Whites Writing Whiteness Reading List
Membership Categorization Analysis: tools for analysing the moral order of letter-content
Liz Stanley
Please reference as: Liz Stanley (2020) ‘Methodology’, https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/publications/reading-lists/membership-categorization-analysis/ and provide the paragraph number as appropriate when quoting.
1. Introduction
1.1 Membership Categorization Analysis is a sub-set, or perhaps a divergent strand, of Conversational Analysis. CA is particularly associated with sociologist Harvey Sacks, and is itself a divergent strand, or perhaps partner, of Ethnomethodology, with EM particularly associated with sociologist Harold Garfinkel. Its focus is how categories are used in positioning people, events, behaviours and so on, in particular in talk. So why should a project called ‘Whites Writing Whiteness’ be concerned with this small body of quite technical MCA and CA literature?
1.2 In representing the world, and people and events in it, whether this is in talk, writing, photographs, songs, fiction or other forms of representation, we all use categories to describe and to explain. ‘She’s a nice person’, ‘he is clever’, ‘they were having a row’. Sometimes the categories used rely on gender (nice women, clever men) or ethnicity (a Scotsman, an Irishman and an Englishman…’) or ‘race’ (blacks are this, white people are that’ – and the first removes peoplehood and reduces to colour; and the second is much more rarely said or written because it is assumed to be normative).
1.3 These ideas as developed and used by MCA scholars provide some excellent pointers for things to look for when reading letters and other archive documents – how are categories generally used in particular people’s letters? do they mobilise ethnic or ‘racial’ and related categories? how do categories concerning class and gender figure in this? Key to this are the ways that people go about describing and positioning people, circumstances and events in the moral order of letter-writing, and how ideas about blackness and whiteness, and the evaluations that are attached to these categories, appear in letter-writing over time.
1.4 A useful example to think about here – just when did blackness start being used in a more negative way? was it already like this at the start of our research period, the 1770s? and if not, then when and how did this change? Also, did it change for everyone, or were perhaps different groups or networks, of some white people but not others, involved in this?
1.5 MCA and its techniques of analysis provides some incredibly useful tools for exploring these and related matters. The readings below add up to a toolbox of helpful ideas for analysing the use of locational, ethnic and racial categories in the letters that the WWW project is concerned with and for exploring their emergent moral order.
1.6 ** indicates recommended reading
2. Key Readings
Rebecca Clift 2016 Conversation Analysis Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
** Peter Eglin and Stephen Hester (2003) The Montreal Massacre: A Story of Membership Categorization Analysis Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier Press.
Analyses the notorious case of a gunman in Montreal targeting and slaughtering women students at the Ecole Polytechnique. Shows the powerful ways that MCA can throw light on how people, victims, perpetrators and notions of innocence and guilt are represented and changes in such representations over time.
Matteo Farina 2019 Facebook and Conversation Analysis: The Structure and Organization of Comment Threads London: Bloomsbury Academic.
** Stephen Hester & Peter Eglin (1997) ‘Membership categorization analysis: an introduction’ in (ed) Stephen Hester & Peter Eglin Culture in Action: Studies in Membership Categorization Analysis Washington, DC: International Institute for Ethnomethodology & Conversational Analysis & University Press of America, pp.1-23.
A short, readable and very accessible introduction to MCA in the context of Conversation Analysis & Ethnomethodology; a must read.
**William Houseley & Richard Fitzgerald (2009) ‘Membership categorization, culture and norms in action’ Discourse and Society 20 (3): 345–362.
Very useful discussion of how MCA helps to get at on-going aspects of moral order.
**Lena Jayyusi (1984) Categorization and Moral Order London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
One of the major contributions to Conversation Analysis post-Sacks, and a key contributor regarding MCA and the moral order.
**Georgia Lepper (2000) Categories in Text and Talk London Sage.
(Chapters 1, 2 and 3 are essential reading on MCDs. This book is a primer, and each chapter provides details on ‘how to’ aspects of MCA.
Jessica Nina Lester and Michelle O’Reilly 2018 Applied Conversation Analysis: Social Interaction in Institutional Settings London: Sage.
Aletta Norval (1996) Reconstructing Apartheid Discourse London: Verso.
A discourse analysis approach rather than a CA/MCA one, Norval’s book combines poststructuralist and post-Marxist ideas to explore and deconstruct the ‘political grammar’ of apartheid.
Tim Rapley 2018 Doing Conversation, Discourse and Document Analysis London: Sage.
** David Silverman (1998) Harvey Sacks, Social Science and Conversation Analysis Cambridge: Polity Press.
Lucid discussion, good on Sacks; chapters 5 and 7 are essential reading on MCDs.
**Kevin Whitehead & Gene Lerner (2009) ‘When are persons ‘white’? On some practical asymmetries of race reference in talk-in-interaction’ Discourse and Society 20 (5): 613-41.
An extremely interesting discussion. This is one of few applications of MCA to race categories; it is concerned in particular with how and when the ordinarily invisible, whiteness, surfaces in social situations.
3. Useful MCA Terms
Membership categorisation device – hear/read membership categories as belonging to collections of these, with rules for how to apply and hear/read them.
The economy rule – a single category can be ‘referentially adequate’, that is, hearers/readers will read/hear the unspoken or unwritten relationship to the collection the category belongs to.
The consistency rule – if a category has already been used or implied, then this is likely to be used or implied again, so hear/read it like this if it’s possible to.
Standardized relational pairs – a paired relationship in a collection which is stated or implied (baby, Mummy; white, Black); also, an absence can ‘count’ in these terms – eg. if white or European keeps being used, it implies a relationship that is not stated and may not be articulated except in absence.
Category-bound activities – activities can imply identities and categories – eg. invoking swishing, tossing hair and lisping is not to imply builder or surgeon but camp gay man; so the categories themselves need not always be actually used.
Positioned categories – the relational pairs, activities etc need not be ‘paired’ in the sense of being equal; they can invoke or imply a hierarchy – parent/child
Openings and closings – MCDs are most often used in the opening and closing phases (of talk), and are inferred or implied between these.
Recipient-design – accounts are given for audiences or recipients, and are tailored for them, according to their knowledge etc and so what can be taken for granted and what needs stating; so the ‘who’ of the audience matters
Context-bound – context more generally, as well as recipient specifically, is important in how an account is made, the situatedness in which accounts occur.
Sequential process – using MCDs is part of the way further description and explanation etc is done, and so part of ongoing processes (
Disjunctive categories – Lepper’s useful term for a category (or category collection) with a built-in disjuncture – doctor/patient and doctor/nurse, and police/suspect rather than police/witness. In blame allocation or making excuses, the account-making will often work to position people – eg. as a witness, rather than as a suspect.
Relational asymmetries – Whitehead and Lerner point out that relational pairs can be ordinarily asymmetrical, so this is a more pointed way of thinking than ‘positioned categories’, that the categories can be used to accomplish asymmetry.
Categories and the moral order –Jayyusi’s points out that membership categorisation is the essence of micro-politics and it implies, constructs and enforces moral ordering in social life.
Last updated: 28 June 2020
