The Video Analyst’s Manifesto (or The Implications of Garfinkel’s Policies for Studying Practice within Design-Based Research)

Cast as a manifesto, this chapter presents a set of foundational principles for doing video analytic work in support of design-based research. Our approach draws predominantly upon the literature and methodology of ethnomethodology (EM). EM is centrally concerned with practical reasoning and the procedures (i.e., “methods”) participants (i.e., “members”) employ in making sense of their own actions and the actions of others, that is in creating “local rationality.” Design-based research calls for systematic and rigorous studies of practice. Because of its central concern with practical reasoning and meaning-making practices, EM would seem to provide a useful disciplinary foundation for carrying out such studies. In some of the early writing on EM, Garfinkel (1967) defined the field in terms of five policy statements. We examine each of these policy statements here and attempt to articulate their implications for video-based analytic work.