Abstract
Harold Garfinkel wrote a series of highly detailed and lengthy ‘memos’ during his time (1951-53) at Princeton, where remarkable developments in information theory were taking place. These very substantial manuscripts have been edited by Anne Warfield Rawls in Toward a Sociological Theory of Information (Garfinkel 2008). This paper explores some of the implications of these memos, which we suggest are still relevant for the study of ‘information’ and information theory. Definitional privilege of ‘information’ as a technical term has been arrogated by information science, which thereby excludes the interactional occasions of use of ‘information’. The authors examine some ‘professional’ and ‘laic’ determinations of ‘information’. Looking at in situ uses of ‘information’ shows how dealing with ‘information’ is characterized by ad hoc practices, such as specifications, ‘authorization’ and ‘particularization’ procedures. The authors report on a series of workplace studies in academic libraries, looking at how librarians account for ‘information’ through practices of classification. Classifying ‘information’ is a member’s local accomplishment, and explicating practices of classifying ‘information’ undermines the formal-analytic project of the ‘Philosophy of Information,’ as formulated, for instance, by Luciano Floridi. Implications of Garfinkel’s work must remain beyond the purview of information science if it is to maintain its status as the recognized field dealing with ‘information’. However, such omission risks ‘losing the phenomenon’ of ‘information’: to adapt an argument from Dorothy Smith (Catalyst, 8, pp 39–54, 1974), it trades upon decontextualized uses and recontextualizes ‘information’ for the practical purposes of formal analysis.
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Notes
Moore worked closely with Talcott Parsons, Garfinkel’s supervisor at Harvard. The role of Parsons in the development of information theory is often missing in information science accounts. For a rare exception, see Leydesdorff (1993).
Our comments here are greatly indebted to Rawls’ ‘Introduction,’ though she may well not agree with our specific ‘take’; and to an extremely penetrating discussion of information theory from an anthropological/communication perspective (Winkin 2012). We have also adapted some observations derived from Peters’ (1999) book Speaking into the Air.
Whilst this paper is somewhat influenced by ethnomethodology and a nascent conversation analysis (Scott participated in the informal graduate students’ group that met at Sacks’ apartment when both were studying sociology at the University of California, Berkeley) it is, largely, a symbolic interactionist analysis. Its notion of account is very much at variance with that of ethnomethodology. Symbolic interactionists treat ‘accounts’ as being called forth when something is defined as having gone wrong. By contrast, ethnomethodologists treat this as only a special, exposed case of accounting. ‘Accounts,’ for ethnomethodologists, refers to the sense made in any situation, whether untoward or not (Watson and Sharrock 1991).
Gail Jefferson (personal communication) suggested the relevance of the term ‘pro forma’ in this context.
In these data (from Watson 1990), ‘advise’ stands on behalf of ‘inform’: cf. Chambers English Dictionary, 10th Edition, p. 20.
Lectures 16 and 17 (Sacks 1992, vol. 1: 605–615).
For a general approach to this issue see McDowell (2002). Unfortunately the cast of this analysis is inimical to ethnomethodology but at least it raises the issue of trust.
For some general comments on the interchangeability of standpoints and the nature of trust, see Watson (2009).
All glossing is an activity—or rather, various glosses comprise a ‘family’ of activities. On glossing practices, see Garfinkel and Sacks (1970).
Whilst it might be argued that philosophical concerns with information preceded Floridi’s attempts, it is often claimed that he defined the field, though whether he actually coined the phrase ‘Philosophy of Information’ is an open question, e.g., Mark Alfino taught a course titled ‘Philosophy of Information’ at Gonzaga University, USA in 1995, which seems to pre-date Floridi’s concerns.
For more detail on inter-library loan requests forms, see Carlin (2003b).
A fuller description may be found elsewhere (Carlin 2003a).
In some of the research sites that we observed, the classifiers were also the cataloguers. Some academic libraries held a strict demarcation between holders of professional library qualifications, who engaged in classifying materials, and those without professional qualifications. So ‘qualified’ staff could catalogue material, but ‘unqualified’ staff could not classify material. The activity of data entry—the inputting of finalized catalogue details on the library system—was delegated to nominated ‘information assistants’. This exhibits the division of labour within academic libraries (Carlin 2003a).
Librarians called some books ‘problematics’ when they were problematic to classify or had been classified at variance with in situ titles. ‘Problematics’ made available how members used ‘non-textbook’ methods to achieve a ‘textbook’ organization (see below).
On the practical management of the ‘principle of consistency’ in library classification, see Ikeya (1997): 319ff.
Despite Floridi’s efforts, not quite all philosophers concerned with ‘information’ go for a single, unified definition or a unified theory. The phenomenologist Nunberg (1996) specifically eschews this in his celebrated essay “Farewell to the Information Age”. However, he goes on to replace one formal-analytic stance with another.
Careful considerations of a ‘pre-microcomputer age’ problematize the notions of ‘the information age’ and ‘the information society’ (Black et al. 2007).
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Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank the participants at the research sites; Michel Barthélémy; Ian Cornelius; Doug Macbeth; George Parker; Anne Warfield Rawls, for her magnificent editing of Garfinkel’s writing on information; and Yves Winkin, not just for his expertise on social-scientific approaches to information but for finding Garfinkel’s ‘Memo #3’ in the first place. A version of this paper was presented as “Les déterminations pratiques et théoriques du concept d’‘information’” at the conference “Contributions Ethnométhodologiques à la Science de l’Information-Communication,” University of Paris VIII, November 2008. We thank Pierre Quettier for his invitation to present at this conference and generosity regarding this paper.
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Watson, R., Carlin, A.P. ‘Information’: Praxeological Considerations. Hum Stud 35, 327–345 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-012-9233-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-012-9233-1