DORA :: Browsing by Author "Elsey, Christopher"

Browsing by Author "Elsey, Christopher"

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Open Access
Assessment of the delivery and implementation of the Football Association’s Heads Up mental health promotion campaign
(Taylor and Francis, 2024-01-18) Elsey, Christopher; Southwood, James; Winter, Peter; Thomas, Guy; Litchfield, Susan; Ogweno, Sharon; Billington, Leanne
During the 2019–20 English football season the Football Association, Heads Together mental health charity, and Public Health England, launched the Heads Up campaign to raise fans’ awareness about mental health issues. This research examines the campaign’s delivery and implementation of well-being resources and messaging from a fan-perspective within a stadium and the shift into a media-mediated campaign during the pandemic. Our methods included ethnographic observation of the campaign in and around a football stadium, and analyses of the campaign’s promotional videos, matchday programmes, TV and radio coverage, and social media posts. Our findings reveal positive aspects of the campaign methods, which included the delivery of a football-oriented and coherent set of accessible resources geared towards normalising mental health conversations. However, there were several missed opportunities in delivery linked to limited control over the deployment of campaign resources and a lack of future planning to build on the campaigns initial impact.
Open Access
Book Review: Hastings, J. Mental Health Ontologies: How we talk about mental health, and why it matters in the digital age. Exeter: University of Exeter Press.
(Wiley, 2022) Elsey, Christopher; Sarah, Solarin
Open Access
Conversational assessment in memory clinic encounters: interactional profiling for the differential diagnosis of dementia and functional memory disorder
(Taylor and Francis, 2015-03-24) Jones, Danielle; Drew, Paul; Elsey, Christopher; Blackburn, Daniel; Wakefield, Sarah; Harkness, Kirsty; Reuber, Markus
OBJECTIVES: In the UK dementia is under-diagnosed, there is limited access to specialist memory clinics, and many of the patients referred to such clinics are ultimately found to have functional (non-progressive) memory disorders (FMD), rather than a neurodegenerative disorder. Government initiatives on 'timely diagnosis' aim to improve the rate and quality of diagnosis for those with dementia. This study seeks to improve the screening and diagnostic process by analysing communication between clinicians and patients during initial specialist clinic visits. Establishing differential conversational profiles could help the timely differential diagnosis of memory complaints. METHOD: This study is based on video- and audio recordings of 25 initial consultations between neurologists and patients referred to a UK memory clinic. Conversation analysis was used to explore recurrent communicative practices associated with each diagnostic group. RESULTS: Two discrete conversational profiles began to emerge, to help differentiate between patients with dementia and functional memory complaints, based on (1) whether the patient is able to answer questions about personal information; (2) whether they can display working memory in interaction; (3) whether they are able to respond to compound questions; (4) the time taken to respond to questions; and (5) the level of detail they offer when providing an account of their memory failure experiences. CONCLUSION: The distinctive conversational profiles observed in patients with functional memory complaints on the one hand and neurodegenerative memory conditions on the other suggest that conversational profiling can support the differential diagnosis of functional and neurodegenerative memory disorders.
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Dementia in Conversation: Observations from Triadic Memory Clinic Interactions
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2019-11) Elsey, Christopher
Dementia is synonymous with a deteriorating 'memory' in those it impacts. However, it is often in conversation that the neuro-degeneration is revealed. This chapter outlines a memory clinic study which sought to explore how interactional features of dementia patients' talk exhibited 'signs' of their underlying conditions that could be useful for neurologists to notice. The chapter focuses on triadic history-taking encounters between neurologists, patients and accompanying persons (e.g. spouses, family members). Analysis examines the memory recall expectations of neurologists and accompanying persons resulting in public displays of memory failure requiring repair or correction. TThe diagnostic relevance of these conversational practices examines the content of the talk (i.e. what is absent) and the production of the talk, as well how these problems can occur simultaneously.
Open Access
Doing the organization’s work - Transcription for all practical governmental purposes
(Frontiers, 2021-12-31) Holder, Alexander; Elsey, Christopher; Kolanoski, Martina; Brooker, Phillip; Mair, Michael
By comparing two distinct governmental organizations (the US military and NASA) this paper unpacks two main issues. One the one hand, the paper examines the transcripts that are produced as part of the working 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 organizations. These organizations have been chosen as transcription forms a routine part of how they operate as worksites. Further, the everyday working environments in both organizations involve complex technological systems, as well as multiple-party interactions in which speakers are frequently spatially and visually separated. In order to explicate these practices, the article draws on the transcription methods employed in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis research as a comparative resource. In these approaches audio-video data is transcribed in a fine-grained manner that captures temporal aspects of talk, as well as how speech is delivered. Using these approaches to transcription as an analytical device enables us to investigate when and why transcripts are produced by the US military and NASA in the specific ways that they are, as well as what exactly is being re-presented in the transcripts and thus what was treated as worth transcribing in the interactions they are intended to serve as documents of. By analysing these transcription practices it becomes clear that these organizations create huge amounts of audio-video ‘data’ about their routine activities. One major difference between them is that the US military selectively transcribe this data (usually for the purposes of investigating incidents in which civilians might have been injured), whereas NASA’s ‘transcription machinery’ aims to capture as much of their mission-related interactions as is organizationally possible (i.e., within the physical limits and capacities of their radio communications systems). As such the paper adds to our understanding of transcription practices and how this is related to the internal working, accounting and transparency practices within different kinds of organization. The article also examines how the original transcripts have been used by researchers (and others) outside of the organizations themselves for alternative purposes.
Open Access
The elicitation and management of multiple health concerns in GP consultations.
(Elsevier, 2018-11-14) Stuart, B.; Leydon, G.; Woods, C.; Gennery, E.; Summers, R.; Stevenson, F.; Chew-Graham, C.; Barnes, R.; Moore, M.; Little, P.; Elsey, Christopher; Drew, Paul
Objective: To describe the nature of patient concerns and to explore if, when and how they are addressed by GPs in the UK. Methods: Detailed coding and descriptive analysis of 185 video recordings from the EPaC study (Elicitation of Patient Concerns, EPaC) Results: An average of 2.1 concerns were raised per consultation and the most common concerns were musculoskeletal, administrative (e.g. test results and medication related issues), and skin symptoms. GPs who had been trained as part of the EPaC intervention to solicit for additional concerns in the opening phase of the consultation did so 92.6% of the time. In contrast, those in the control arm did so only 7% of the time. However, the particular formulation of the GP soliciting question does not seem to be associated with the likelihood of the patient volunteering an additional concern. Conclusions: GP consultations are complex encounters in which multiple concerns are dealt with across a wide range of disease areas. GPs can be trained to solicit for problems/concerns early in the consultation. Practice implications: Soliciting for additional concerns is not routinely done. But very brief training can substantially help in eliciting concerns early in the consultation, which may help with organising the consultation.
Embargo
Ethnomethodology, Conversation Analysis and the Study of Action-in-Interaction in Military Settings
(Routledge, 2016) Elsey, Christopher; Mair, M.; Smith, Paul V.; Watson, P. G.
In this chapter we discuss what ethnomethodology and conversation analysis can contribute to studies of the military, specifically ‘action-in-interaction’ in military settings. The chapter is methodologically focused and explores how work in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis provides an alternative way of approaching the problems posed by studying the different forms of practice that constitute ‘soldierly work’. Rather than approach these issues in the abstract, and in line with the central thrust of ethnomethodological and conversation analytic studies, we shall outline this approach through a discussion of the methods employed, and difficulties encountered, in the course of research we conducted into a specific case: a fatal ‘blue-on-blue’ or ‘friendly fire’ attack on British infantry by American aircraft during the Second Gulf War. What initially drew us to the incident was the availability of a cockpit video-tape – complete with audio of communications between the two pilots involved in the attack and the ground forward air controller who they were working with – that was leaked to the public during a controversial coroner’s inquest in 2007, some 4 years after the attack took place. Our interest in the footage was twofold. We wanted, firstly, to see what we could make of data of this kind; and, secondly, we wanted to look at what the three official inquiries into the incident (including two military boards of inquiry alongside the coroner’s inquest) had made of it, how they had used the video as a resource for analysing what had gone wrong. This methodological strategy reflects the ‘duplex’ forms of analysis that ethnomethodology and conversation analysis rest upon: in this case, an analysis of the pilot’s communicative and sense-making practices coupled with an analysis of analyses of those practices by a number of authoritative auditors, with tacking between the data and after-the-fact accounts of it. In order to bring this out, we will discuss, initially, the problems we encountered in transcribing the video and what those difficulties themselves revealed about what the pilots were doing. After that, we turn to the ways in which we established links between the video and the reports published by the official inquiries, reports which offered competing where not conflicting interpretations of what happened and why. Again, we shall suggest that this reveals something about what is involved in holding military operatives to account. Based on this, and linking own research to wider work in the field, we will conclude, finally, by returning to the question of what ethnomethodologcal and conversation analytic research adds to our understanding of action-in-interaction in military settings: namely, a focus on its specificities and the forms of organisation internal to it.
Embargo
Feedback-in-action within bedside teaching encounters: a video ethnographic study
(Wiley, 2014-08-11) Rizan, Chantelle; Elsey, Christopher; Lemon, Thomas; Grant, Andrew; Monrouxe, Lynn V.
Context Feedback associated with teaching activities is often synonymous with reflection on action, which comprises the evaluative assessment of performance out of its original context. Feedback in action (as correction during clinical encounters) is an underexplored, complementary resource facilitating students' understanding and learning. Objectives The purpose of this study was to explore the interactional patterns and correction modalities utilised in feedback sequences between doctors and students within general practice-based bedside teaching encounters (BTEs). Methods A qualitative video ethnographic approach was used. Participants were recorded in their natural settings to allow interactional practices to be contextually explored. We examined 12 BTEs recorded across four general practices and involving 12 patients, four general practitioners and four medical students (209 minutes and 20 seconds of data) taken from a larger corpus. Data analysis was facilitated by Transana video analysis software and informed by previous conversation analysis research in ordinary conversation, classrooms and health care settings. Results A range of correction strategies across a spectrum of underlying explicitness were identified. Correction strategies classified at extreme poles of this scale (high or low explicitness) were believed to be less interactionally effective. For example, those using abrupt closing of topics (high explicitness) or interactional ambiguity (low explicitness) were thought to be less effective than embedded correction strategies that enabled the student to reach the correct answer with support. Conclusions We believe that educators who are explicitly taught linguistic strategies for how to manage feedback in BTEs might manage learning more effectively. For example, clinicians might maximise learning moments during BTEs by avoiding abrupt or ambiguous feedback practices. Embedded correction strategies can enhance student participation by guiding students towards the correct answer. Clinician corrections can sensitively manage student face-saving by minimising the exposure of student error to patients. Furthermore, we believe that the effective practices highlighted by our analysis might facilitate successful transformation of feedback in action into feedback for action.
Open Access
An Interactional Profile to Assist the Differential Diagnosis of Neurodegenerative and Functional Memory Disorders
(Ovid, 2018-01-09) Reuber, Markus; Blackburn, Daniel; Elsey, Christopher; Wakefield, Sarah; Arden, Kerry; Harkness, Kirsty; Venneri, Annalena; Jones, Danielle; Shaw, Chloe; Drew, Paul
Objective: Specialist services for dementia are seeing an increasing number of patients. We investigated whether interactional and linguistic features in the communication behaviour of patients with memory problems could help distinguish between those with problems secondary to neurological disorders (ND) and those with Functional Memory Disorder (FMD). Methods: In Part 1 of this study, a Diagnostic Scoring Aid (DSA) was developed encouraging linguists to provide quantitative ratings for 14 interactional features. An optimal cut-off differentiating ND and FMD was established by applying the DSA to 30 initial patient–doctor memory clinic encounters. In Part 2, the DSA was tested prospectively in ten additional cases analysed independently by two Conversation Analysts blinded to medical information. Results: In part one, the median score of the DSA was +5 in ND and -5 in FMD (p<0.001). The optimal numeric DSA cut off (+1) identified patients with ND with a sensitivity of 86.7% and a specificity of 100%. In part two, DSA scores of rater one correctly predicted 10/10 and those of rater two 9/10 diagnoses. Conclusions This study indicates that interactional and linguistic features can help distinguish between patients developing dementia and those with FMD and could aid the stratification of patients with memory problems.
Embargo
Interpretive asymmetries, diagnostic inquiry and the reconstruction of action in an incident of friendly fire
(Wiley, 2013-10-03) Mair, Michael; Elsey, Christopher; Watson, Patrick G.; Smith, Paul V.
In this article, we examine a controversial friendly fire incident that took place during the early stages of the Iraq war. Our focus is on how a cockpit video of the incident was used post facto in a military inquiry to arrive at an understanding of the actions of the pilots involved. We shall concentrate specifically on a series of interpretive difficulties that highlighted the problematic status of the video as evidence and explore what their resolution might tell us about military practice, and the place of friendly fire within it more broadly.
Embargo
Investigating the Use of Force in Contemporary Conflict: Researching Military Operations with Audio, Video and Transcript Data
(National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM), 2021-11) Holder, Alexander; Elsey, Christopher; Kolanoski, Martina; Mair, Michael; Elsey, Christopher
Using public domain video and/or audio-recordings, transcripts, internal reports and inquiries as data, we investigate specific and often highly controversial incidents in which Western militaries employ the use of force. Analysing the interactional organisation of such incidents as they unfold ‘ethnographically’ (incorporating fieldnotes, interviews, biographical accounts and other relevant resources), our collaborative research examines the assessment of threats, the identification of combatants and the distinction between lawful and unlawful military action as interrelated and co-established features of that work. Of interest to social researchers but also military personnel, lawyers and campaigners, among others, this case study will outline how we methodically investigate the use of force with reference to a particular case, the Uruzgan incident, using available interactional data and related resources while remaining alive to their very real limits.
Open Access
Mental Health Disclosure in the Public Eye: Accounting for and Managing Absences From Professional Sporting Competition
(Taylor and Francis, 2019-02-18) Elsey, Christopher
The purpose of this paper is to consider how professional sports players and their sporting clubs and associations publicly manage the disclosure of mental health issues that result in a players enforced absence from competition. The paper focuses on official or authorised press statements, press conferences (and transcripts thereof), social media posts and official websites, to consider public discourses and media coverage of mental health in professional sport. The research is informed by the principles and methods of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. Presented here are two retrospective 'mental injury' timelines from two professional sports players in the UK (namely Sarah Taylor, cricketer and Aaron Lennon, footballer), starting with the initial announcement that the player will not be participating and ending with the announcement of their reintegration into their team's routine match day activities. Several important findings have emerged, including: whether the original announcement was (in)voluntary; the categorisation of mental health conditions employed; the details made public in press statements and what is added in subsequent press conferences and interviews; and the open-ended return time-frames. At stake is how a player's (patient) confidentiality clashes with the need to reliably and accurately inform the public, via the media, in these cases.
Open Access
Patients embodied and as-a-body within bedside teaching encounters: A video ethnographic study
(Springer, 2016-05-31) Elsey, Christopher; Challinor, Alexander; Monrouxe, Lynn V.
Bedside teaching encounters (BTEs) involve doctor–patient–student interactions, providing opportunities for students to learn with, from and about patients. How the differing concerns of patient care and student education are balanced in situ remains largely unknown and undefined. This video ethnographic study explores patient involvement during a largely student-centric activity: ‘feedback sequences’ where students learn clinical and practical skills. Drawing on a data subset from a multi-site study, we used Conversation Analysis to investigate verbal and non-verbal interactional practices to examine patients’ inclusion and exclusion from teaching activities across 25 BTEs in General Practice and General Surgery and Medicine with 50 participants. Through analysis, we identified two representations of the patient: the patient embodied (where patients are actively involved) and the patient as-a-body (when they are used primarily as a prop for learning). Overall, patients were excluded more during physical examination than talk-based activities. Exclusion occurred through physical positioning of doctor–patient–student, and through doctors and students talking about, rather than to, patients using medical jargon and online commentaries. Patients’ exclusion was visibly noticeable through eye gaze: patients’ middle-distance gaze coincided with medical terminology or complex wording. Inclusory activities maintained the patient embodied during teaching activities through doctors’ skilful embedding of teaching within their care: including vocalising clinical reasoning processes through students, providing patients with a ‘warrant to listen’, allocating turns-at-talk for them and eye-contact. This study uniquely demonstrates the visible nature patient exclusion, providing firm evidence of how this affects patient empowerment and engagement within educational activities for tomorrow’s doctors.
Open Access
Professional sport and initial mental health public disclosure narratives
(Sage, 2020-11) Elsey, Christopher; Winter, Peter; Litchfield, Susan; Ogweno, Sharon; Southwood, James
The disclosure of absences from professional sporting activities to the media is a routine and generally unproblematic part of a sporting career. However, when the reason for the absence relates to mental health concerns, players can encounter difficulties in trying to define, describe and conceptualise their own issues while attempting to maintain privacy as they undergo assessment and treatment. Drawing on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis principles and methods, this paper explores first/initial public mental health disclosure narratives produced by players and sporting organisations across several professional sports via media interviews, press statements, and social media posts. The analysis focuses on (in)voluntary accounts produced by teams or players themselves during their careers and examines the different communication strategies they employ to categorise and explain their predicament. The analysis reveals how some players provide partial or proxy public disclosure announcements (due to a desire to mask issues or delayed help-seeking and assessment), whereas others prefer fuller disclosure of the problems experienced, including diagnoses and on-going treatment and therapy regimes. The paper outlines the consequences of these disclosure strategies and considers the implications they can have for a player’s wellbeing in these stressful circumstances.
Embargo
The reciprocal nature of trust in bedside teaching encounters
(John Benjamins, 2014-07-24) Elsey, Christopher; Monrouxe, Lynn V.; Grant, A. J.
The objective of this chapter is to explore a broad and liberal conception of trust as manifest in bedside teaching encounters (BTEs) in which medical students learn with, from and about patients. Adopting an ethnomethodological conception of trust, it is postulated that trust, as a practical phenomenon, revolves around parties within a clinical setting sharing a mutual intelligibility of action and orienting to a world-known-in-common that provides the interactional resources to enable the mutual accomplishment of the medical encounter (Garfinkel 1963; 1967; Watson 2009; Schegloff 1992; Sacks 1995). The standard medical encounter between doctor and patient constitutes an experience that they routinely and recurrently enact. As a result it is reasonable to postulate that on any given instance of a medical interaction the different parties have a shared understanding as to the social roles that are being fulfilled by themselves and others. However, the presence of a medical student is not necessarily an intrinsic feature of medical encounters. Therefore a fruitful avenue of analysis is to explore how the triadic interaction between doctor-patient-student involves a modification of the interactional format and organisation of medical encounters. It is also critical to consider how the expectations and roles of the participants are negotiated, enacted and transformed, in the midst of the pursuit of patient health and wellbeing. The primary mode of enquiry has been video ethnography in conjunction with a linguistic ethnographic analytic mentality (Heath et al. 2010; Pink 2007). In short our data consists of video recordings of bedside teaching encounters (n=34, ongoing; mean average per encounter 23 minutes; approximate total recording time 788 minutes) in a variety of clinical settings (e.g. general practice surgeries, hospital wards, outpatient clinics) encompassing a range of clinical specialties (e.g. GP, paediatrics, geriatrics, and general surgery and medicine). The thrust of the analytic interests reside in understanding the dynamics that are constituted within the triadic interactions between doctor-patient-student and focalises the pivotal role that the student plays within BTEs whether as an observer or active participant.
Open Access
Scepticism or conspiracy? A discourse analysis of anti-lockdown comments to online newspaper articles
(Taylor and Francis, 2023-03-10) Tafi, Vanessa; Goodman, Simon; Yates, Scott; Elsey, Christopher; Coles, Alexander
This paper addresses responses to news about the imposing of a local lockdown in a UK city. The opposition to the measure shows it to be controversial as does the associated rejection of the grounds for taking action against covid more generally, which comes alongside the devaluing of expertise, resistance to public health responses, a proliferation of conspiracy theories and misinformation and the harm that can be caused by focussing on non-adherence to covid measure. The research question for this analysis is therefore: how are arguments about the local lockdown discursively formulated in online discussions? Discursive analysis of online discussions following four newspaper articles identified sixeven arguments used that range from scepticism to conspiratorial: scepticism over (1) the prevalence and; (2) severity of covid; (3) lockdowns generally do not work and (4) the specific city lockdown will not work; (5) lockdowns are overly risk averse; and (6) there are hidden political motives for lockdowns. The discussion shows how both the ‘conspiratorial’ and non-conspiratorial arguments are potentially harmful from a public health perspective.
Open Access
‘This is my lesson’: Ethnomethodological lessons in classroom order and social organisation for adults with learning difficulties
(Ethnographic Studies, 2021) Elsey, Christopher
Education as practiced is predicated upon order, structure and organisation. This educational order can be ‘found’ in the classroom within lessons, activities, and tasks, and is the collaborative achievement of those present within them (e.g. teachers, students and, in this case, learning support assistants). The pivotal issue is how the various sense-making practices found in the setting (e.g. talk, gesture, gaze, embodied action) enable those present to ‘find their place’ within the present educational lesson. These considerations are made perspicuous in the research reported here as the various students present have attributed learning difficulties and disabilities and are attending a Further Education (FE) College to take part in a course purposefully designed to teach them practical everyday living skills. The specific learning difficulties attributed ranged in type and degree and the relevance of these designations will be documented when necessary. For present purposes issues of order, structure, organisation and authority inundate the opening sequence of a timetabled cleaning lesson in which an individual student verbally dissents and makes an embodied challenge to the authority of the teacher, threatening the organisation of the whole lesson. As a result the teacher (in conjunction with others) successfully reintegrates the stubborn student by utilising a series of methods and resources explicated in the paper to include: cohorting practices, claiming ‘ownership’ of lessons (linked to ‘lesson appropriate actions’) and ‘if/then formulations’ as a warning technique.
Open Access
Towards diagnostic conversational profiles of patients presenting with dementia or functional memory disorders to memory clinics
(Elsevier, 2015-06-11) Elsey, Christopher; Drew, Paul; Jones, Danielle; Blackburn, Daniel; Wakefield, Sarah; Harkness, Kirsty; Venneri, Annalena; Reuber, Markus
Objective: This study explores whether the profile of patients’ interactional behaviour in memory clinic conversations with a doctor can contribute to the clinical differentiation between functional memory disorders (FMD) and memory problems related to neurodegenerative diseases. Methods: Conversation Analysis of video recordings of neurologists’ interactions with patients attending a specialist memory clinic. “Gold standard” diagnoses were made independently of CA findings by a multi-disciplinary team based on clinical assessment, neuropsychological testing and brain imaging. Results: Two discrete conversational profiles for patients with memory complaints emerged, including (i) who attends the clinic (i.e., whether or not patients are accompanied), and (ii) patients’ responses to neurologists’ questions about memory problems, such as difficulties with compound questions and providing specific and elaborated examples and frequent “I don’t know” responses. Conclusion: Specific communicative difficulties are characteristic of the interaction patterns of patients with a neurodegenerative pathology. Those difficulties are manifest in memory clinic interactions with neurologists, thereby helping to differentiate patients with dementia from those with FMD. Practical implications: Our findings demonstrate that conversational profiles based on patients’ contributions to memory clinic encounters have diagnostic potential to assist the screening and referral process from primary care, and the diagnostic service in secondary care.
Metadata only
Unprofessional vision? Politics, (video)evidence and accountability after the work of Michael Lynch
(Cantonal and University Library Fribourg, 2025-01-14) Elsey, Christopher; Holder, Alexander; Kolanoski, Martina; Mair, Michael; Allen, Olive
As part of an ongoing critical dialogue with Charles Goodwin’s work on “professional vision” (1994), Michael Lynch has observed on a number of occasions that ‘viral’ videos—often those depicting instances of police and military misconduct—are publicly circulated artifacts that “vulgarise” and thus render perspicuous issues of ‘evidence’, ‘expertise’, ‘accountability’, and ‘visibility’ as matters of practical rather than philosophical concern (Lynch 1993, 146; see Lynch 1999, 2014, 2018, 2002; Lindwall and Lynch 2021). Alongside the video of Rodney King’s beating and, more recently, the murder of George Floyd, one such video to have gained particular global notoriety is WikiLeaks’ 2010 “Collateral Murder”, which presented leaked gun camera footage from a 2007 US Army Apache helicopter combat patrol in a Baghdad suburb in the course of which, among others, two journalists were killed, two children shot and seriously wounded, and a building in a residential area destroyed with missiles. As with the King and Floyd cases, Collateral Murder, in the form of WikiLeaks’ edited version of the video, was watched in revulsion by millions as a transparent example of egregious wrongdoing—the killing, wounding, and harming of innocents. In this contribution we revisit the unedited footage, extending consideration to its less examined second half in which the Apache team attacks and destroys a building, where we are among the first to do so in any detailed manner. We do that to explore Lynch’s ethnomethodological insights into politics, evidence and accountability as they are rendered—or fail to be rendered—perspicuous by this case. Rather than seeking to establish our own form of ‘professional vision’ as a competitor to the Apache crews’, we suggest that Lynch’s work, if taken seriously, asks us to embrace its ‘vulgar’ counterpart by working through whatwe can make of the video by drawing on our vernacular competencies as ordinary members and the problems we encounter in doing so. We will tease out what might be at stake ethnomethodologically—not an ‘unprofessional’ but practical understanding—with reference to the ‘raw’ Collateral Murder footage and what, as video, it does and does not make available to the viewer. We end by reflecting on “ethnomethodology’s program” (Garfinkel 2002) in light of the issues this strand in Lynch’s work raises, more specifically the care we need to exhibit when we seek to gain instruction in worldly practices and their equally worldly evaluation.
Open Access
Violence as Work: Ethnomethodological Insights into Military Combat Operations
(American Psychological Association, 2018) Elsey, Christopher; Mair, Michael; Kolanoski, Martina
Objective: The objective of this article is to outline an ethnomethodological approach to the study of professionalized violence or violence as work. It focuses primarily on violence in the context of military combat operations and the ‘situational’ analyses and assessments military personnel themselves undertake when engaging in violent action. Method: We use video from one incident (WikiLeaks’ Collateral Murder release) as a demonstration case to set out the methodological bases of ethnomethodological studies of combat violence. As part of that, we show how transcripts can be used to document the interactions in which situational analyses feature as part of coordinating and executing linked attacks. Results: Based on the video and our transcripts, we explicate how the military personnel involved collaboratively identified, assessed and engaged a group of combatants. We show the incident consisted of two attacks or engagements: a first and a follow up, treated as connected rather than distinct by those involved on situational grounds. Conclusion: Moving beyond controversy, causal explanations and remedies, the paper describes how structures of practical military action can be investigated situationally from an ethnomethodological perspective using video data. By treating collaborative military methods and practices as a focus for inquiry, this article contributes to our understanding of violence as work more broadly.

Browsing by Author "Elsey, Christopher"

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