http://hdl.handle.net/10539/9657 2013-05-24T16:11:17Z http://hdl.handle.net/10539/12663 Managing Self-Other Relations in Complaint Sequences: The use of Self-Deprecating and Affiliative Racial Categorizations Whitehead, Kevin A The production and reception of complaints in talk-in-interaction is shaped by a range of interactional contingencies, including matters of alignment and affiliation between the complainant and complaint recipient(s), and (in cases where the complainee is a person or people) considerations associated the implications of moral failing on the part of complainees. In this report, I describe two complementary practices through which speakers orient to and manage the implications of their racial category membership when acting in the course of complaint sequences. The first of these practices involves speakers’ use of self-deprecating self-categorizations, and the second involves affiliative ways of categorizing or referring to “racial others” (i.e., members of racial categories other than the speaker’s own category). These practices serve as ways in which participants can manage the matters of self-other relations made relevant in the course of complaint sequences. 2013-04-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10539/12662 Race-Class Intersections as Interactional Resources in Post-Apartheid South Africa Whitehead, Kevin A 2013-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10539/12516 The Professional Consequences of Political Silence Whitehead, Kevin A. The article discusses the moral limits and professional consequences of the political dimensions of silence. It cites the debates on the article "How Do I Live in This Strange Place?" by Samantha Vice in which she stated the moral damaged caused by the position of White South Africans within the apartheid system and explains the sustainable distinction between political and professional silence. It also offers revealing insights on the life of people living in strange place. 2013-03-13T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10539/12515 Racial Categories as Resources and Constraints in Everyday Interactions: Implications for Racialism and Non-Racialism in Post-Apartheid South Africa Whitehead, Kevin A. The anti-apartheid struggle was characterized by tensions between the opposing ideologies of non-racialism (exemplified by the Freedom Charter) and racialism (exemplified by Black Consciousness). These tensions have remained prevalent in public policies and discourse, and in the writings of social scientists, in the post-apartheid period. In this paper, I examine some ways in which issues of whether, when, and how race matters become visible in everyday interactions in South Africa, and what insights this may offer with respect to these ongoing tensions. Specifically, I employ an ethnomethodological, conversation analytic approach to examine some ways in which racial categories are treated as resources for action or constraints on action. I conclude by arguing that these findings point to the contingent and situational operation of a practical non-racialism (as well as practical racialism), and thus to the achievement of these ideologies in the moment-by-moment unfolding of interactions. 2013-03-13T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10539/12514 Some Uses of Head Nods in “Third Position” in Talk-in-Interaction Whitehead, Kevin A. Previous research on the use of head nods in talk-in-interaction has demonstrated that they can be used for various interactional purposes by speakers and recipients in different sequential positions. In this report, I examine speakers’ uses of nods in “third position,” in the course of “minimal post-expansions” (Schegloff, 2007). I identify three possible distinct types of nods. The first of these can be used to register a prior utterance as news; the second appears to be designed to register receipt of a prior utterance without treating it as news; and the third embodies features of the first two types, and may be designed to register receipt and acknowledgment of “dispreferred” news. These findings are suggestive of rich complexities in the use of head movements in the production of actions-in-interaction, and of the importance of a fine-grained analytic approach for understanding their situated uses. 2013-03-13T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10539/12513 AN ETHNOMETHODOLOGICAL, CONVERSATION ANALYTIC APPROACH TO INVESTIGATING RACE IN SOUTH AFRICA WHITEHEAD, KEVIN A. This primarily methodologically-oriented article describes how an ethnomethodologically informed, conversation analytic approach can be used to investigate the ways in which racial categories become relevant in ordinary interactions in post-apartheid South Africa. Drawing on descriptions of the data and procedures employed in a broader study of the continuing centrality of race for everyday life in South Africa, the article explicates the central features and assumptions of the approach and its utility in studying the operation of social category systems (or ‘membership categorization devices’) such as race in recorded interactions. This methodological discussion is illustrated by presenting some excerpts from the data upon which the broader study was based, thereby demonstrating some of the analytic payoffs of employing this type of approach. Specifically, I briefly describe a generalising practice through which speakers can treat race as relevant, or potentially relevant, for what they are doing. This empirical illustration demonstrates the utility of this approach in exploring how racial categories (and other social categories) may surface in interactions in which they have not been pre-specified as a topic of interest. The approach I describe thus offers insights into the deployment, and hence reproduction, of common-sense knowledge associated with social categories, and racial categories in particular, in ordinary episodes of interaction. 2013-03-12T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10539/12512 The Management of Racial Common Sense in Interaction Whitehead, Kevin A. In this paper, I consider one mechanism by which racial categories, racial “common sense,” and thus the social organization of race itself, are reproduced in interaction. I approach these issues by using an ethnomethodological, conversation analytic approach to analyze a range of practices employed by participants of a “race-training” workshop to manage the normative accountability involved in referring to the racial categories of others when describing their actions, and thus in using racial common sense in talk-in-interaction. This accountability arises in part because a speaker’s use of a racial category to explain someone else’s actions may provide a warranted basis for recipients to treat the speaker’s own racial category as relevant for understanding and assessing the speaker’s actions. I describe three main ways in which speakers can manage this accountability, namely generalizing race, localizing race, and alluding to race. My analysis shows that, even in attempting to resist racial common sense in accounting for their own actions and those of others, speakers orient to race as a normative framework according to which individuals will produce their own actions and interpret those of others, and thus reproduce it as relevant for understanding social action. This research contributes to advancing knowledge in the fields of ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, racial studies, and categorical inequality. 2013-03-12T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10539/12511 Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference Whitehead, Kevin A.; Lerner, Gene H. This report contributes to the study of racial discourse by examining some of the practical asymmetries that obtain between different categories of racial membership as they are actually employed in talk-in-interaction. In particular, we identify three interactional environments in which the ordinarily “invisible” racial category “white” is employed overtly, and we describe the mechanisms through which this can occur. These mechanisms include 1) “white” surfacing “just in time” as an account for action, 2) the occurrence of referential ambiguities with respect to race occasioning repairs that result in overt references to “white,” and 3) the operation of a recipient design consideration that we term “descriptive adequacy.” These findings demonstrate some ways in which the mundane invisibility of whiteness – or indeed, other locally invisible racial categories – can be both exposed and disturbed as a result of ordinary interactional processes, revealing the importance of the generic machinery of talk-in-interaction for understanding both the reproduction of and resistance to the racial dynamics of everyday life. KEY WORDS: race, racial categories, whiteness, membership categorization devices, conversation analysis When Are Persons “White”? 2013-03-12T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10539/12163 Moving foward by doing analysis Whitehead, K A In this article, I address some of the issues for the analysis of categorial features of talk and texts raised by Stokoe’s ‘Moving forward with membership categorization analysis: Methods for systematic analysis’. I begin by discussing a number of points raised by Stokoe, relating to previous conversation analytic work that has addressed categorial matters; the implicit distinction in her article between ‘natural’ and ‘contrived’ data; and ambiguity with respect to the (possible) relevance of categories, in particular practices or utterances. I then discuss how my own previous work could be located in light of Stokoe’s discussion of debates and divergences between conversation analysis (CA) and membership categorization analysis (MCA), and argue that being bound by the integrity of the data on which an analysis is based (Schegloff, 2005) should take precedence over attempting to characterize the analysis as exemplifying either a CA- or MCA-based approach. I conclude by calling for a commitment to doing analysis, and pointing to the value of the resources Stokoe offers in this regard. 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10539/12159 Towards a South African Injury Costing Model Bowman, B The costs of injury are of obvious importance for the purposes of priority setting in prevention planning by policy makers and stakeholders in general. The economic costs of injury and death have been the focus of considerable international attention in recent years. Localisation of these studies and their methods to the South African injury context, however, remains largely underdeveloped. The costing of fatal and non-fatal injuries in South Africa consists of a number of initiatives undertaken by various segments of both the public and private sectors. This article will review the existing literature devoted to the estimation of costs in various sectors of the South African morbidity and mortality contexts, with a view to illustrating the manner in which this information informed both provisional processes and structure for the implementation of a nationwide South African injury costing project. The literature is examined across three primary dimensions: the precise object of the study, the method employed in the costing of that object, and the sample coverage of the method. The findings of the review indicated a number of significant entry-points for the development of a local South African costing model. A preponderance of direct medical costing, significantly discrepant expenditure figures between the public and private health care systems and blurring of distinct costing concepts are problematic themes throughout the review of the literature. This article illustrates the manner in which the identification of the problems and promises of these existing costing studies informed the sites, injury types and methodology selected for development and implementation of a National South African Injury Costing Project. 2002-01-01T00:00:00Z