Social Life under the Microscope?

Abstract

Video is an important new instrument for sociological research, sometimes welcomed as the ‘microscope’ of social science. It provides access to important and otherwise difficult to examine aspects of human interaction. Moreover, because video captures practice in its lived production as ‘another next first time’ (Garfinkel 2002), it makes it possible to study practical creativity - the way in which people invent new practices. In this paper, I probe the microscope metaphor through concrete examples from my work with landscape architects and computer scientists in participatory technology research and design projects.