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A current set of concerns in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis includes the question of how conversation analysis (CA) can deal with studies of social structure or studies of talk in institutional settings. In this paper a focus is placed on how the accomplishment of "work" and "categorization" are interrelated. Two particular instances are examined: a ski school and a package delivery service. Membership categorization is shown to be a complex, on-going, interactive accomplishment. The parties act in ways that are "predicatively-bound" (i.e. predicates of action, rights, obligations, etc.) which allow inferences to be made by each of the parties about the other based on these actions; these enable each to accept/confirm/validate the other‘s self-categorization and to produce, via their own actions, activities that are congruent with the other‘s self-categorization. Activities of the parties are category-relevant and category-generative. Thus, "work" or "the work of the organization", (e.g. for Choice, a package delivery service), is being accomplished in and through the talk and interaction of the parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes up the current discussion and disagreement among ethnomethodologists and conversation analysts concerning how conversation analysis should address questions of "social structure." It also discusses the question of whether conversation analysis can address questions concerning the organisation of "work" as developed in the "studies of work" program of ethnomethodologists. Five different types of ethnomethodological and conversation analytic studies are delineated in order to show that, although they differ in problem selection and formulation, methodological preference and foci, they are not incompatible but complementary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an introduction to this special issue of "Human Studies," which offers papers presented at the first International Conference on Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis held at Waseda University in Tokyo in 1997.

Presents an introduction to the October 1999 issue of the journal "Human Studies," on languages and interaction.