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This paper introduces ethnomethodological studies of skill and reasoning in domains of mundane expertise. In particular, it focuses on reasoning in the game of checkers. Reasoning is generally considered to be a ‘thing of its own kind’, something universal that transcends the empirical situations to which it is applied. The game of checkers suggests something quite different: that reasoning is domain specific and that it belongs peculiarly to the practices from within which reasoning arises. Through the material on checkers, the paper illustrates ethnomethodological research as a ‘tinkerer's craft’ and attempts to show the continuing vitality of small-scale ethnomethodological studies for raising fundamental, foundational issues of social inquiry [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a paper that aims to make a contribution to the sociology of skills. It explains that a research, which suggests that skills and their transmission are the properties of communities, leaves unanswered the question of how information may be explicitly transmitted and acquired as part of the process of leaning a skill. It further discusses, studies of skill accept that skill acquisition occurs within a culture; it also examines in detail, which aspects of skills can be explicated and which cannot. Such a second-order study is presented here. It identifies a quasi-quantitative measure of skill acquisition-hardness. This measure is useful in understanding how task uncertainty is resolved in practice and how new skills are learnt. It explains learning how hard something is and how hard one should go at it is a part of becoming a skilled person. It mentions that the question of the transfer of skills is deeply sociological so long as one thinks of skills as being the properties of communities.

This article examines the process by which a particular type of leader emerges from among the people of Ballybeg, Northern Ireland. Since this person acts as a spokesman at meetings and takes a leading position in various organizations it would in some ways be preferable to refer to him as a formal leader, but for the sake of brevity he will be referred to simply as a leader. To the north are uplands, rising in places to over 1000 feet, but to the south are lowlands, separated from the hills by an abrupt, almost scarp-like slope, and Ballybeg stands on the borders of these two types of country and serves them both. Despite their differences, however, both Catholic and Protestant have in some ways very similar attitudes towards the world outside their district. Ballybeg forms part of a political organization over which its inhabitants have very little influence, but they are themselves influenced by this organization in a great many ways. Not unnaturally the attitude of the people to officialdom is therefore one of considerable distrust and dislike, since in their relationship with it they suffer many irritations.