M Mair
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 13192 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | M Mair |
| NOMBRES | M |
| APELLIDO | Mair |
| FIRMA | MAIR M |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Liverpool |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0929-5426 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 18 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 85 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 18 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1979 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2023 |
| ÍNDICE H | 6 |
Thinking Like a Machine
As part of ongoing research bridging ethnomethodology and computer science, in this article we offer an alternate reading of Alan Turing’s 1936 paper, “On Computable Numbers”. Following through Turing’s machinic respecification of computation, we hope to contribute to a deflationary position on AI by showing that the activities attributed to AIs are achieved in the course of methodic hands-on work with computational systems and not in isolation b…
Doing the Organization’s Work—Transcription for All Practical Governmental Purposes
By comparing two distinct governmental organizations (the US military and NASA) this paper unpacks two main issues. On the one hand, the paper examines the transcripts that are produced as part of work activities in these worksites and what the transcripts reveal about the organizations themselves. Additionally, the paper analyses what the transcripts disclose about the practices involved in their creation and use for practical purposes in these …
Fictions of practice – anthropological accounts and the fabrication of the real
Just what are we doing when we're describing AI? Harvey Sacks, the commentator machine, and the descriptive politics of the new artificial intelligence
In dialogue with the work of Heather Love and colleagues, this article makes use of a peculiar 'descriptive assemblage' proposed by Harvey Sacks (1963) - that of the 'commentator machine' - to open up issues of 'descriptive politics' in the field of contemporary Artificial Intelligence (AI). We do so by reviewing the gameplay of Google DeepMind's AlphaGo - an algorithm designed to outperform human players at the game of Go - with a focus on the i…
Doing things with description
In a number of linked articles and monographs over the last decade (e.g. Love, 2010, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017), literary scholar and critic Heather Love has called for a descriptive (re)turn in the humanities, repeatedly taking up examples of descriptive methods in the social sciences as exemplifying what that (re)turn might look like and achieve. Those of us working as sociologists, anthropologists, science and technology studies scholars and rese…
Impacts of urban development on urban water management – Limits of predictability
Violence as work
The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link
The planners’ dream goes wrong?’ Questioning citizen-centred planning
The reform of urban and environmental planning in England since the election of the Coalition government in 2010 has resulted in the emergence of Neighbourhood Planning: a situation in which citizens can autonomously assemble, define the spatial extent of their neighbourhood and author a plan for it. In this paper, we argue that this radical policy is part of a wider agenda to de-professionalise planning as a statutory function and has its roots …
Statistical Practice
As a contribution to current debates on the 'social life of methods', in this article we present an ethnomethodological study of the role of understanding within statistical practice. After reviewing the empirical turn in the methods literature and the challenges to the qualitative-quantitative divide it has given rise to, we argue such case studies are relevant because they enable us to see different ways in which 'methods', here quantitative me…
Methodological troubles as problems and phenomena
Across the disciplinary frontiers of the social sciences, studies by social scientists treating their own investigative practices as sites of empirical inquiry have proliferated. Most of these studies have been retrospective, historical, after-the-fact reconstructions of social scientific studies mixing interview data with the (predominantly textual) traces that investigations leave behind. Observational studies of in situ work in social science …
Interpretive Asymmetry, Retrospective Inquiry and the Explication of Action in an Incident of Friendly Fire
Video Abstract
War-making and sense-making
In this paper we analyse a 'friendly fire' incident from the second Gulf War and the controversy which came to envelop it during a coroner's inquest in 2007. Focusing on the cockpit video of the incident that was leaked to the media during that inquest, we examine what the military and civilian investigators were involved in reconstructing: the incident as it unfolded in real time. Our analysis is grounded in a praxeological perspective that draw…
From Methodology to Methodography
Despite the huge literature on the methodology of the social sciences, relatively little interest has been shown in sociological description of social science research methods in practice, i.e., in the application of sociology to sociological work. The overwhelming (if not exhaustive) interest in research methods is an evaluative and prescriptive one. This is particularly surprising, since the sociology of science has in the past few decades scru…
Deconstructing behavioural classifications
In this article, I examine a defining feature of the ‘new public health’: the (re)construction of health-related phenomena in behavioural terms. While the ‘behavioural turn’ within epidemiology has had far-reaching implications for the way in which public health problems as a whole are conceptualised, including, significantly, obesity and alcohol (mis)use, here I explore how the new public health works up its behavioural objects using the example…
Descriptions as data
This article examines some general issues around the use of data in social research by taking an extended look at how drawings and text have been used in ‘draw and write’ research. With reference to a split between positivist and interpretivist studies, the authors argue that the problems generated by draw and write research reflect what has been described as a ‘crisis of representation’ in social research more broadly. With reference to descript…
Critical reflections on the field of tobacco research
In recent years, tobacco research, as a field of investigative practices, has come to be seen as a major contributor to broader tobacco control efforts and a ‘significant component of the global health agenda’ (World Health Organization (1999 World Health Organisation. 1999. Confronting the epidemic: A global agenda for tobacco control research, Geneva: WHO. [Google Scholar]). Confronting the epidemic: A Global Agenda For Tobacco Control Research…
Lies, damned lies and statistics? Reliability and personal accounts of smoking among young people
Rapport and Timeless Moments
Statistical Practice
As a contribution to current debates on the 'social life of methods', in this article we present an ethnomethodological study of the role of understanding within statistical practice. After reviewing the empirical turn in the methods literature and the challenges to the qualitative-quantitative divide it has given rise to, we argue such case studies are relevant because they enable us to see different ways in which 'methods', here quantitative me…
Methodological troubles as problems and phenomena
Across the disciplinary frontiers of the social sciences, studies by social scientists treating their own investigative practices as sites of empirical inquiry have proliferated. Most of these studies have been retrospective, historical, after-the-fact reconstructions of social scientific studies mixing interview data with the (predominantly textual) traces that investigations leave behind. Observational studies of in situ work in social science …
War-making and sense-making
In this paper we analyse a 'friendly fire' incident from the second Gulf War and the controversy which came to envelop it during a coroner's inquest in 2007. Focusing on the cockpit video of the incident that was leaked to the media during that inquest, we examine what the military and civilian investigators were involved in reconstructing: the incident as it unfolded in real time. Our analysis is grounded in a praxeological perspective that draw…
From Methodology to Methodography
Despite the huge literature on the methodology of the social sciences, relatively little interest has been shown in sociological description of social science research methods in practice, i.e., in the application of sociology to sociological work. The overwhelming (if not exhaustive) interest in research methods is an evaluative and prescriptive one. This is particularly surprising, since the sociology of science has in the past few decades scru…
The planners’ dream goes wrong?’ Questioning citizen-centred planning
The reform of urban and environmental planning in England since the election of the Coalition government in 2010 has resulted in the emergence of Neighbourhood Planning: a situation in which citizens can autonomously assemble, define the spatial extent of their neighbourhood and author a plan for it. In this paper, we argue that this radical policy is part of a wider agenda to de-professionalise planning as a statutory function and has its roots …
Interpretive Asymmetry, Retrospective Inquiry and the Explication of Action in an Incident of Friendly Fire
Video Abstract
Violence as work
The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link
Doing things with description
In a number of linked articles and monographs over the last decade (e.g. Love, 2010, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017), literary scholar and critic Heather Love has called for a descriptive (re)turn in the humanities, repeatedly taking up examples of descriptive methods in the social sciences as exemplifying what that (re)turn might look like and achieve. Those of us working as sociologists, anthropologists, science and technology studies scholars and rese…
Lies, damned lies and statistics? Reliability and personal accounts of smoking among young people
Just what are we doing when we're describing AI? Harvey Sacks, the commentator machine, and the descriptive politics of the new artificial intelligence
In dialogue with the work of Heather Love and colleagues, this article makes use of a peculiar 'descriptive assemblage' proposed by Harvey Sacks (1963) - that of the 'commentator machine' - to open up issues of 'descriptive politics' in the field of contemporary Artificial Intelligence (AI). We do so by reviewing the gameplay of Google DeepMind's AlphaGo - an algorithm designed to outperform human players at the game of Go - with a focus on the i…
Rapport and Timeless Moments
Lies, damned lies and statistics? Reliability and personal accounts of smoking among young people
Descriptions as data
This article examines some general issues around the use of data in social research by taking an extended look at how drawings and text have been used in ‘draw and write’ research. With reference to a split between positivist and interpretivist studies, the authors argue that the problems generated by draw and write research reflect what has been described as a ‘crisis of representation’ in social research more broadly. With reference to descript…
Critical reflections on the field of tobacco research
In recent years, tobacco research, as a field of investigative practices, has come to be seen as a major contributor to broader tobacco control efforts and a ‘significant component of the global health agenda’ (World Health Organization (1999 World Health Organisation. 1999. Confronting the epidemic: A global agenda for tobacco control research, Geneva: WHO. [Google Scholar]). Confronting the epidemic: A Global Agenda For Tobacco Control Research…
Deconstructing behavioural classifications
In this article, I examine a defining feature of the ‘new public health’: the (re)construction of health-related phenomena in behavioural terms. While the ‘behavioural turn’ within epidemiology has had far-reaching implications for the way in which public health problems as a whole are conceptualised, including, significantly, obesity and alcohol (mis)use, here I explore how the new public health works up its behavioural objects using the example…
From Methodology to Methodography
Despite the huge literature on the methodology of the social sciences, relatively little interest has been shown in sociological description of social science research methods in practice, i.e., in the application of sociology to sociological work. The overwhelming (if not exhaustive) interest in research methods is an evaluative and prescriptive one. This is particularly surprising, since the sociology of science has in the past few decades scru…
War-making and sense-making
In this paper we analyse a 'friendly fire' incident from the second Gulf War and the controversy which came to envelop it during a coroner's inquest in 2007. Focusing on the cockpit video of the incident that was leaked to the media during that inquest, we examine what the military and civilian investigators were involved in reconstructing: the incident as it unfolded in real time. Our analysis is grounded in a praxeological perspective that draw…
Interpretive Asymmetry, Retrospective Inquiry and the Explication of Action in an Incident of Friendly Fire
Video Abstract
Methodological troubles as problems and phenomena
Across the disciplinary frontiers of the social sciences, studies by social scientists treating their own investigative practices as sites of empirical inquiry have proliferated. Most of these studies have been retrospective, historical, after-the-fact reconstructions of social scientific studies mixing interview data with the (predominantly textual) traces that investigations leave behind. Observational studies of in situ work in social science …
Statistical Practice
As a contribution to current debates on the 'social life of methods', in this article we present an ethnomethodological study of the role of understanding within statistical practice. After reviewing the empirical turn in the methods literature and the challenges to the qualitative-quantitative divide it has given rise to, we argue such case studies are relevant because they enable us to see different ways in which 'methods', here quantitative me…
The planners’ dream goes wrong?’ Questioning citizen-centred planning
The reform of urban and environmental planning in England since the election of the Coalition government in 2010 has resulted in the emergence of Neighbourhood Planning: a situation in which citizens can autonomously assemble, define the spatial extent of their neighbourhood and author a plan for it. In this paper, we argue that this radical policy is part of a wider agenda to de-professionalise planning as a statutory function and has its roots …
Violence as work
The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link
Impacts of urban development on urban water management – Limits of predictability
Fictions of practice – anthropological accounts and the fabrication of the real
Just what are we doing when we're describing AI? Harvey Sacks, the commentator machine, and the descriptive politics of the new artificial intelligence
In dialogue with the work of Heather Love and colleagues, this article makes use of a peculiar 'descriptive assemblage' proposed by Harvey Sacks (1963) - that of the 'commentator machine' - to open up issues of 'descriptive politics' in the field of contemporary Artificial Intelligence (AI). We do so by reviewing the gameplay of Google DeepMind's AlphaGo - an algorithm designed to outperform human players at the game of Go - with a focus on the i…
Doing things with description
In a number of linked articles and monographs over the last decade (e.g. Love, 2010, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017), literary scholar and critic Heather Love has called for a descriptive (re)turn in the humanities, repeatedly taking up examples of descriptive methods in the social sciences as exemplifying what that (re)turn might look like and achieve. Those of us working as sociologists, anthropologists, science and technology studies scholars and rese…
Doing the Organization’s Work—Transcription for All Practical Governmental Purposes
By comparing two distinct governmental organizations (the US military and NASA) this paper unpacks two main issues. On the one hand, the paper examines the transcripts that are produced as part of work activities in these worksites and what the transcripts reveal about the organizations themselves. Additionally, the paper analyses what the transcripts disclose about the practices involved in their creation and use for practical purposes in these …
Thinking Like a Machine
As part of ongoing research bridging ethnomethodology and computer science, in this article we offer an alternate reading of Alan Turing’s 1936 paper, “On Computable Numbers”. Following through Turing’s machinic respecification of computation, we hope to contribute to a deflationary position on AI by showing that the activities attributed to AIs are achieved in the course of methodic hands-on work with computational systems and not in isolation b…
Sociology (12 obras) · Epistemology (10 obras) · Political science (9 obras) · Law (8 obras) · Computer Science (7 obras) · Psychology (7 obras) · Social science (7 obras) · Engineering (5 obras) · Ethnomethodology (5 obras) · Law (5 obras)