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Prompted by the material turn in the social sciences and the development of novel interaction technologies, lively debates in social theory have arisen regarding the agency of non-human entities. While these debates primarily involve exchanging theoretical arguments against the background of different theoretical positions, ethnomethodological membership categorization analysis (MCA) provides an empirical approach to questions of non-human agency. The article discusses the debate on non-human agency, demonstrates how MCA can be used to investigate categorial work at the boundaries of the social, and presents the example of an encounter between two museum visitors and a humanoid robot to show how the robot is categorized in a specific way as an 'addressable non-person.' In this way, it becomes clear that social-theoretical debates and empirically oriented MCA can mutually inspire each other and how the 'basic categorization apparatus' addresses new alterities.

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Ageism in the manager-employee relationship is one of the main obstacles towards an age-inclusive workplace. Ageism in the labour market is rooted in the use of age as an organising principle of employment relations. This article contributes to the study of ageism in the workplace by investigating how stages of life, as normalised age categories, are mobilised through discursive practices in performance appraisals. Based on the analysis of video recordings of actual performance appraisal interviews at an Italian labour union, three discursive ways of 'doing age' - or of how age, as a constructed social category, is performed and enacted - were identified: quantification (e.g. number of years in the organisation), 'ageing within the organisation' and age-group membership identification (e.g. 'young' vs. 'old'). The analysis suggests that stages of life categories and age attributes are 'done' in social interactions and employed by both employees and managers as shared culture to sustain ongoing organisational activities, thereby reproducing discriminatory age norms and stereotypes. The study demonstrates how the ordering power of the stages of life categories is situated in organisational culture and challenges the implementation of equal and inclusive workplace policies.

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The current socio-political circumstances in the United States (US), constituted by the increasing visibility of police shootings of Black people, present a compelling moment for analysing how news media report about law enforcement, culpability, and racism. This paper conducts a membership categorization analysis of recent news media reports of police shootings of Black people (May 2020-October 2020) and investigates how news media negotiate culpability of agents involved these shootings. Findings illustrate how news reports (1) use the repeated category formulation 'police shooting of a Black man' to imply police are culpable for engaging in racist shootings, (2) upgrade culpability of police officers through adding to racial categorization of victims in ways that foreground victims' moral character (e.g., 'unarmed Black man'), and (3) highlight racism as an explanation for shootings and culpability of police through using racial categorizations for police officers. Overall, news media reports use racial categories as a resource to construct racism as an explanation for police shootings and to construct police officers and policing institutions as culpable for these shootings. Thus, we highlight how race and racism are constitutive of, and inseparable from, culpability in news media reports.

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Health professions education scholarship units (HPESUs) are increasingly becoming a standard for medical schools worldwide without having much information about their value and role in actual educational practices, particularly of those who work in these units, the educational scientists. We conducted a linguistic analysis, called Membership Categorization Analysis, of interviews with leaders of recent curriculum changes to explore how they talk about educational scientists in relation to these processes. The analysis was conducted on previously collected interview data with nine change leaders of major undergraduate medical curriculum change processes in the Netherlands. We analyzed how change leaders categorize HPESUs and educational scientists (use of category terms) and what they say about them (predicates). We noticed two ways of categorizing educational scientists, with observable different predicates. Educational scientists categorized by their first name were suggested to be closer to the change process, more involved in decisional practices and positively described, whereas those described in more generic terms were represented in terms of relatively passive and unspecified activities, were less explicit referenced for their knowledge and expertise and were predominantly factually or negatively described. This study shows an ambiguous portrayal of educational scientists by leaders of major curriculum change processes. Medical schools are challenged to establish medical curricula in consultation with a large, diverse and interdisciplinary stakeholder group. We suggest that it is important to invest in interpersonal relationships to strengthen the internal collaborations and make sure people are aware of each other's existence and roles in the process of curriculum development.

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BACKGROUND: Inclusive research is studied mainly in short-term collaborations between researchers with and without intellectual disabilities focusing on practicalities. Structural study of long-term collaborations can provide insight into different roles of inclusive researchers, thereby contributing to a collective approach. METHOD: Interviews with inclusive research team members (n = 3), colleagues (n = 8), and managers (n = 2) and three group discussions within the inclusive research team were held. Data were analysed following membership categorization analysis (MCA) adapted to the needs of the inclusive research team. RESULTS: This MCA provides insight into the complexity of inclusive research, reflected in the multitude of identified roles and activities. Analysis indicates that researchers with and without intellectual disabilities complement each other. CONCLUSIONS: The activities identified in this study provide valuable information for discussing roles and responsibilities from the outset, so that dialogue starts at the core of inclusive research: the process between researchers with and without intellectual disabilities.

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A growing body of research examining age-in-interaction has revealed the way in which people orientate to stereotypical associations of aging. However, relatively little attention has been given to the way older-age categorial terms and expressions are used in everyday, non-medicalised settings and the kinds of identities thereby achieved. In this study I aim to bring to the fore and explain the variability of stances towards older-age terms and expressions in an ordinary setting, a hair-salon. I explore this variability by scrutinizing in detail cases where older women resist another's use of aging to explain their ailment or complaint, and contrast these with cases where the same women, in the same appointment, themselves invoke older age to explain or intensify their own problem. Drawing on audio-recorded conversations between clients and salon-workers and using the micro-discourse analytic tools of Conversation Analysis and Membership Categorization Analysis, I show that these seemingly inconsistent orientations to older age emerge out of the unfolding sequential context and the different projects in which participants are engaged in interaction. I further show that older age is not the only or main identity orientated to in such uses in this setting. The discussion as a whole highlights the value of adopting an age-blind approach to the data and of examining people's use of older-age terms and expressions in a range of ordinary settings.

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Suffering from a contested illness poses a serious threat to one's identity. We analyzed the rhetorical identity management strategies respondents used when depicting their health problems and lives in the context of observed or suspected indoor air (IA) problems in the workplace. The data consisted of essays collected by the Finnish Literature Society. We used discourse-oriented methods to interpret a variety of language uses in the construction of identity strategies. Six strategies were identified: respondents described themselves as normal and good citizens with strong characters, and as IA sufferers who received acknowledge from others, offered positive meanings to their in-group, and demanded recognition. These identity strategies located on two continua: (a) individual- and collective-level strategies and (b) dissolved and emphasized (sub)category boundaries. The practical conclusion is that professionals should be aware of these complex coping strategies when aiming to interact effectively with people suffering from contested illnesses.

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This paper presents Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA) as a useful qualitative methodology in evaluation study. MCA is closely connected to Conversation Analysis and is most frequently used in Sociology studies. MCA provides evaluators unique insights into the boundaries different categories (e.g. teachers, students) place on themselves and their actions. The paper includes an illustrated example of the value added of MCA in an evaluation of an early childhood educator improvement program.

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O rompimento da integridade física, psíquica, moral e sexual do indivíduo configura-se em um ato de violência. Mulheres de todas as idades frequentemente são vítimas de violência exercida pela "força-potência-dominação" empregada por homens e respaldada pela cultura patriarcal, que estabelece relações hierárquicas assimétricas entre os gêneros. Gênero é uma construção social que naturaliza condutas de ambos os sexos. Comumente utiliza-se a terminologia "violência de gênero" como sinônimo de violência contra a mulher. Além desse uso não evidenciar para qual dos lados, feminino ou masculino, o vetor da dominação aponta, ele também não denuncia como a dominação masculina ocorre e não analisa as relações homem-mulher resultantes deste controle. De forma a preencher essa lacuna, este trabalho utiliza o embasamento teórico-conceitual de violência patriarcal contra a mulher para problematizar as análises deste estudo, evitando dúvidas em relação a como se configura o vetor de força-potência-dominação. O assédio sexual pode ser definido como qualquer forma de violência de natureza sexual, seja por meio de agressão física ou verbal, seja por meio de outros tipos de agressão; o assédio é uma via de manifestação do poder masculino sobre o feminino. No entanto, pesquisas mostram que mulheres não reconhecem o assédio como uma violência sexual, tampouco identificam situações que configuram assédio. A partir de um episódio de assédio sexual realizado na internet contra uma criança, o projeto feminista Think Olga criou a mobilização #MeuPrimeiroAssédio buscando promover o debate para a desnaturalização de violência sexual contra a mulheres. Esta pesquisa busca identificar as identidades reveladas a partir dos papéis sociais esperados de homens e mulheres pela cultura patriarcal nas interações ocorridas via publicações de participantes da mobilização #MeuPrimeiroAssédio. É um estudo de análise de dados naturalísticos amparado na Comunicação Mediada por Computador e pelo recorte metodológico êmico da Análise de Categorizações de Pertença e de Análise da Conversa. A análise das interações revelou três categorizações de pertença: (a) Meninas: infância, socialização, percepções e culpa, evidenciando a "socialização de gênero das meninas", "como as meninas vêem o abusador" e "a culpa relatada pelas meninas", (b) Mulher Ideal, revelando as identidades de "mulher bela", "mãe ideal" e "mulher obrigada a perdoar" e (c) Mulheres corajosas, imunes e educadoras, apresentando as identidades "mulheres corajosas", "mulheres imunes" e "mulheres educadoras". Outras possíveis categorizações podem ser buscadas nas interações que fizeram parte deste estudo e, espera-se que estes achados possam contribuir para melhorar o entendimento acerca do assédio sexual que acontece em nossa sociedade.

The breaking of physical, psychological, moral and sexual integrity of the individual is an act of violence. Women of all ages are often victims of violence exercised by the "force-power-domination" employed by men and backed up by patriarchal culture, which establishes asymmetrical hierarchical relations between genders. Gender is a social construction that naturalizes conduct of both sexes. The term "gender violence" is commonly used as synonym for violence against women. Besides not evincing which side, either male or female, the vector of domination points to, this terminology also does not denounce how male domination occurs and does not analyze man-woman relations resulting from this control. In order to fill this gap, this work uses the theoretical-conceptual basis of patriarchal violence against women to discuss the analysis of this study, avoiding doubts regarding how the force-power-domination vector is configured. Sexual harassment can be defined as any form of sexual violence, whether through physical or verbal aggression or through other types of aggression; harassment is a way of manifestation of male power over the feminine. However, researches show that women do not recognize harassment as sexual violence, nor do they identify situations that constitute harassment. From an online sexual harassment episode against a child, the feminist project Think Olga created the #MeuPrimeiroAssédio (#MyFirstHarassment) mobilization to promote the debate on the denaturalization of sexual violence against women. This research aims to identify the identities revealed from the expected social roles of men and women by the patriarchal culture in the interactions that took place via the publications of participants of the mobilization #MeuPrimeiroAssédio. It is a study of naturalistic data analysis based on the Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and the methodological cutoff of the Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA) and Conversation Analysis (CA). The analysis of the interactions revealed three Membership Categorizations: (a) Girls: childhood, socialization, perceptions and guilt, evidencing the "gender socialization of girls", "how girls see the abuse perpetrator" and "guilt reported by girls" (b) Ideal Woman, revealing the identities of "beautiful woman," "ideal mother" and "woman obligated to forgive," and (c) courageous, immune and educating women, presenting the identities "brave women", "immune women" and "Educating women". Other possible categorizations can be sought in the interactions that were part of this study, and it is hoped that these findings may contribute to improve the understanding about sexual harassment that happens in our society.

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This case study aims to give an understanding of what actions health professionals' castings of patients into the category 'old' perform on a medical and social level as well as what actions patients' interactional management of these castings perform. Particularly, this study aims to bring to the fore the negotiability of health professionals' perspectivating age ascriptions. This is done with the conversation analytic method (CA) according to which altercasting is a mutual construction performed turn by turn and shaped by the reactions of the interlocutor who can approve, resist, or modify the identity in question. The data are drawn from two Swedish television documentaries on health encounters. Three major findings are presented. Firstly, the castings of the patients into the category 'old' are in several cases embedded in metaphors that either position the patient's body in the role of a victim of old age or in the role of a machine to routinely check. Secondly, the castings with a fateful approach to old age are ambivalent; whereas they serve as resources for the health professionals' normalizing of medical projects and perspectives, they can constitute sources of problems for the patients' doctorability and/or agency. Thirdly, the health professionals' perspectivating age ascriptions are negotiable; their design facilitates resistance to them, and the patients accept, modify, interrupt or reverse them.

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The persistence of gender inequality in postindustrial societies is puzzling in light of a plethora of changes that destabilize it, including shifts in economy, legislation, and the proliferation of feminist politics. In family relations, such persistence manifests as a disconnect between couples aspiring to be more egalitarian yet continuing to enact traditional gender roles and hierarchies. There is an emerging consensus that gender inequality persists because of people's continued reliance on sexist ideology or gendered assumptions that constitute women as innately distinct from and inferior to men. Sexist ideology changes its form to accommodate to changing socio-economic conditions. Contemporary forms of sexism are old ways of legitimizing male power articulated in new and creative ways, often by incorporating feminist arguments. To effectively recognize and address "new sexism," scholars and practitioners require new, innovative research frameworks. Our objective in writing this article is two-fold. First, we seek to advance discursive (i.e., focused on language in use) approaches to the study of sexism. Second, we present the results of a discursive analysis of "new" sexist discourse in the context of couple therapy. The study provides preliminary evidence that, despite endorsing egalitarian norms, couples studied continue to rely on gender binaries and remain entrenched in old-fashioned patterns of gender inequality. Implications of these results for the practice of couple therapy and for future research are discussed.

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