In his own words

Abstract

This paper returns to two pieces of work I did some years ago with Wes Sharrock. The first was an empirical investigation into the work done by hardware and software engineers involved in various projects that were developing technology to be used in office environments. The second was to make visible that Garfinkel and Sacks' description of "constructive analysis" applies just as much to the theoretical perspectives of "post-modernism", "constructionism", "feminist theory" and other developments since they coined the phrase, as it did to the "positivist" paradigm that was predominant at the time they were writing. I do this in order to illustrate Sharrock's abiding interest in in three matters: natural language, grounding that interest in empirical investigations, and exploring the ramifications of that interest and the outcome of those investigations for both sociology and philosophy.