Robin James Smith
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 3660464 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Robin James Smith |
| NOMBRES | Robin James |
| APELLIDO | Smith |
| FIRMA | SMITH R J |
| AFILIACIONES | Cardiff University |
| VERIFICADO | No |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 24 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 164 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 22 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 2 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2010 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
Simmel and Ethnomethodology
Georg Simmel, despite being a founding father of sociology, is often excluded from the list of the discipline’s principal founders. This neglect of Simmel’s work was perpetuated in ethnomethodology even though, like ethnomethodology, Simmel’s work concerns the minute organization of everyday interaction. It can, therefore, be of considerable importance for ethnomethodological inquiries. A group of ethnomethodologists devoted two years to reviewin…
What the World is Made Up of”
This article explores the intricate relationship between the development of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EM/CA) and the ethnographic traditions of the Chicago School (CS). By examining the historical and methodological intersections, the study highlights the complex and nuanced resonances between these influential sociological approaches with a focus on the ways CS writing featured in the development of EM/CA work. Drawing on archi…
The (Re)Production, Negotiation, and Navigation of Social Asymmetries‐in‐Action
This article reconsiders, and argues for, the contribution of ethnomethodological and conversation analytic research (EM/CA) to the understanding of social asymmetries in action. As well as highlighting the significance of the approach in describing the interactional “machinery” of supposedly “Big” social issues such as injustice, exclusion, and discrimination, it also considers some of the tensions that have been discussed by key scholars in the…
Leaving the field
Through accounts of ethnographers’ various exits from the field, this book draws attention to an overlooked but essential part of the research process, and contributes to more general discussions of ethnography.
Interaction in public places
In this chapter I introduce, review, and reconsider Erving Goffman’s seminal writings on interaction in public places. As is well known, Goffman’s sociology was primarily concerned with the fundamentally public character of social life and the demands that social settings and co-presence placed upon the self. Indeed, across his work, Goffman attempted to draw sociological attention to how interaction and communication was not to be straightforwar…
On Sacks
Making something out of nothing
Public displays of stillness and silence are increasingly found in contemporary life, yet have seldom been examined as social phenomena in their own right. We analyse people's accomplishment, treatment and negotiation of an encounter with people 'doing nothing' - a breaching experiment comprising a group of students standing still in a city centre - and provide a granular description of the bodily practices whereby passers-by make 'something' out…
The Lost Ethnographies
The Lost Ethnographies reports on the methodological lessons learnt from ethnographic projects that, viewed superficially, failed. Experienced researchers write about projects they planned, and were excited about, which then never began, had to be abandoned, or took such unexpected directions that it became a different piece of work altogether. The topics and settings are varied and disparate, but the lessons learnt have important similarities. T…
Working out Douglas's aphorism
This article aims to reconsider Mary Douglas's well-known aphorism - that, 'where there is dirt there is system' - through the work of street-cleaning in and the handling of detritus in the Upper Town district of Gibraltar. In 'working out' the aphorism, we adopt an ethnomethodological approach and focus upon the description of situated categorisation practices in the treatment of waste and dirt. The article is thus concerned with the methods in …
Everyday territories
This article develops a situational approach to understanding urban public life and, in particular, the production of urban territories. Our aim is to examine the ways in which city space might be understood as comprising multiple, shifting, mobile and rhythmed territories. We argue that such territories are best understood through attending to their everyday production and negotiation, rather than handling territory as an a priori construct. We …
Membership categorisation, category-relevant spaces, and perception-in-action
Interactionism and digital society
In this article we consider the extent to which interactionist ideas can inform the analysis of current socio-technical trends and practices that surround the emerging contours of digital society. We make reference to four field domains of inquiry that are relevant to this task and highlight how established interactionist insights can be carried forward and inform future studies in this developing area
Pedestrian circulations
This article considers the intersection of urban ethnography, Interactionism and the mobilities paradigm. In its course, we develop a discussion of mobilities as a social order, replete with constraints, conditions and contradictions, in dialogue with Goffman’s understanding of interaction order and, more specifically, his remarks on territories and social relations. We draw on ethnographic work undertaken with a team of ‘outreach’ professionals …
Method and Measurement in Sociology, fifty years on
In this article, we revisit Aaron Cicourel’s classic text Method and Measurement in Sociology. We consider the legacy and influence of the book in the context of the continued and urgent significance of such properly methodological inquiry. We examine, in particular, the ways in which Cicourel’s concern with decisions of measurement – as a situated, contingent and unavoidably practical accomplishment – makes a critical contribution to the underst…
Care and Repair and the Politics of Urban Kindness
This article considers the possibility that small acts of urban care, maintenance and cleaning might make for a good city. This might seem a slim possibility, given the vast sociology of hopelessness to which the contemporary city is home. But it can also be argued that a politics, and a sociology, of hope are best looked for not in big picture or utopian thinking but in the practical instances of everyday care and kindness that are as much a par…
Stop and Go
Drawing on fieldwork observation of a team of street-level welfare bureaucrats, this article presents a pedestrian case-study of routine footwork and slow progress in the making and maintaining of contact between outreach workers and the urban homeless. This material is used to highlight two aspects of modern-day mobilities that are perhaps under-examined and certainly worthy of attention. The first is urban pedestrianism, described here not as a…
Urban Rhythms
This insightful collection of papers on the contemporary cityscape explores the rhythms of urban flows, temporalities and interactions. It interprets the city as a complex whole, interwoven with networks and constant movement, and offers case studies of global metropolises from Manchester to Rio de Janeiro, Cardiffto Jakarta. Wide-ranging interdisciplinary analysis Combines urban theory with informed empirical research Includes studies of cities …
No Time Out
This paper is about the twenty-four hour city and analyses this phenomenon with the assistance of a case study dispersed across (temporally and spatially) twenty-four hours spent moving in, around and with the city centre of Cardiff, UK. Reporting from a continuous twenty-four hour period of fieldwork the paper describes the round-the-clock work of a range of urban patrols - street sweepers, Police Community Support Officers and outreach workers …
How Far Does Mobility Get Us
Personal Troubles and Public Issues on the Streets of Las Vegas
Telling the Caqdas code
During the course of this article we examine data gathered from two research meetings in which coding issues and data organization are being discussed in relation to the use of the software package Atlas.ti. The meetings were concerned with the organization and coding of semi-structured interviews carried out by three different groups as part of a wider collaborative research project. A number of papers have considered aspects of coding practice …
Woolworths and Wales
In this paper we present a multi-dimensional analysis of the closure of Woolworths in Wales and the way in which the loss of this familiar high-street brand can be accounted for at a number of levels and within different social arenas. Primarily, the paper demonstrates how Woolworths is positioned as a symbol of a previous era of consumption centred upon community and place based notions of nostalgia and community. What is striking in the analysi…
Goffman's Interaction Order at the Margins
This article considers Goffman's conceptualization of interaction order at the margins of society in encounters between urban welfare workers and their clients. Observations from these encounters demonstrate practices relating to the situated management of stigma and identity, and the accomplishment of role within these service encounters. A reading of Goffman's theoretical contribution lies in revealing how social actors and social structures ar…
Innovation and Reduction in Contemporary Qualitative Methods
During the course of this paper we mobilise an ideal typical framework that identifies three waves of reduction within contemporary qualitative inquiry as they relate to key aspects of the sociological tradition. The paper begins with a consideration of one of sociology's key questions; namely how is social organisation possible? The paper aims to demonstrate how this question moves from view as increased specialisation and differentiation in qua…
Care and Repair and the Politics of Urban Kindness
This article considers the possibility that small acts of urban care, maintenance and cleaning might make for a good city. This might seem a slim possibility, given the vast sociology of hopelessness to which the contemporary city is home. But it can also be argued that a politics, and a sociology, of hope are best looked for not in big picture or utopian thinking but in the practical instances of everyday care and kindness that are as much a par…
Membership categorisation, category-relevant spaces, and perception-in-action
Urban Rhythms
This insightful collection of papers on the contemporary cityscape explores the rhythms of urban flows, temporalities and interactions. It interprets the city as a complex whole, interwoven with networks and constant movement, and offers case studies of global metropolises from Manchester to Rio de Janeiro, Cardiffto Jakarta. Wide-ranging interdisciplinary analysis Combines urban theory with informed empirical research Includes studies of cities …
Goffman's Interaction Order at the Margins
This article considers Goffman's conceptualization of interaction order at the margins of society in encounters between urban welfare workers and their clients. Observations from these encounters demonstrate practices relating to the situated management of stigma and identity, and the accomplishment of role within these service encounters. A reading of Goffman's theoretical contribution lies in revealing how social actors and social structures ar…
Stop and Go
Drawing on fieldwork observation of a team of street-level welfare bureaucrats, this article presents a pedestrian case-study of routine footwork and slow progress in the making and maintaining of contact between outreach workers and the urban homeless. This material is used to highlight two aspects of modern-day mobilities that are perhaps under-examined and certainly worthy of attention. The first is urban pedestrianism, described here not as a…
Pedestrian circulations
This article considers the intersection of urban ethnography, Interactionism and the mobilities paradigm. In its course, we develop a discussion of mobilities as a social order, replete with constraints, conditions and contradictions, in dialogue with Goffman’s understanding of interaction order and, more specifically, his remarks on territories and social relations. We draw on ethnographic work undertaken with a team of ‘outreach’ professionals …
Everyday territories
This article develops a situational approach to understanding urban public life and, in particular, the production of urban territories. Our aim is to examine the ways in which city space might be understood as comprising multiple, shifting, mobile and rhythmed territories. We argue that such territories are best understood through attending to their everyday production and negotiation, rather than handling territory as an a priori construct. We …
No Time Out
This paper is about the twenty-four hour city and analyses this phenomenon with the assistance of a case study dispersed across (temporally and spatially) twenty-four hours spent moving in, around and with the city centre of Cardiff, UK. Reporting from a continuous twenty-four hour period of fieldwork the paper describes the round-the-clock work of a range of urban patrols - street sweepers, Police Community Support Officers and outreach workers …
Working out Douglas's aphorism
This article aims to reconsider Mary Douglas's well-known aphorism - that, 'where there is dirt there is system' - through the work of street-cleaning in and the handling of detritus in the Upper Town district of Gibraltar. In 'working out' the aphorism, we adopt an ethnomethodological approach and focus upon the description of situated categorisation practices in the treatment of waste and dirt. The article is thus concerned with the methods in …
Telling the Caqdas code
During the course of this article we examine data gathered from two research meetings in which coding issues and data organization are being discussed in relation to the use of the software package Atlas.ti. The meetings were concerned with the organization and coding of semi-structured interviews carried out by three different groups as part of a wider collaborative research project. A number of papers have considered aspects of coding practice …
Innovation and Reduction in Contemporary Qualitative Methods
During the course of this paper we mobilise an ideal typical framework that identifies three waves of reduction within contemporary qualitative inquiry as they relate to key aspects of the sociological tradition. The paper begins with a consideration of one of sociology's key questions; namely how is social organisation possible? The paper aims to demonstrate how this question moves from view as increased specialisation and differentiation in qua…
Making something out of nothing
Public displays of stillness and silence are increasingly found in contemporary life, yet have seldom been examined as social phenomena in their own right. We analyse people's accomplishment, treatment and negotiation of an encounter with people 'doing nothing' - a breaching experiment comprising a group of students standing still in a city centre - and provide a granular description of the bodily practices whereby passers-by make 'something' out…
Interactionism and digital society
In this article we consider the extent to which interactionist ideas can inform the analysis of current socio-technical trends and practices that surround the emerging contours of digital society. We make reference to four field domains of inquiry that are relevant to this task and highlight how established interactionist insights can be carried forward and inform future studies in this developing area
Method and Measurement in Sociology, fifty years on
In this article, we revisit Aaron Cicourel’s classic text Method and Measurement in Sociology. We consider the legacy and influence of the book in the context of the continued and urgent significance of such properly methodological inquiry. We examine, in particular, the ways in which Cicourel’s concern with decisions of measurement – as a situated, contingent and unavoidably practical accomplishment – makes a critical contribution to the underst…
Innovation and Reduction in Contemporary Qualitative Methods
During the course of this paper we mobilise an ideal typical framework that identifies three waves of reduction within contemporary qualitative inquiry as they relate to key aspects of the sociological tradition. The paper begins with a consideration of one of sociology's key questions; namely how is social organisation possible? The paper aims to demonstrate how this question moves from view as increased specialisation and differentiation in qua…
Telling the Caqdas code
During the course of this article we examine data gathered from two research meetings in which coding issues and data organization are being discussed in relation to the use of the software package Atlas.ti. The meetings were concerned with the organization and coding of semi-structured interviews carried out by three different groups as part of a wider collaborative research project. A number of papers have considered aspects of coding practice …
Woolworths and Wales
In this paper we present a multi-dimensional analysis of the closure of Woolworths in Wales and the way in which the loss of this familiar high-street brand can be accounted for at a number of levels and within different social arenas. Primarily, the paper demonstrates how Woolworths is positioned as a symbol of a previous era of consumption centred upon community and place based notions of nostalgia and community. What is striking in the analysi…
Goffman's Interaction Order at the Margins
This article considers Goffman's conceptualization of interaction order at the margins of society in encounters between urban welfare workers and their clients. Observations from these encounters demonstrate practices relating to the situated management of stigma and identity, and the accomplishment of role within these service encounters. A reading of Goffman's theoretical contribution lies in revealing how social actors and social structures ar…
How Far Does Mobility Get Us
Personal Troubles and Public Issues on the Streets of Las Vegas
Stop and Go
Drawing on fieldwork observation of a team of street-level welfare bureaucrats, this article presents a pedestrian case-study of routine footwork and slow progress in the making and maintaining of contact between outreach workers and the urban homeless. This material is used to highlight two aspects of modern-day mobilities that are perhaps under-examined and certainly worthy of attention. The first is urban pedestrianism, described here not as a…
Urban Rhythms
This insightful collection of papers on the contemporary cityscape explores the rhythms of urban flows, temporalities and interactions. It interprets the city as a complex whole, interwoven with networks and constant movement, and offers case studies of global metropolises from Manchester to Rio de Janeiro, Cardiffto Jakarta. Wide-ranging interdisciplinary analysis Combines urban theory with informed empirical research Includes studies of cities …
No Time Out
This paper is about the twenty-four hour city and analyses this phenomenon with the assistance of a case study dispersed across (temporally and spatially) twenty-four hours spent moving in, around and with the city centre of Cardiff, UK. Reporting from a continuous twenty-four hour period of fieldwork the paper describes the round-the-clock work of a range of urban patrols - street sweepers, Police Community Support Officers and outreach workers …
Method and Measurement in Sociology, fifty years on
In this article, we revisit Aaron Cicourel’s classic text Method and Measurement in Sociology. We consider the legacy and influence of the book in the context of the continued and urgent significance of such properly methodological inquiry. We examine, in particular, the ways in which Cicourel’s concern with decisions of measurement – as a situated, contingent and unavoidably practical accomplishment – makes a critical contribution to the underst…
Care and Repair and the Politics of Urban Kindness
This article considers the possibility that small acts of urban care, maintenance and cleaning might make for a good city. This might seem a slim possibility, given the vast sociology of hopelessness to which the contemporary city is home. But it can also be argued that a politics, and a sociology, of hope are best looked for not in big picture or utopian thinking but in the practical instances of everyday care and kindness that are as much a par…
Pedestrian circulations
This article considers the intersection of urban ethnography, Interactionism and the mobilities paradigm. In its course, we develop a discussion of mobilities as a social order, replete with constraints, conditions and contradictions, in dialogue with Goffman’s understanding of interaction order and, more specifically, his remarks on territories and social relations. We draw on ethnographic work undertaken with a team of ‘outreach’ professionals …
Membership categorisation, category-relevant spaces, and perception-in-action
Interactionism and digital society
In this article we consider the extent to which interactionist ideas can inform the analysis of current socio-technical trends and practices that surround the emerging contours of digital society. We make reference to four field domains of inquiry that are relevant to this task and highlight how established interactionist insights can be carried forward and inform future studies in this developing area
Everyday territories
This article develops a situational approach to understanding urban public life and, in particular, the production of urban territories. Our aim is to examine the ways in which city space might be understood as comprising multiple, shifting, mobile and rhythmed territories. We argue that such territories are best understood through attending to their everyday production and negotiation, rather than handling territory as an a priori construct. We …
The Lost Ethnographies
The Lost Ethnographies reports on the methodological lessons learnt from ethnographic projects that, viewed superficially, failed. Experienced researchers write about projects they planned, and were excited about, which then never began, had to be abandoned, or took such unexpected directions that it became a different piece of work altogether. The topics and settings are varied and disparate, but the lessons learnt have important similarities. T…
Working out Douglas's aphorism
This article aims to reconsider Mary Douglas's well-known aphorism - that, 'where there is dirt there is system' - through the work of street-cleaning in and the handling of detritus in the Upper Town district of Gibraltar. In 'working out' the aphorism, we adopt an ethnomethodological approach and focus upon the description of situated categorisation practices in the treatment of waste and dirt. The article is thus concerned with the methods in …
On Sacks
Making something out of nothing
Public displays of stillness and silence are increasingly found in contemporary life, yet have seldom been examined as social phenomena in their own right. We analyse people's accomplishment, treatment and negotiation of an encounter with people 'doing nothing' - a breaching experiment comprising a group of students standing still in a city centre - and provide a granular description of the bodily practices whereby passers-by make 'something' out…
Interaction in public places
In this chapter I introduce, review, and reconsider Erving Goffman’s seminal writings on interaction in public places. As is well known, Goffman’s sociology was primarily concerned with the fundamentally public character of social life and the demands that social settings and co-presence placed upon the self. Indeed, across his work, Goffman attempted to draw sociological attention to how interaction and communication was not to be straightforwar…
Leaving the field
Through accounts of ethnographers’ various exits from the field, this book draws attention to an overlooked but essential part of the research process, and contributes to more general discussions of ethnography.
The (Re)Production, Negotiation, and Navigation of Social Asymmetries‐in‐Action
This article reconsiders, and argues for, the contribution of ethnomethodological and conversation analytic research (EM/CA) to the understanding of social asymmetries in action. As well as highlighting the significance of the approach in describing the interactional “machinery” of supposedly “Big” social issues such as injustice, exclusion, and discrimination, it also considers some of the tensions that have been discussed by key scholars in the…
Simmel and Ethnomethodology
Georg Simmel, despite being a founding father of sociology, is often excluded from the list of the discipline’s principal founders. This neglect of Simmel’s work was perpetuated in ethnomethodology even though, like ethnomethodology, Simmel’s work concerns the minute organization of everyday interaction. It can, therefore, be of considerable importance for ethnomethodological inquiries. A group of ethnomethodologists devoted two years to reviewin…
What the World is Made Up of”
This article explores the intricate relationship between the development of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EM/CA) and the ethnographic traditions of the Chicago School (CS). By examining the historical and methodological intersections, the study highlights the complex and nuanced resonances between these influential sociological approaches with a focus on the ways CS writing featured in the development of EM/CA work. Drawing on archi…
Sociology (21 obras) · Social science (15 obras) · Political science (11 obras) · Epistemology (10 obras) · Law (9 obras) · Politics (8 obras) · Computer Science (7 obras) · Geographies of human-animal interactions (6 obras) · Outreach (6 obras) · Geography (5 obras)