Thinking Ethnographically

Defining Social Reality
In: Thinking Ethnographically
By: Paul Atkinson

Pub. Date: 2017
Access Date: March 6, 2018
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications Ltd
City: 55 City Road
Print ISBN: 9780857025906
Online ISBN: 9781473982741
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781473982741
Print pages: 20-42
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Defining Social Reality
Introduction
Social realities, social life-worlds, are what ethnographers study. They are not ‘given’ and they
require detailed studies that reflect and respect their complexity. The notion that social realities
are socially constructed is something of a commonplace. But it deserves careful attention.
Constructionism (or constructivism) in general is a very important aspect of an ethnographic
understanding. Unfortunately, it is readily misunderstood and poorly applied. In particular, it is
too easy to assume that a constructionist analytic perspective implies that phenomena are ‘only’
constructed, or that they therefore lack any material substance. But there is nothing trivial
about constructions, and they have real embodiments and practical accomplishment. Likewise,
it is not the goal of constructionist analysis simply to conclude that things are socially
constructed, but to document how they are, with what resources, and with what consequences.
In other words, we ought to study how social realities are produced. Moreover, we need to
remind ourselves that notions of construction always imply the social. We are not dealing here
with private worlds or fantasies. Assumptions and activities in and about the world are
generated through socially shared beliefs, knowledge and conventions. Consequently, there is
a direct and necessary analytic parallel between our studies of social worlds and their
production and the detailed study of practical knowledge.
Just as realities are socially defined, so situations have their construction. The idea of the
definition of the situation is fundamental to our close analysis of social activities and events. But
if we subscribe to the view that situations are real insofar as they are defined as real, then that
does not mean that any or all such defining is arbitrary. Far from it: such defining is based on
shared or contested stocks of knowledge. They rest on the kinds of discursive and material
resources that social actors can mobilise. Situations and their definitions have to be sustained
through social action. Shared definitions depend on the intersubjective, mutual monitoring of
the parties to the situation. The nature of such interactional work depends on the frames of
reference that actors bring to bear and negotiate between themselves. There are degrees of
tentativeness or certainty concerning ‘what is occurring’. Is this serious or playful? Is it
wholeheartedly sincere? Aspects of interaction can be speculative, as it were: flirtation can be
an end in itself, or a speculative movement towards a different and more consequential
trajectory.
In other ways, social worlds are the products of social definition. There are no naturally-
occurring fields for us to study or for members to inhabit. The social world, the world around us
(what the phenomenologists call the Umwelt, which is only German for the same thing), is a
Page 2 of 22 Thinking Ethnographically

shifting thing. It is defined by boundaries – physical and symbolic – that are themselves subject
to definition and negotiation. Boundaries are important in shaping the contours of everyday life.
Architectural boundaries, or geographical demarcations, can define spaces as sacred or
profane, frontstage or backstage, private or public. Such demarcations are consequential. In
this chapter, therefore, we shall examine some of the aspects that ethnographers need to take
on board. Given, as I have already said, that the ‘fields’ of fieldwork are not natural entities, we
need to pay close attention to how social worlds are identified, sustained and contested.
One can see that social constructions and definitions of the situation imply degrees of trust.
Trust – what Durkheim captured in writing about the non-contractual element of the contract –
is fundamental to the conduct of social action and interaction. It reflects the kind of practical
assumptions that we rely on unreflectingly. I place my trust in repertoires of experience and
reasoning that seem to work for most purposes. I place or withhold trust on the basis of what I
know about the kind of actor I am dealing with. I trust in certain procedures that I have relied on
before.
Social construction of reality
Constructionism has many roots and inspirations. It is convenient to think in terms of the key
work of Berger and Luckmann (1967). They really introduced to the English-speaking world key
aspects of the phenomenological movement and the work of authors like Alfred Schütz (1967).
It has also been associated especially closely with strands of thought in science and
technology studies (STS), social problems and criminology research, and the study of medical
knowledge. The STS strand was partly influenced by the work of Thomas Kuhn (1962), whose
book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions helped to establish a distinctively sociological or
anthropological view of scientific work and knowledge (Fuller 2000). The work of authors such
as Michel Foucault has also contributed, from a very different starting point, to a broadly
constructivist perspective on knowledge formation, cultural and scientific categories, and the
categorisation of social actors (e.g. Foucault 1973). It is also, more generically and loosely,
associated with interpretative social research. In the latter sense it does not, perhaps, have the
radical force of the pure phenomenological position. But viewed from a more general
sociological position, a constructivist perspective is a powerful way of comprehending how
everyday and specialist knowledge is produced, transmitted, used, validated and legitimated.
Such a view suspends our ordinary beliefs in the categories and contents of knowledge.
It is important to remember that social construction is proposed. In other words, constructivism

is not a claim that ‘realities’ can be conjured out of thin air purely by acts of will and imagination
by individual social actors. Moreover the fact that such activity is social means that it is rooted in

shared cultural forms and resources. Constructs have history, they are embedded in traditions
and collective memories. The fact that they are ‘constructions’ should also alert us to the fact
that they require collective work to create or sustain them. So there is nothing mystical about
such ideas. On the contrary, they are thoroughly sociological and historical. Equally,
constructivists do not deny the material, concrete realities with which people work: an
exploration of the construction of diabetes or HIV/AIDS does nothing to wish them away or to
deny their physical consequences. We might equally think of the social production o f
phenomena, which gives us a yet more vivid reminder that we are talking about collective work
(in the broadest sense).
Constructionist analyses have been applied especially to social problems. Indeed, that is one of
the fields where such a perspective has flourished. One must be careful not to imply that a
‘problem’ is ‘only’ or ‘just’ a social construction. While constructionist analysis may demonstrate
and explain how a problem comes to be identified as such, how it is defined, how it is
measured, and its trajectory of development, our task is not to explain it away. It can be hard to
maintain strictly indifferent or symmetrical forms of analysis, but it is vital at least to try to
bracket any views as to the validity of any given construction. The constructionist perspective is
a methodological one, and not an ontological one. We are not in the business of vulgar
‘debunking’. By treating something as a social construction we are simply recognising that
there can be no social or cultural phenomenon that is independent of the processes of
recognition, description, or classification that render it as a social object in the first place. It is
too easy to slip into a mode of explanation that contrasts a social problem as a construction
(such as a moral panic) with some implied other state that is supposedly a true state of affairs.
Classics on the constructionist analyses of social problems include Spector and Kitsuse (1977),
Gusfield (1981) and Best (2004).
Some commentators and critics seem to think that the social analyst is only interested in
demonstrating that something – such as a diagnosis or a social problem – is a matter of social
construction. But most analysts working in this tradition would treat that as the starting point,
actually trying to explore how that work is done: Who makes decisions and imposes
interpretations? Based on what occupational or other culture? How do actors learn such
interpretative methods? What representations are used (e.g. media accounts, narratives,
images)? Some commentators – pro and contra constructivism – assume that the social
analyst’s aim is to undermine the assumptions, categories and decisions under investigation.
But it is not necessary or desirable to assume that constructivism is always critical or seeks to
belittle the authority of science and other expert fields. Indeed, it goes no further, in principle,
than demonstrating that science, technology, or medicine are human undertakings that share

the same or similar processes that suffuse every other human, social activity. In many ways that
ought to endow the work and achievements of those domains of knowledge with a certain
nobility, rather than diminishing them. Equally, of course, it may call into question practitioners’
claims to superior ethical standards, the disinterested pursuit of knowledge, or selfless
devotion. Shortcomings are also human attributes, and ethics are context dependent.
In the same way, it is sometimes assumed that constructivists perversely deny the existence of
any material ‘reality’. This is not the case. It confuses an analytic stance with a normative one,
or a methodological stance with an ontological one. Constructivism is a methodological
perspective that requires the analyst to consider any and every aspect of knowledge as equally
‘socially constructed’. This is the principle of analytic symmetry. Similar criticisms are based on
what the critic assumes are such indisputably real phenomena that any questioning of them is
wrong-headed. Howard Becker (2014) provides a valuable (and characteristically readable)
rebuttal. ‘What about murder?’, he would hear from critics within criminology or socio-legal
studies: the implication being that murder must be a crime irrespective of any social-labelling
processes. ‘What about Mozart?’ critics ask, asserting that the composer was a genius by any
criteria. The fact that Mozart’s or Beethoven’s genius (DeNora 1995) is socially constructed
neither detracts from nor adds to the value of their music, but it does invite us to consider just
how aesthetic judgements are made, and by whom, using what criteria; it asks us to investigate
the role of impresarios, performers, critics and other cultural entrepreneurs; it forces us to
consider the contemporaries of such ‘geniuses’ to see why they have been relegated to the
margins of artistic canons. We might therefore end up understanding that artistic reputations
are not divorced from the social processes of production and reproduction, and are culturally
shaped by shared conventions. Indeed, we would readily broaden our analysis to include other
larger-than-life geniuses of the musical canon (such as Liszt or Paganini), while making
appropriate comparisons with contemporary celebrity culture.
There are many domains where the construction of categories of thought and action is central
to sociological or anthropological analysis: medicine and psychiatry; deviance, crime and law;
aesthetic judgements; belief systems. In a sense, without saying so, all of anthropology is
about the social construction of reality, as it emphasises the extent to which different cultures
can classify and manage the world – social and natural – in distinctive ways. Much of the
interactionist tradition in sociology is also concerned with social processes whereby facts,
decisions, categories, labels and the like are arrived at and implemented. This is paralleled by a
long-standing interest in the definition of the situation (discussed elsewhere in this chapter).
Key examples of research on constructivism are to be found in virtually all of the main fields of
empirical fieldwork. In medical settings, the construction of diagnoses and management

decisions has been a major and recurrent theme. Contrasting approaches characterise the
field. On the one hand there are perspectives inspired by poststructuralist thought, associated
especially with the work of Foucault, stressing the historical and cultural specificity of clinical
categories and diagnoses (Foucault 1973). Medical knowledge is analysed as a projection of
medical power. Research from an interpretive or interactionist tradition on the other hand
stresses the local, practical accomplishment of diagnoses and management decisions. Medical
constructivism clearly does not try to wish away the realities of bodily pathology, but argues that
they can be construed/constructed in multiple ways, and that there is socially-distributed work
that goes into such constructions. Mol’s (2002) analysis of multiple professional versions of
physical phenomena is a key exemplar, while constructivist perspectives also treat lay persons’
understandings of bodily and health-related phenomena as worthy of careful analysis. (See
Atkinson and Gregory 2007 for a review of constructivism and medical knowledge.) In a similar
way, Science and Technology Studies (STS) is thoroughly constructivist in perspective; indeed
it can be argued that virtually all STS is constructivist as some level (though the field is
internally divided). Key ethnographic studies in the field certainly embody a constructivist
analytic perspective (e.g. Knorr-Cetina 1999).
Sometimes the relativism that seems to be embedded in a constructivist stance is presented as

a major problem for ethnographers. In the first place, we need to affirm constantly that
processes of knowledge production and construction are observable, empirical issues. It is
perfectly possible to observe and to document the processes whereby a diagnosis gets
assembled, a legal outcome is negotiated, a social problem is defined as such, or a team of
professionals puts together a case. Such empirical analysis is no different in kind or in principle
from any of the other social processes and encounters that one might observe in the course of
any field research. Do we ourselves escape from such processes? Of course not, we frame our
own arguments and our own texts in accordance with socially-shared conventions (Atkinson
1990).
For most practical research purposes, the ethnographer ought to suspend not just her or his
common-sense ideas about ‘realities’, but also bracket out the many debates and controversies
about constructionist (or constructivist) analysis itself. There are, after all, many empirical
issues that deserve attention irrespective of philosophy. For instance, there are many settings
where one needs and wants to ask: How are the facts produced? How are phenomena
classified and measured? How do actors describe what they see or hear, and how do they
describe what is going on? How do actors mobilise collectively to create preferred outcomes?
What methods are used to make a given social field relatively stable and predictable? How do
social actors interact so as to bring their perceptions of events into closer alignment? How is

consensus established and maintained? And so on. We can and should answer such
questions in the field, without recourse to speculation on the nature of ‘reality’ beyond or prior
to our ethnographic inquiries (cf. Best 2008). As Maxwell (2012) and others have persuasively
argued, it is perfectly possible to sustain a (sophisticatedly) realist ontology together with a
constructivist epistemology. And in any case, it is also perfectly possible to observe and
document the processes whereby specific ‘realities’ (such as medical diagnoses or legal
judgements) are accomplished in equally real social settings. In other words, as ethnographers
we are not engaged in simply asserting that phenomena are socially constructed. We look
beyond that to ask ourselves how those tasks are accomplished, how realities are sustained, or
challenged; how they are justified; how they are reproduced. We also ask ourselves: What are
the consequences of such reality work? How are specific social realities enforced or
challenged? With what resources and skills are they accomplished? How are they maintained
through organisational practices, through everyday routines, or through common-sense
categories? For a guide to studies in this vein, see the collection of essays edited by Gubrium
and Holstein (2007).
Social worlds
The notion of a social world is associated especially with an analytic perspective derived from
the interactionist tradition of a second and third generation of ‘Chicago’ sociology (Fine 1995)
(which is not confined geographically to Chicago). It was explicated by Shibutani (1955) and
Strauss (1978b, 1982, 1984, 1993), among others. It has been applied to the analysis of
biomedicine and other science (e.g. Fujimura 1988; Clarke 1990), and occupational groups
(Kling and Gerson 1978). In general, social worlds are identified in terms of common or joint
activities, their actors bound together by a network of communication. In these and related
perspectives, there are several key social processes that guide the analysis: they are the
intersection of social worlds; segmentation into sub-worlds; and potential issues of authenticity
and legitimacy. In other words, in the interactionist style, the emphasis is on processes, and
competition. The analysis parallels the analysis of occupations and professions, as developed
by Everett Hughes. Here too we find an emphasis on professional segmentation, on
competition, on contested claims to legitimacy (Strauss, Schatzman, Bucher, Ehrlich and
Sabshin 1964).
In use, the idea is closely linked to the work of Howard Becker and is exemplified in his
monograph on art, appropriately called Art Worlds (Becker 1982). In the first place, this study
demonstrates a common trait of studies by Everett Hughes and his circle. Becker refuses any
approach that starts from an assumption that there is anything special or ‘consecrated’ about
the work of art. Moreover, the analytic focus is not just on the work of art in itself. Rather,

Becker focuses on the social relations and division of labour that make possible any ‘art’ activity.
That complex of social relations and the variety of everyday work constitute the art world.
Hence, in the context of a discussion of the division of labour, Becker suggests:
Painters thus depend on manufacturers for canvas, stretchers, paint, and brushes; on
dealers, collectors and museum curators for exhibition space and financial support; on
critics and aestheticians for the rationale for what they do; on the state for the
patronage or even the advantageous tax laws which persuade collectors to buy works
and donate them to the public; on members of the public to respond to the work
emotionally; and on the other painters, contemporary and past, who created the
tradition which makes the backdrop against which their work makes sense. (1982: 13)
An obvious problem with this rather loose characterisation is that it can be extended almost
indefinitely. For instance, the commercial art world definitely needs specialist shippers and
couriers, who can deliver artworks safely and promptly to galleries and collectors; specialist
insurance companies who will insure individual works or art collections; event organisers and
caterers for gallery and exhibition openings; publishers for art monographs; printers for
exhibition catalogues; magazines in which exhibitions and openings can be advertised and
reviewed. And so on. There is an obvious danger of lumping together a vastly disparate variety
of actors and activities and declaring it a ‘social world’, simply because they are all engaged in
a set of activities with a common name (in this case ‘art’). It is clear that one can only develop
such an idea with real analytic bite if it is grounded in empirical research on actual social
relations. In the case of ‘art’ worlds, therefore, one needs detailed ethnographic studies that
preserve the specificity of the art and the concrete social relations that constitute a possible
‘world’. One such exemplar is Gary Alan Fine’s study of naïve American art and its collectors
(Fine 2004), or his monograph on mushroom collectors (Fine 1998).
Becker himself illuminates his approach in a useful and telling interview (Becker and Pessin
2006). There he and his interviewer contrast Becker’s approach to ‘worlds’ with Bourdieu’s
notion of ‘fields’ (e.g. Bourdieu 1993). Perhaps the distinction seems like academic nit-picking.
On the other hand, it helps to clarify what is going on here. Becker suggests that Bourdieu
uses the idea of a field as a metaphor to capture impersonal ‘forces’. (I think that this is entirely
congruent with the French anthropology and sociology that permeated the intellectual
background to Bourdieu’s work.) It owes much to structuralism (broadly defined), even when
Bourdieu claims to be reacting against it. The field is a site of power and domination, of
competition for scarce resources, and of symbolic boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. In
sharp contrast Becker says that his notion of a social world is essentially a descriptive term,
and not an abstract metaphor. In the course of the interview he says,

A ‘world’ is thus an ensemble of people who do something together. The action of

each is not determined by something like the ‘global structure’ of the world in question
but by the specific motivations of each of the participants, any of whom might ‘do
something different’, create new responses to new situations. In these conditions,
what they do together results from arrangements about which the least one can say is
that they are never entirely predictable. (2006: 280)
In other words, as Becker paraphrases himself immediately after, a social world ‘consists of real
people who are trying to get things done, largely by getting other people to do things that will
assist them in their project’ (ibid.).
These two poles – the abstract, metaphorical and the concretely descriptive – capture a
recurrent tension in the conduct and reportage of ethnographic fieldwork. The tensions within
as well as between the two positions are also telling. While Bourdieu seems to Becker to drain
the actual interpersonal work out of his ‘field’, Becker seems to me to remove from his ‘world’
the specificity that makes it a world (or anything) in the first place. His approach leaves a
residual paradox: in the complete absence of any discussion of aesthetics or values, one
remains mystified as to quite why the artist would devote years of her or his time – with no
guaranteed material reward – to making artworks of any kind. After all, art may well be work.
But is it always work like any other? Indeed, is any work just work like any other? If we confine
ourselves to the most generic of analytic categories, then we are always in danger of losing the
distinctive ‘whatness’ – the quiddity – of what is done and what is produced. Because, if one
says that a social world is defined just in terms of people doing things, then there are few
grounds for identifying anything in particular. Indeed, there is a similar argument made in
relation to work that Becker himself collaborated on (Becker, Geer, Hughes and Strauss 1961).
That classic Chicago School study of socialisation in a medical school borrowed ideas from
industrial sociology in order to account for student culture, and the collective strategies that
medical students negotiated among themselves in order to cope with the considerable –
sometimes overwhelming – demands of medical school. What Becker and his colleagues
describe is surely accurate. There is little doubt as to the significance of phenomena like
student culture and the hidden curriculum in many educational contexts. In this sociological
account, the content of the curriculum, and the manner of its pedagogy, remain invisible to the
reader. Those medical students do not seem to be learning anything in particular. You could
say the same things about coping mechanisms in virtually any institution, and there is rather
little in the monograph to hint at what forms of medical knowledge are being reproduced, and
what versions of medical practice are being enacted in the classrooms and on the floors of the

teaching hospitals (Atkinson 1981).
In other words, any use of social worlds needs to be informed by a degree of specificity. The
boundaries of such a world may well be permeable, but in the absence of some principled
notion of where to stop, virtually anything and anybody could be brought into the bounds of
any social world. Likewise, one needs a strong sense of the content of a given social world – its
particularity – if one is to avoid the sociological commonplace of making each one like every
other. So the task for the ethnographer is not merely to explore a given social world. It includes
the need to analyse what makes it a social world. What symbolic boundaries are used to
delineate such a domain? (If indeed it is a meaningful entity for the participants.) Do social
actors make distinctions between themselves and other social worlds? What are the elements
that comprise this world? What are its distinctive cultural forms and contents? What are the
social relations that define and constitute that world? Equally, we must be careful not just to
assume that there must be a ‘social world’ that corresponds to the particular phenomenon we
choose to look at and participate in.
Defining the situation
This is another of the sociological classics that are often invoked in the analysis of social
encounters and organisations. It derives from a famous dictum by W.I. Thomas, one of the key
figures in the development of the Chicago School of sociology (Thomas 1923). In that
remarkably early formulation, Thomas first suggested that situations are real insofar as they are
defined as real and are real in their consequences. Now the dictum is open to over-
simplification and misunderstanding, not least because it is too often quoted in isolation, and
without consideration of its thoroughly sociological inspiration and applications. The concept is
analogous to the social construction of reality; the two ideas represent a convergence of
interactionist and phenomenological traditions. Neither is intended to imply that ‘reality’ can be
conjured up out of thin air, or that definitions can be created by acts of will alone. So it is not a
good idea to invoke such an idea carelessly, or as if it referred only to individuals’ interpretations
and wishes. Defining reality is a complex social process (DeNora 2014).
We have to start not just with the ‘definition’, but with the ‘situation’. It is easy to overlook the
fact that for a definition or definitions to be in play there must be a situation as well. So here a
situation must mean something socially and analytically specific. It requires two or more actors
to be engaged in some degree of mutual attention, undertaking joint activity. The situation is,
therefore, an intersubjective event. It does not comprise two or more separate individuals, each
free to impose a definition. Definitions have to be grounded in shared and negotiated activity
(even if one party is manipulating the others). In other words, there is nothing arbitrary about

definitions of the situation, except insofar as all social events are conventional and that culture
has an arbitrary aspect to it. Situations, we are reminded, are real insofar as they are real in
their consequences. Again, this is not a matter of whimsical or idiosyncratic ideas somehow
being conjured into life. It means that situations are only real if actors act on the basis of that
definition. Consequences can refer to a wide range of possible outcomes – including of course
further situations and further negotiation. The definition of the situation is, it follows, a
profoundly social concept, owing nothing to individualism. It also departs from the idea of a
Sociology of the Absurd (Lyman and Scott 1970), which does emphasise the arbitrary formation
of social realities.
The idea of the definition of the situation, beyond Thomas’s original dictum, owes something to
the interactionist tradition, to phenomenology and to ethnomethodology. As Perinbanayagam
(1974) points out, these are not always mutually compatible, and a degree of conceptual
muddle is always possible. The important task for empirical researchers is to employ the idea(s)
in genuinely sociological ways. That is, through a recognition that situations are defined and
sustained in interaction between social actors who are actively engaged in sustained
interpersonal work. It is always an empirical issue as to how and whether a sustained definition
is achieved, by whom. These are not necessarily cut-and-dried: it is possible for a state of
pervasive ambiguity to hinder any such resolution (Ball-Rokeach 1973).
A potentially misleading example is the monograph by McHugh (1968) that elaborates a

demonstration by Garfinkel (1967). It is based on a famous experiment. It shared features with
psychological experiments on yielding and conformity. The participants were informed that they
were receiving an experimental form of counselling: they could ask questions to which they
would receive answers. The nature of the experimental treatment lay in the fact that the
answers (Yes or No) were randomly assigned and bore no actual relationship to the questions
as posed. Asked to reflect on the questions and answers, the participants (‘experimental
subjects’ as they might be termed) did their very best to turn the random answers to their
questions into some semblance of coherence. They interpreted the answers as responses to
the questions, and tried to create coherence out of the absurd situation. This is, however, a
flawed exercise, although it is illuminating up to a point. There was no interaction between the
‘conversationalists’, and there was, therefore, no joint negotiation of a shared definition of the
situation. Moreover, the definition of the situation that was in play was one imposed by the
experimenters. The participants were, after all, told that they were participating in an
experiment. Everything they did was done in accordance with that definition. Their sense-
making efforts were done in order to try to bring the random answers into line with the a priori
definition. The experiment was illuminating up to a point, but in the final analysis very limited.

As Perinbanayagam observed, ‘… the only definition of the situation which could possibly have
occurred was that of someone doing an experiment about therapeutic practices, and that
occurred in spite of the experimental procedures used’ (1974: 529). So perhaps the ‘experiment’
demonstrated that the participants responded to the imposed definition, but not in the way that
McHugh – and Harold Garfinkel – quite intended.
Further, such an imposed definition can rob the idea of its real significance. That is, the sense
that definitions can be fragile, plastic, changing, and even contested. One of the key aspects of
situations is the possibility that the different parties to an encounter may harbour and act on
different sets of assumptions and perceptions. What is behaviourally ‘the same’ event may
contain contrasting meanings for different participants. Hospital and laboratory fieldwork at
Cardiff, for instance, has suggested that consultations at ‘the same’ hospital clinic for
neurological conditions could be defined primarily as a therapeutic or diagnostic event by
patients and their partners, while it was primarily a research-oriented event for the clinical
researchers who conducted it (Lewis, Hughes and Atkinson 2014). Moreover, we really ought to
think in terms of a more continuous process – defining the situation – rather than a single
outcome (Stone and Farberman 1970). That can be a process of negotiation, or a matter of
differential power. Indeed, one of the key aspects of the micro-politics of encounters is the
ability of one or more parties to impose their preferred definition, at least in terms of the
practical outcomes and consequences. Equally, as Altheide (2000) argues, identity and the
definition of the situation are closely related analytically. He draws attention to the extent to
which versions of ‘identity’ can be divorced from the interactional accomplishment of encounters
and situations, and associated with almost essentialised social categories (race, class, gender,
sexual orientation, etc.).
Frame-analysis builds on the idea of the definition of the situation. Framing captures some of
the underlying dimensions that inform actors’ (and analysts’) grasp of what kind of a situation is
being enacted, and therefore what range of behaviours is situationally appropriate. Framing
can, for instance, relate to the degrees of seriousness and intent that are implied. A key
example might be the difference between a situation that is being enacted ‘for real’ and a
rehearsal of such a situation, or a dramatic representation of it. The significance of actions
performed under such contrasting circumstances is clear. The expression of emotion under
conditions of, say, theatrical performance is very different from that under conditions of ordinary,
mundane reality. A ‘stage kiss’ between actors has very different import from a kiss between
lovers. (Of course, when pairs of famous actors such as Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton or
Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh become equally famous or notorious lovers, the frames can
become blurred and the frisson of excitement correspondingly enhanced.)

Consequently, framing can have far-reaching consequences for the management of encounters
and situations. Goffman (1974) provides the most comprehensive enumeration of framings. It is
part of his career-long exploration of social encounters and their conventions. We have to be
careful not to use the idea in a circular fashion. It is not very helpful to suggest that actors are
interpreting a situation as a teasing or playful one because it is framed as such, and equally to
say it is framed as a tease because that is the way they are acting. In other words, we need to
be able to identify how actors are accomplishing something like framing. Indeed, the analytic
point for the observer is precisely how actors construct and convey the behavioural and
discursive cues to demarcate levels or layers of reality work. Goffman himself refers to keys in
such analytic contexts. Framings have a great deal to do with the sort of sincerity and
commitment that actors invest in encounters. Gonos (1977) suggests that Goffman’s frame
analysis distinguishes his work most starkly from that of the interactionists, insofar as it defines
an essentially structural approach to situations, as opposed to the under-determined version of
the symbolic interactionists. Frames are, Gonos argues, relatively stable, based on cultural
codes and conventions that are oriented to by participants. Gonos himself used frame analysis
in his (1976) ethnographic study of go-go dancing.
To some extent, the general idea parallels the analysis of vocabularies of motive. The latter
refers to motivational framings that provide ways of making sense of action, by attributing
appropriate motives to the actors. It also relates to Geertz’s use of ‘thick description’, in that the
latter refers to the cultural meanings that inform the performance and interpretation of a given
action, or indeed distinguish inadvertent behaviour from purposeful action (Geertz 1973). In
other words, if we want to make sense of a series of activities, or a given interaction, then we
need to know how it is framed, what behaviours are appropriate, and therefore how it is being
understood by the participants. We shall need to bear in mind that the participants themselves
may entertain competing frames: a good deal of situational comedy, from Plautus and Terence
onwards through Goldoni, derives from such ambiguities and misalignments. Self-deprecation
can be embarrassingly misinterpreted if the framing is not visible to all parties, as can irony. If
something ironic is interpreted literally, then profound misunderstandings can ensue,
necessitating a great deal of repair. Participants can use possible ambiguities in framing to
strategic effect. An attempt at romantic intimacy that is unsuccessful can be repaired by a claim
that it was a ‘tease’, while of course the other party can pretend not to have noticed, or to have
treated it as less than serious all along.
Documentary realities
Ethnographers need to pay close attention to the creation, circulation and use of documents of
all sorts. As Watson (2009) points out, there is, in contemporary society, a plethora of texts in

everyday life: text messages, tattoos, tickets, receipts, road markings and street signs,
newspapers, advertisements and hoardings, are just some of them. Furthermore, there are
specialised, professional and bureaucratic texts in great number: records, case files,
regulations and codes of practice, organisational charts. There are archives of all sorts, from
personal collections to national repositories. The ‘file’ is a pervasive cultural product (Hull 2003,
2006). In principle, any and all of these documentary materials can find their place in
ethnographic studies. As with any and every form of artefact and text, ethnographers should
not assume that such materials are privileged sources of information, or that documentary
evidence trumps other forms, such as oral testimony. Rather, we recognise that documentary or
textual sources are among the means whereby social realities can get constructed, or whereby
identities, biographies and labels are crystallised (Prior 2003). Documentary records and
artefacts are such a pervasive feature of modern social institutions that they deserve close
attention in multiple ethnographic contexts (Riles 2006; Atkinson and Coffey 2011).
Bureaucratic textual formats are among the ways in which complex social worlds are
transmuted into standardised forms. The dual meanings of ‘forms’ in this context is a guiding
metaphor: paper or online forms can provide standardised forms or formats through which
bureaucratic realities are sustained and reproduced. While members of an organisation may
not follow bureaucratic rules ‘to the letter’, documentary representations can be invoked to
justify and legitimise courses of action. Organisational records do not necessarily provide
transparent representations of ‘what happened’. Their construction and use depend upon local
organisational and professional knowledge. This was the major issue identified by Harold
Garfinkel (1967) in his discussion of ‘good organisational reasons for bad clinical records’. He
pointed out that hospital records are written and read in the context of professional background
assumptions concerning the kinds of work and the sort of judgements that inform them.
Consequently, an ethnographic understanding of the organisation of work needs to take
account of such record-making, and studies of records need to examine the background
conventions that inform them.
Record-keeping and record-making can therefore be central analytic topics for workplace and
similar kinds of ethnography. Medical records have provided fruitful topics in this regard.
Clinical case-notes are repositories of information about patients. They are among the
mechanisms whereby persons are transformed into patients, and in turn turned into ‘cases’.
Indeed, the processes whereby medical records are created are among the concrete,
observable practices whereby realities (such as diagnoses and management decisions) are
constructed (Rees 1981; Bloor 1991; Berg 1996). Such records are, of course, often the
outcomes of other, prior texts and form part of a circuit of textual artefacts (Hak 1992). The

written record, moreover, can be granted greater credibility and weight than other sources of
knowledge, evidence or authority. The document can be made to support the ‘bare facts’, as
opposed to opinion or recollection. (See Scott 1990.)
Fincham, Langer, Scourfield and Shiner (2011) offer a distinctive use of documentary sources,
applied to one of sociology’s classic topics – suicide. Although theirs is not an ethnographic
study, it provides a valuable exemplar for researchers more generally, working in organisational
settings, and studying processes of typification or classification. They treat documentary
sources as topics and resources for analysis. In the course of their ‘sociological autopsy’, they
examine a range of files and documents (including suicide notes) in demonstrating the variety
of identities attributed to the deceased. In detailed readings of the suicide notes in particular,
they respect their constructed nature while drawing conclusions concerning causal explanation.
Paying close attention to documentary realities is a feature of institutional ethnography, a s

practised by Dorothy Smith and her colleagues (e.g. Smith 2005; Smith and Turner 2014), and
they put considerable emphasis on documentary materials. Smith, in the course of outlining a
form of public sociology, draws attention to the ways in which institutional texts remove agency,
depersonalising regimes of regulation. An ethnography that is attentive to textual regimes
shows how they co-ordinate action. The ethnographies explore what are called textually-
mediated activity. While one can question the actual novelty or distinctiveness of this approach,
it leads to an interesting variety of ethnographies that document the local practices of
engagement with texts (not all of which are ‘institutional’ in the conventional sense). They range
from a musician’s work with the score of a concerto (Warren 2001) to texts and local-
government planning (Turner 1995), or the regulation of organic farming (Wagner 2014).
Ethnographies of science and technology are prime sites for textual practices. The outcomes of
routine scientific work are ‘results’, while those of revolutionary science are ‘discoveries’, but
both depend on the production of textual representations of that science. Those texts often take
the form of scientific papers, which themselves follow typical formats, to the effect that the
agency of scientists’ work is rendered invisible, and the nature of scientific knowledge uniform.
The conventions of scientific writing have been examined for their textual and rhetorical devices
(e.g. Myers 1990), while ethnographies of laboratory life include accounts of how scientific work
is transmuted into such texts and representations. In a classic exploration of laboratory realities,
Latour and Woolgar (1986) discuss the production and circulation of such artefacts, which they
call immutable mobiles: they turn the local production of knowledge into artefacts that can be
detached from their local context. Moreover, the textual format of scientific reports and papers
has evolved over time and is now thoroughly taken for granted. Its conventions appear to be
‘natural’ modes of expression. Scientific documents therefore construct a particular version of

what science is and how it is accomplished, not just how it is reported. The conventional, highly
condensed scientific paper removes agency. The use of the passive voice is highly
characteristic of the natural sciences (and sometimes aped in the social sciences too, often with
deleterious consequences). These documents are dependent on a high level of shared
knowledge between author(s) and reader(s), since a very great deal of background
assumptions is assumed and left unspoken.
The competent reading and use of texts is often dependent on elements of trust. Readers and
writers trust in each other, for practical purposes of putting texts to work. Institutional and
bureaucratic texts are often insufficient in themselves without some background knowledge of
who wrote them and what went into their construction. For instance, as Stephens, Lewis and
Atkinson (2013) point out, processes of certification and accreditation – in this case in a
laboratory – can go on indefinitely, with more and more systems of regulation that monitor other
regulatory procedures. In practice, such an infinite regress is avoided on the basis that
regulators know whom they regulate, and ultimately a degree of trust is necessary. Wagner’s
(2014) discussion of certifying organic farming is a parallel case, where local and personal
knowledge mediate regulation, just as regulatory texts mediate social relations.
Ethnographers, therefore, need to ensure that literate cultures are not inadvertently
(mis)represented as if they were entirely oral, by neglecting written texts, their creation,
circulation and use. Equally, we need to avoid the everyday assumption that documents are in
some sense more factual or reliable sources of evidence than any others. Consequently,
‘triangulation’ should not mean checking data such as oral testimony and accounts against ‘the
facts’ enshrined in documentary sources. Equally, we need to recognise that textual formats
and the routines used to construct them can have an active role in constituting social realities,
in co-ordinating activity and in generating orderly conduct. That does not mean that they have
no referential value and it is far from necessary to take a purely constructivist perspective that
insists that documents can only be studied as artefacts, with no evidential value for the
ethnographer. What is crucial, however, is the recognition that documentary realities are
themselves social products, and even when they appear to be plain statements of fact, they are
constructed, read and interpreted in that way. There is never a transparent relationship
between a document and what it reports. Documents mediate. They are produced and
consumed in accordance with cultural conventions. Their formats can actually generate the
forms of reality that they report. There is no antithesis between documentary analysis and
ethnographic fieldwork, provided we take care to examine the practicalities of document use.
Documentary sources are, therefore, not simply an analytic resource for the ethnographer.
They are potential topics for analytic attention. Processes and routines of record-making and

record-keeping are important aspects of contemporary culture (Riles 2006). Audit culture, for
instance, is possible only by virtue of documentary work. In anticipation of audit, members of
organisations are required to create documentary archives and paper trails that anticipate
internal and external scrutiny in a foreseeable future. As a consequence, the formats and
contents of such documents define the past and project possible futures. Like all versions of
documentary reality, they depend on record-makers and record-users having a level of shared
understanding and background knowledge. No document can entirely determine how it is read
and interpreted, and so readers must bring to them local, situated knowledge, and read into
those documents background assumptions and expectations. Consequently, it is the job of the
ethnographer to examine the everyday realities of documentary action. Writing and reading,
storing and consulting documents are everyday work activities. Interpreting documents is
grounded in often complex assumptions concerning those routines and realities. Hull (2003,
2006), based on an anthropological ethnography of bureaucracy in Islamabad, suggests that
contemporary regulation and governance are governed by what he calls ‘graphic artefacts’ –
files, maps, letters, reports, and office manuals. Nowadays, of course, such documentary forms
are frequently physically in digital form rather than physically available on paper or in filing
cabinets. The principle is the same irrespective of whether records are virtual or material.
Boundaries
Social scientists are given to creating categories and boundaries, and so too are social actors.
The classifications of cultural categories are not the sole preserve of anthropologists and
sociologists (Ryen and Silverman 2000). There are many ways in which an ethnographic
fieldworker needs to pay attention to boundaries, physical and symbolic. Physical boundaries
define space and demarcate domains of legitimate participation, forms of activity, and spheres
of significance. Such boundaries shape and define the performative architecture of built
environments, such as hospitals, prisons, laboratories (Thrift 2006). They separate sterile
spaces from dirty or polluting ones. They segregate inmates from one another, from staff, from
the outside world (Stephens, Glasner and Atkinson 2008). They can separate the sacred from
the profane. They demarcate backstage regions from frontstage regions. The total institution
(Goffman 1961) is largely defined by its boundaries. External boundaries, such as prison walls,
define and circumscribe the institution, while internal divisions define spaces of sequestration,
of association, of movement between otherwise separate spaces, and so on. Within an
institution, such as a hospital, boundaries define the distinctive shape of the clinic (in the
broadest sense) – the arrangement of the wards, the divisions between specialties. Historically,
the physical arrangement of the hospital has inscribed aspects of medical knowledge, and the
professional division of labour.

Boundaries do not enact such distinctions and differentiations independent of the significance
attributed to them. In that sense, all boundaries are symbolic. Equally, of course, it is possible
to have symbolic boundaries that are not directly embodied in physical walls or barriers.
Symbolic boundaries demarcate fields of expert knowledge, academic specialties, cultural
domains, and the like. Boundaries are established and maintained by subtle codes of
distinction, such as the cultural codes that reflect differences in social class and status, or that
enact gender and ethnic differences. Such symbolic boundaries can, therefore, help to
enshrine the systems of cultural classification, as described classically by Durkheim and Mauss
(1963), and as explored subsequently (Bloor 1982). Analyses include cosmologies reflected in
social and physical arrangements. The symbolic arrangements of dwellings and settlements is
a classic and recurrent theme in anthropological studies. They include the symbolic and
physical barriers between the home and the street, notably in studies of Mediterranean
societies. The internal divisions and demarcations within the household, such as those that
separate male and female spheres of influence, or that separate domestic servants from their
mistresses and masters, are also among recurrent motifs. For a classic description, see
Bourdieu’s (1971) description of the Berber household; see also Delamont’s (1995) general
account of boundaries and segregation in European cities.
Academic and other intellectual fields are characterised by symbolic boundaries. What we
conventionally think of as academic disciplines or curriculum subjects embody such bounded
domains. The divisions are arbitrary, to the extent to which there are in principle many ways of
dividing up all the possible versions of human knowledge. (That does not mean that they are
entirely arbitrary or whimsical: they have referential or representational relations with the world.)
They are forms of cosmology, in that they help to define not just how the world is, but how the
world ought to be. The boundaries that such cosmologies define are thus treated as normative,
and are often patrolled and policed. The relative strength of symbolic boundaries in academic
fields helps to define the kind of curriculum that is pursued. Bernstein’s sociology of academic
knowledge includes a consideration of such classification: ‘pure’ academic subjects have
strong symbolic boundaries, while interdisciplinary studies have weaker, more permeable
membranes between knowledge domains. In a rather similar vein, Bourdieu’s sociology of
culture stresses the kind of horizontal and vertical boundaries that help to define cultural
competence and taste. Culture is stratified, reflecting social stratification, and the boundaries
between ‘high’ (consecrated) culture and ‘popular’ or ‘vulgar’ (profane) culture can be
rigorously enforced.
In turn analysis of these symbolic boundaries and their management reflects the
anthropological analysis of cultural systems pioneered by Durkheim and Mauss who related

cultural classifications to systems of social division. The treatment of anomalies of such

systems – objects or persons that transgress boundaries – was developed by Mary Douglas
(1966). Her analysis of pollution emphasises the extent to which ‘dirt’ is matter out of place.
Consequently hybrids, monsters and anomalies can be highly threatening to the established
cultural order. In an analysis of newly emergent academic specialisms, Lewis, Bartlett and
Atkinson (2016) show that bioinformatics experts can be troublesome, being ‘hybrid’ and
anomalous, somewhere between biology and computer science. In a similar vein, Fisher and
Atkinson-Grosjean (2002) consider the role of actors who mediate between university research
and industry: they can be marginal or liminal to both domains. Harvey and Chrisman (1998)
use the idea of boundary objects to explore how GIS technology mediates and migrates
between different groups. Of course, over time cosmologies and organisations can change, so
that new specialisms and categories emerge and become part of the established order,
throwing up new anomalies in their turn. Symbolic boundaries can also be policed by
professionals and practitioners who seek to preserve orthodoxies. Scientific paradigms (Kuhn
1962) are sustained in part by boundary-work on the part of promoters of the taken-for-granted
order of normal science at any given time, while mavericks and innovators can be excluded.
Boundaries can be discursive constructs. Accounts and accounting devices include the use of
contrastive rhetoric. People contrast what ‘the others’ did (poorly) with what ‘I’ or ‘we’ did
(better). Medical professionals in elite hospitals, for instance, construct part of their case
narratives around the contrast between what was done or not done by primary-care medics, or
at peripheral hospitals with the shrewd and competent diagnosis and treatment that they
themselves initiated as soon as the patient came into their care (Atkinson 1995). Likewise,
academics construct their own discipline by discursive contrasts with others. Their own
discipline can be defined and defended by comparing it with others: more practical, more
scientific and so on. These boundaries are thus created and reinforced through practitioners’
accounting methods (Delamont, Atkinson and Parry 2000). As Gieryn (1995, 1999) suggests,
the boundaries between ‘science’ and ‘non-science’ are discursively produced through
boundary-work, rather than being based on essential characteristics of science itself.
So an analysis of boundaries – physical, symbolic, discursive – can be a productive strategy in

understanding the cosmologies of local cultures, such as those of occupational groups. It is, of
course, always important to remind oneself that such boundaries and distinctions are never
entirely fixed or impermeable. Boundaries can be crossed: depending on the circumstance,
such border crossings can be acts of transgression and deviance, or of pioneering heroism.
Hybrid anomalies can evolve into new entities, mavericks can become the pioneers of new
orders. But those new arrangements will be defined by new symbolic markers and boundaries.

Boundary crossings can be opportunities for adaptation and learning (Akkerman and Bakker
2011). They explore various ways in which cultural discontinuities can provide resources for the
development of identities and strategies. They identify: identification, which concerns learning
about different practices; co-ordination, the creation of cooperative exchanges across
boundaries; reflection, the capacity to expand one’s perspectives; transformation, which
concerns the emergence of new practices. In many ways, of course, such constructive border
crossings parallel the work of the ethnographer, since anthropological and sociological
fieldwork is based on cultural learning derived from the exploration of an unfamiliar social
world. See also Wegener (2014) on parallels between ethnography and border crossings, in a
study of educational and care settings.
Boundary objects have become a significant analytic topic, notably but not exclusively in
Science and Technology Studies (Star and Griesemer 1989). In that context, boundary objects
inhabit more than one social domain, such as a field of specialisation. They are relatively
plastic, and can thus have different values for the actors who use them. But they are robust
enough to retain meaning in two or more domains. Like a lot of concepts of the middle-range,
boundary objects can seem an over-used idea. People have identified boundary objects in
many contexts, and the concept can seem played out. As with so many concepts of the middle-
range, it is important to retain a sense of precision and purpose in using these ideas.
Boundaries can be found all over the place, and virtually anything can be a boundary object.
The solution is not to abandon such ideas altogether, but to use them with some purpose, and
with clear analytic point. Simply declaring something to be a boundary object is not a very
penetrating analysis in and of itself.
Fieldwork, therefore, is permeated by issues of boundary. Indeed, ‘fields’ are not given to us as
natural kinds (cf. Amit 2000). What we describe as social worlds, field sites, or social networks,
are ‘bounded’ only in the sense that there are social or cultural boundaries in play. Likewise,
the categories and classes we use (such as diagnostic categories) are locally defined by the
symbolic boundaries that are placed around them. Boundaries, therefore, are neither given nor
fixed. They are constantly in the process of being defined, refined and negotiated through the
everyday social activities of social actors and collectivities. Our analytic interests therefore go
beyond just negotiating those boundaries ourselves in pursuit of research access, but in
developing a sustained and detailed understanding of the interpersonal processes whereby
boundaries are defined, transgressed, patrolled and celebrated. We need to be attentive to the
segmentation of our chosen research settings, and the ways in which such segmentation is
realised.

Conclusion
As we have seen, there is ample opportunity for misapprehensions concerning ‘definitions of

reality’. It can too often appear as if constructivist analysts were in denial concerning the very
existence of an external reality that impinges on everyday social activity. Vulgar criticisms imply
that we believe realities to be conjured up out of thin air, as if anything and everything could be
invented from scratch. That is not the case. Analysis of social reality is, by contrast, at the very
heart of any sociology or anthropology that is methodologically and theoretically sensitive. As I
have emphasised, in the first place, we are interested in social constructions. For some
purposes, it might be more productive to think of the social production of reality. Such
terminology might help to reinforce the extent to which we are dealing with collective social
activity. Reality production is collaborative work. It is based on collective, interactive activity. It is
generated from shared cultural resources.
Ethnographic analysis, therefore, is not aimed simply at demonstrating that realities are socially
produced, but – much more fundamentally – on how that is accomplished. We have to ask
ourselves repeatedly how social actors engage with one another in order to sustain shared
understandings and commitments. We ask ourselves what resources those actors bring to any
such work. Equally, we must remember that we are dealing with definitions of the situation. So
the situation becomes a possible unit of analysis, and situations are self-evidently social in
character. ‘Situations’, in this sense, are not given, they are made to happen by their
participants. They are defined in part by the boundaries that encompass them. As we have
seen, such boundaries may be physical, but – more importantly – they are always symbolic.
And in the same vein, situations may be framed in accordance with socially-shared conventions
of orderly conduct. They are, therefore, thoroughly social in character, and they display their
cultural basis.
For the ethnographer, therefore, there are lessons. We should not take on trust the kinds of
situations and definitions we observe and participate in. We need to pay close analytic attention
to the methods and means whereby situations and realities are co-produced by social actors.
This is not a matter of intuition on our part. Social actors observably work at making realities
possible, and they use cultural resources that are open to us for discovery. Such a perspective
does not mean that all situations are unambiguous or that consensus reigns. Indeed, one of
our key analytic issues involves the recognition that there may be competing realities in play,
and confusions or conflicts that arise.
We do not, however, come to grips with these social phenomena without the fine-grained
observation of what social actors actually do (including what they say). This therefore leads us

to the subject matter of the next chapter: social encounters. The emphasis among many
qualitative researchers today on extended interviews can all too easily lead us away from the
fundamental building blocks of everyday life. An ethnographic analysis of interaction –
conversations, pedagogic events, sporting contests, business meetings, conferences,
consultations with professionals – is vital if we are to come to grips with the remarkable variety
of social action, and its organisational properties.
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Defining Social Reality

In: Thinking Ethnographically

By: Paul Atkinson

Defining Social Reality

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Social construction of reality

It is important to remember that social construction is proposed. In other words, constructivism

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Sometimes the relativism that seems to be embedded in a constructivist stance is presented as

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A ‘world’ is thus an ensemble of people who do something together. The action of

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teaching hospitals (Atkinson 1981).

Defining the situation

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A potentially misleading example is the monograph by McHugh (1968) that elaborates a

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Paying close attention to documentary realities is a feature of institutional ethnography, a s

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cultural classifications to systems of social division. The treatment of anomalies of such

So an analysis of boundaries – physical, symbolic, discursive – can be a productive strategy in

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As we have seen, there is ample opportunity for misapprehensions concerning ‘definitions of

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