Temporality as a member’s problem in real time: An analysis of a prehospital emergency care setting
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26485/PS/2025/74.3/6Keywords:
Harvey Sacks, ethnomethodology, sociology of time, perspicuous setting, emergency medicineAbstract
The aim of this paper is to explore how theoretical concepts can be studied as members’ problems, building on an argument developed by Sacks and Garfinkel through the notion of perspicuous settings. This notion is crucial for addressing social order as a member’s problem. We aim to articulate ways of describing a member’s problem in real time by focusing on the concept of time, since members’ orientations to time are relevant to virtually all forms of action, whether or not they are carried out through interaction.
It might seem, then, that describing actions in interaction with close attention to the details of sequential organization is the appropriate way to approach members’ problems in real time. However, this approach leaves unaddressed another dimension of members’ orientation to time – namely, the assumptions members make when engaging in setting-specific actions, which may not be audio-visually transcribable. Therefore, this paper articulates different ways of describing time as a member’s problem in real time, encompassing members’ orientations both to the ordering principles of interaction and to time as an ordering principle of the work setting – or to either of these dimensions individually.
The setting of prehospital emergency care is chosen as a perspicuous setting, in which various temporal and spatial dimensions are made relevant in the coordination of actions involved in transferring a patient under treatment.
References
Anderson Robert J., Wes W. Sharrock. 2018. Action at a distance: Studies in the practicality of executive management. London: Routledge.
Au-Yeung Terry S.H., Richard Fitzgerald. 2022. “Time structures in ethnomethodological and conversation analysis studies of practical activity”. The Sociological Review 71(1): 221–242. https://doi: 10.1177/00380261221103018.
Burns Stacy. 2025. “Sacks and Garfinkel, early on.” Przegląd Socjologiczny 74(3): 37–54. https://doi.org/10.26485/PS/2025/74.3/4. (this issue)
Button Graham. 1990. “On member’s time”. Réseaux 8(1): 161–182. https://doi: 10.3406/reso.1990.3537.
Carlin Andrew P. 2021. Sacks’ plenum: The inscription of social orders. In: On Sacks. Methodology, materials, and inspirations. R. J. Smith, R. Fitzgerald, W. Housley (eds.), 32–46. Abingdon: Routledge. https://doi: 10.4324/9780429024849-4.
Durkheim Émile. 2008. The elementary forms of religious life. C. Cosman (trans.), M.S. Cladis (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Garfinkel Harold, D. Lawrence Wieder. 1992. Two incommensurable, asymmetrically alternate technologies of social analysis. In: Text in context: Contributions to ethnomethodology. G. Watson, R.M. Seiler (eds.), 175–206. Newbury Park: Sage.
Garfinkel Harold. 2002. Ethnomethodology’s program: Working out Durkheim’s aphorism. A.W. Rawls (ed.). Rowman & Littlefield.
Giddens Anthony. 1986. The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hernes Tor. 2014. A process theory of organization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ikeya Nozomi. 2003. “Practical management of mobility: The case of the emergency medical system”. Environment and Planning A 35(9): 1547–1564. https://doi:10.1068/a35194.
Ikeya Nozomi. 2019. “A reading of Sacks’ ‘Lawyer’s work’ as an invitation to ethnomethodological studies of work”. Ethnographic Studies 16: 167–180. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3459383.
Ikeya Nozomi. 2020. “Hybridity of hybrid studies of work: Examination of informing practitioners in practice”. Ethnographic Studies 17: 22–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4050533.
Ikeya Nozomi. 2025. Hybrid studies. In: The Routledge international handbook of ethnomethodology. A.P. Carlin, A. Dennis, K.N. Jenkings, O. Lindwall, M. Mair (eds.), 313–322. Abingdon: Routledge. https://doi: 10.4324/9780429323904-31.
Ikeya Nozomi, Shintaro Matsunaga, Tatsuya Akutsu, Seiichi Takahashi, Hiroko Nakazawa. 2023. Working out interprofessional collaboration: Flight nurses’ practical management of prehospital emergency care. In: Medical and healthcare interactions: Members’ competence and socialization. S. Keel (ed.), 47–72. Abingdon: Routledge. https://doi: 10.4324/9781003312345-4.
Mair Michael, Wes Sharrock. 2021. Action, meaning and understanding: Seeing sociologically with Harvey Sacks. In: On Sacks. Methodology, materials, and inspirations. R.J. Smith, R. Fitzgerald, W. Housley (eds.), 19–31. Abingdon: Routledge. https://doi: 10.4324/9780429024849-3.
Mondada Lorenza. 2021a.The temporality of embodied action: responding, anticipating, preempting [Video]. DARGchive. www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWI4EQTOpfI.
Mondada Lorenza. 2021b “How early can embodied responses be? Issues in time and sequentiality.” Discourse Processes 58(4): 397–418. https://doi:10.1080/0163853X.2020.1871561.
Monteiro David, Oriana Rainho Brás, Michel Binet. 2024. “Time-oriented decisions in palliative care team meetings”. Discourse Studies 26(3): 381–401. https://doi: 10.1177/14614456231223147.
Rawls Anne Warfield. 2005. “Garfinkel’s conception of time”. Time & Society 14(2–3): 163–190. https://doi: 10.1177/0961463X05055132.
Sacks Harvey. 1972. Notes on police assessment of moral character. In: Studies in Social Interaction. D. Sudnow (ed.), 280–283. New York: Free Press.
Sacks Harvey. 1992. Lecture 14: The inference-making machine. In: Lectures on conversation, vol 1. Jefferson, G. (ed.), 113–125. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sacks Harvey. 1997. The lawyer’s work. In: Law in action: Ethnomethodological and conversation analytic approaches to law. M. Travers, J.F. Manzo (eds.), 43–49. Farnham: Ashgate.
Sharrock Wes, Graham Button. 1991. The social actor: Social action in real time. In: Ethnomethodology and the human sciences. G. Button (ed.), 137–175. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511611827.008.
Sorokin Pitirim A., Robert K. Merton. 1937. “Social time: A methodological and functional analysis”. American Journal of Sociology 42(5): 615–629. https://doi.org/10.1086/217540.
Zerubavel Eviatar. 1979. Patterns of time in hospital life: A sociological perspective. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
