An influential strand within Science and Technology Studies (STS) rejects the idea that science produces representations referring to objects or processes exist independently of it. This radical ‘turn’ has been framed as ‘constructionist’, ‘nominalist’, more recently ‘ontological’. Its central argument is constructs enacts rather than represents. Since most practitioners believe it involves rep...

Optimum arrangement of communication resources for a distance education system to support collaborative learning, including hand-manipulation of physical objects, was empirically investigated. The authors propose a ‘body metaphor’ concept, which follows the ordinary body arrangement in everyday instruction. It allows: (1) to display instructor’s pointer; (2) to display instructor’s face; (3) to...

This essay considers how we might come to understand social constructionism sociologically. It examines a number of related approaches to gender and sexuality that speak to sociological concerns and might be termed social constructionist: historicism, symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology and materialist feminism. By recognising that social constructionism is multifarious rather than unifie...

In this introduction, we provide the scholarly background that motivates special issue and briefly discuss its content. We touch on contemporary debates in symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology conversation analysis, anthropology inform research undertaken by contributors. conclude deriving six interrelated themes—intersection, entwinement, multimodal, contextually embedded, structured, ser...

Garfinkel’s Ethnomethodology (EM) at its core involves a praxeological, or interactional, respecification of Gestalt phenomena. In early EM, this is pursued through the development category praxeological Gestalten in which social facts (or units) are respecified as phenomena, where members constituents and unit whole Gestalt, produced praxeologically by methodic work members. later work, Garfin...

PURPOSE Asthma is a common chronic disease with gender differences in terms of severity and quality of life. This study aimed to understand the gendered practices of male asthmatic adolescents in terms of living with and managing their chronic disease. The study applied a sociological perspective to identify the gender-related practices of participants and their possible consequences for health...