This collection of new studies in ethnomethodology addresses sociology's classical questions by developing that strand of ethnomethodological inquiry dealing with membership categorization. This book provides detailed studies of members' use of membership categories across various settings from the O.J. Simpson trial, via TV commercials and news headlines, to school staff and referral meetings. The studies show that category use is occasional, that culture is always internal to action; accordingly sociology's key theoretical problems and substantive areas are re-specified in terms of members' methods of membership categorization. This is the first collection of original, unpublished studies by internationally renowned practitioners of ethnomethodology of members' uses of the descriptive resources of language to describe persons. Co-published with The International Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis.

The theme of this book is how ethnomethodology provides for an 'alternate' sociology by respecifying sociological phenomena as locally accomplished members' activities. This theme is explained in the first two chapters, which comprise an introduction by the editors and a seminal statement of ethnomethodology's analytic stance by its founder, Harold Garfinkel. In his chapter, Garfinkel sets out his conception of the 'corpus status' of ethnomethodological studies as an alternative mode of inquiry into the organization of social life. The remainder of the book comprises original research studies by leading scholars in the field. These chapters are organized into two parts. In the first, the focus is on studies of practical action and organisation. In the second, the emphasis is on studies of practical reasoning and situated logic in various settings. By organizing the book in this way, the collection demonstrates the relevance of ethnomethodological investigations to established topics and issues and indicates the contribution that ethnomethodology can make to the understanding of human action in any and all social contexts. Both individually and collectively, these contributions illustrate how taking an ethnomethodological approach opens up for investigation phenomena that are taken for granted in conventional sociological theorizing.

The authors take three particular sociological perspectives, and use them to offer a distinct and critical reading of criminology, highlighting the ways that crime is, first and foremost, a matter of social definition. They provide a good introductory text which will be of great value to students.