Practice-based video analysis: a position statement

Abstract

Practice-based video analysis stands for an ethnomethodological approach that makes explicit the analyst’s practical experience in the technical practice that his or her video analysis bears upon. This paper offers a position statement advocating such a “bastard” approach (cf. Lynch 2015). First, the paper outlines the programmatic interest of the approach in the field of ethnography, ethnomethodology, and “multi-modal” video analysis in particular. Second, a tutorial example is offered to demonstrate how the approach, when developed in a stepwise manner, makes it possible to recover a technical practice in its constitutive accountability. Finally, initial attempts to introduce practice-based video analysis in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Conversation Analysis (CA) are reflected upon in terms of the contrasting disciplinary politics that these attempts have disclosed and may disclose – be it at the pub, in peer review, or at conference presentations.