activities (Lynch 1993: p. 102). This analogical possibility, however, does not determine the relationship between such a vocabulary (or any other vocabulary derived from academic discourse) and participants activities and/or participants formulations of their activities (hence the lose-lose character of analogies alluded to by Sacks 1992a: p. 107). Discussions of constructivism in and/or of S&TS are countless (see, e.g., Button and Sharrock 1993; Hacking 1999; Merz 2006; Sismondo 1993). As such, they may add to the difficulty of engaging in practice description, if only by delaying participant observation and/or preclud[ing]) a critical analysis of the nature of the phenomena under investigation (Anderson and Lee 2013: p. 283).

Introduction 19

fascination with the sentence so characteristic of Paris intellectuals in the late sixties. (Hacking 1988: p. 278, note 1)30

Second, the decision to decline (and dismiss) any self-instruction in the technical domain of research practice considered by alluding to the presumed dangers of going native (Latour and Woolgar 1979: p. 29) compounds the disjunction between interpretively analytic and practically ordered relevancies, between the anthropologists educated guessing and participants local work. That decision, again, leaves it open as to how the latter work could be intelligibly recognized, let alone intelligently (re-)produced, performed, or described, in its own topics, terms and techniques so as to lend itself to any interpretation at all. In sum, if Monsieur Latour and his colleague were joking, then it is far from clear about just what a clarity presupposed by O. Amsterdamskas discussion of Latours later work (see Amsterdamska 1990).31

The present study, in turn, marks a double contrast with respect to the constructivist and analogical stance adopted in what have become canonical lab ethnographies (starting out with Latour and Woolgars Laboratory Life):

1. It trades on and examines lab members formulations of lab work in STM of CSC as an integral part of that work, providing for the recognition of its typical features (as opposed to any interpretive, constructivist, or related idealization of those features).32

2. The study engages its author in microscopic experimentation and examines lab members technical activities, activities achieved so as to have them appear under their typical auspices in the first place (in contrast to any analogical approach to those activities in the absence of their actual description).

By marking this double contrast and drawing out its heuristic implications, the outlined study makes explicit STM of CSC, the examined domain of experimental physics, as a distinctive discovering science of practical action (Garfinkel et

30Interestingly, Latour himself had attributed a similar inscriptional attitude to Lynchs work two years earlier set aside the allusion to Paris intellectuals (cf. Latour 1986a: pp. 1516). On the notion of inscription as promoting a by now well-known discursive bias at the expense of experimental practice, see also Lynch 1993: pp. 93100; and Zammito 2004: pp. 1515, 272. In philosophy of science, this bias had probably been most effectively addressed by Hacking 1983. More recently, see Rouse 2002.

31The Latourian claim that science is and/or should be investigated like any other activity, notably war and politics, is a further expression of analogical fiat (e.g., Latour 1995). In contrast, M. Merz suggests reviving the ethnographic interest in the distinctive features of lab work. However, her difference approach remains based upon the construction analogy (cf. Merz 2006).

32On the use of misplaced idealization, see Zimmerman 1974: pp. 2026; and, more recently, Liberman 2013: p. 6; and Rawls 2002: p. 51.


al. 1989) that is, an inquiry of a double kind, directed at obtaining formally accountable results in disciplinarily relevant specifics (i.e., specific, novel measurements), on the one hand, and at discovering, if not mastering, its own practical contingencies, as a running condition for those results to be obtained, on the other hand (for a similar formulation, see Bjeli 1992: p. 221). The studys analytic orientation, then, contrasts with a recurrent assumption in prior lab ethnographies. The study, indeed, considers the investigated laboratory the STM lab (see below, section I.4) as a self-explicating setting (to use, once again, Pollners felicitous expression), organized in such a way as to introduce novices and prospective members (including the participant observer) to the experimental domain, one way or another, instead of assuming the technical inaccessibility of the domain (and, by default, devising an interpretive, constructivist, and/or analogical approach to lab routine).33

I.4The STM Lab

The outlined investigation is based upon an extended period of participant observation: a total of two years at the investigated laboratory, scheduled over a three-year period (due, in large part, to the complexities and unpredictability of the examined domain). The laboratory in question the STM lab, to adopt the shorthand used by members constitutes one of currently about 10 laboratories worldwide specializing in STM of CSC. The investigated STM lab is located at the physics department of a leading, public university in Europe and, at the peak of its activity, counted up to 15 members (seven PhD students, two post-docs, two technicians, two senior researchers, the operating lab chief and the lab director). Research at the lab, as far as its experimental aspects were concerned, was primarily conducted by PhD students. Indeed, five of its six low-temperature STM facilities were operated by PhD students. Four of them, to a significant degree, were also constructed and calibrated by them, individually so, whereas the fifth one was taken over from a prior lab member by a PhD student in collaboration with a post-doc. PhD students were typically required to proceed with measurements

33Ethnography, by and large, seems to be based upon the assumption of a problem of inaccessibility, where an appropriate theory, interpretation, or (even) philosophy is to solve that problem (see Sharrock and Anderson 1982). As far as lab ethnographies are concerned, the assumption appears in methodological discussions regarding the heuristic virtues versus the hermeneutic obstacles, associated with the technical incompetency of the ethnographer (e.g., Latour and Woolgar 1986b; Lynch 1982; and, more recently, Pollner and Emerson 2001). Alternatively, I will not only consider how novices are introduced to lab work another blind spot of lab ethnography, recently pointed out by Mody and Kaiser (2008: p. 378) but also, and more interestingly, the instructional character of both its initial inaccessibility and competent conduct (where the former, as we shall see, is to be understood as the incidental result of the latter). For a recent discussion in S&TS of loosely related interest, see Beaulieu 2010.

Introduction 21

on compound members of either of two families of complex superconductors: Oxide High TC compounds or Chevrel clusters. The lab chief made measurements on both types of materials as well as on other superconductors (e.g., so-called pnictides). The lab director, on the other hand, stayed away from experimental work. As a former PhD student put it, the lab director, you visit him only to discuss your results.34

The above paragraph gives the reader an initial idea of the investigated laboratory, its organizational features, and disciplinary outlook. All of this will be further elaborated upon in the ensuing study, especially as far as the disciplinarily motivated and experimentally protracted pursuit of STM measurements on CSC are concerned. Throughout the text, pseudonyms have been used to refer to lab members.

34Contrary to the other lab members, the lab director would spend his working day at his office located outside the STM lab, in the central building of the physics department, together with administration. The principal reason for the lab directors habitual absence from the shop floor was his professional commitment to the management of a national research network of which he was the director.

Part I Sociological reasoning:

Seeing Social Order

When a researcher is addressed to the motivated character of an action, or a theory, or a persons compliance to a legitimate order and the like, he will use what he has actually observed to document an underlying pattern. the documentary method is used to epitomize the object.

(Garfinkel 1967: p. 95)

Part I of this study proposes a reflexive ethnography, organized into two related chapters. First, it offers an ethnographic account of a conventional kind, insofar as the offered account takes the form of a detailed description of lab work in its motivated character, as observed and attended to at the investigated StM lab (Chapter 1). the above quote characterizes the documentary method of interpretation engaged in for descriptive purposes, a method intended to exhaust a definite field of possible observables (Garfinkel 1967). Second, the reflexive move of the proposed ethnography amounts to making explicit how the ethnographic description proved possible as such, due to which practices of talking and observing, as well as how, why, and when lab members themselves, especially PhD students, would engage in similar practices of participant observation, if not similarly documented expositions of their running work, in the first place (Chapter 2). This reflexive move, then, allows us to specify how any cogent recognition of lab work in its typical features was, and could be, based on lab members formulations of its ordinary conduct, as a constitutive part of its self-same conduct (at least with respect to its recognition under typified, discursive auspices).1

1Sociological reasoning, then, stands as a gloss for lab members own local reasoning respectively, the analysts vernacular understanding going into solving any actual recognition problem. Members reasoning may be termed sociological, insofar as it occurs from within, expresses and documents the social order of lab work: Its witnessable, typically required, individualized progression (in sequenced phases, as we shall see, of construction, calibration, and measurement).

Chapter 1

STM of CSC: Its Measurement Motive in and as

Project Work

The current domain of STM of CSC is characterized by a paradoxical situation of inquiry. On the one hand, it involves a technical achievement of unimaginable delicacy: any low-temperature STM, at least at the investigated laboratory, had to be home-built, developed at the lab over the course of several years, and specifically designed for distinctive measurements on CSC (e.g., at temperatures reaching down to 400 mK / 272.6C). Practitioners in the domain, on the other ha

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