Advances in Membership Categorisation Analysis

MCA provides an orientation, set of questions, and identification of discrete discourse devices to aid understanding of the moral work being accomplished by speakers' and writers' as they select category terms and tie them to descriptions. Fitzgerald and Housley's Advances in Membership Categorization Analysis brings together cutting edge theoretical explication with fascinating examples ( YouTube posts, intimates video chatting, a review board assessing parole, a research team meeting, online breaking news updates) and is a must-read for anyone interested in identities and interaction. -- Karen Tracy A state of the art collection which is essential reading for anyone interested in social identity and social order. -- David Silverman Membership categories are central to the organization of culture. They set up inferential relations between classes of people, they implicate actions and thoughts, and they mark moral statuses. Membership categorization analysis develops the tradition of work started by Harvey Sacks and shows that the issues he explored are still urgent and significant. In this volume an A-list of contributors provide state of the art analyses that illustrate the ongoing vitality of membership categorization analysis. It is essential reading for anyone interested in this topic. -- Jonathan Potter Richard Fitzgerald and William Housley are to be congratulated for further developing the field. In taking up such questions as the ethnomethodology of categorization (a masterful discussion by Rod Watson), the omni-relevance of categories, the precise nature of the connections between categories and predicates, the temporal reference of category usage, the relationship of categorization to "doing being ordinary" and the place of categorization in the "social life of methods," the contributors truly bear out the promise expressed in the title of advancing membership categorization analysis. -- Peter Eglin