A novice inquiry into unique adequacy

Abstract

In this paper, I question how a researcher might fulfil the unique adequacy requirement when studying novices in a setting in which the researcher is already a member. Since novices by definition lack the expected competencies in a setting, having unique adequacy for novice methods may appear oxymoronic. However, this paper suggests that unique adequacy requires enacting specific ways of ‘seeing’ as part of accomplishing local order; once one is competent, it becomes difficult to enact incompetent action in a locally adequate way, suggesting one can actually lose unique adequacy. Furthermore, as any given situated involves a multifaceted set of competencies, exactly which or whose competencies are relevant is both an analysts’ and members’ issue to solve. With reference to examples, I discuss how analysts and members delimit the ‘provinces of meaning’ in the process of finding what is locally adequate.

Respecifying social change: the obsolescence of practices and the transience of technology

“…In ethnomethodology, the unique adequacy requirement of methods refers to the routine recognition and production of local orders of social activities. As Garfinkel and Wieder (1992) , (p. 184, our emphasis) put it, “ethnomethodology is concerned to locate and examine the concerted vulgar uniquely adequate competencies of order* production.” 10 The enactment of methods of order production, or social practices, is uniquely adequate when the courses of action are recognizable for members and can be “taken seriously” by them ( Garfinkel, 2022 , p. 28)—or, as Hofstetter (2022) explains, “unique adequacy means being situated as some plausible local member.” It is a prerequisite for adequate analysis done by analysts both lay and professional ( Garfinkel and Wieder, 1992 , p. 183)—that is, not only by professional researchers (e.g., sociologists, ethnographers, or conversation analysts) but also by practitioners themselves in the studied settings, as they participate in concerted activities. Our earlier excursion into the development of telephony illustrates that as a competence in routine recognition and production of local order, unique adequacy has a historical dimension.…”