Abstract
In what remains one of the central accomplishments of cognitive anthropology, Berlin and Kay (1969) demonstrated that the diversity of human color systems was built on a universal infrastructure, with black and white being the most basic colors in all systems. The analytical focus of their work is a structural system divorced from the messy tasks of actually using color terms to make relevant distinctions within specific courses of action situated within the concrete settings that constitute the lifeworld of a particular society. By way of contrast, Wittgenstein’s later philosophy argues that it is precisely such endogenous activities that provide the necessary framework for the analysis of human language. Using as data videotape of chemists attempting to determine when to stop a reaction by deciding when the material they are working with is jet black, this chapter explores (1) the diverse practices they deploy to establish what can count as black; (2) how such a distinction is embedded within a local activity system lodged in turn within a relevant community of practice; and (3) the embodied apprenticeship required for new members to become competent in the use of such a category. For the chemists, jet black (e.g., the most prototypical example of black) is not a preformulated, context-free universal color category, but instead a problematic judgment to be artfully accomplished through the deployment of a collection of systematic work practices. This analysis contributes to the development of a practice-based theory of knowledge and action.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Baker, G. P., & Hacker, P. M. S. (1980). Wittgenstein: Understanding and meaning. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Berlin, B., & Kay, P. (1967). Universality and evolution of basic color terms. (Working Paper #1). Berkeley, CA: Laboratory for Language Behavior Research.
Berlin, B., & Kay, P. (1969). Basic color terms: Their universality and evolution. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Bernstein, B. (1972). Social class, language and socialization. In P. P. Giglioli (Ed.), Language and social context (pp. 157–179). New York: Penguin.
Brun-Cottan, F., Forbes, K., Goodwin, C., Goodwin, M. H., Jordan, B., Suchman, L., & Trigg, R. (1991). The workplace project: Designing for diversity and change. (Videotape) Palo Alto, CA: Xerox Research Center.
Bruner, J., Oliver, R. R., & Greenfield, P. M. (1966). Studies in cognitive growth. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Chaiklin, S., & Lave, J. (Eds.). (1993). Understanding practice: Perspectives on activity and context. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Cicourel, A. V. (1964). Method and measurement in sociology. New York: Free Press.
Cole, M. (1985). The zone of proximal development: Where culture and cognition create each other. In J. Wertsch (Ed.), Culture, communication, and cognition: Vygotskian perspectives (pp. 146–161). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Collins, H. M. (1985). Changing order: Replication and induction in scientific practice. London: Sage.
Conklin, H. (1955). Hanunóo color categories. Southwestern Jounal of Anthropology, 11, 339–44.
Damasio, A. R., & Damasio, H. (1992, September). Brain and language. Scientific American, 89–95.
Engeström, Y. (1987). Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research. Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit Oy.
Engeström, Y., & Middleton, D. (Eds.), (in press). Cognition and communication at work. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Goffman, E. (1961). Encounters: Two studies in the sociology of interaction. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill.
Goodenough, W. H. (1956). Componential analysis and the study of meaning. Language, 32, 195–216.
Goodwin, C. (1994). Professional vision. American Anthropologist, 96(3), 606–633.
Goodwin, C. (in press). Transparent vision. In E. Ochs, E. A. Schegloff, & S. Thompson (Eds.), Interaction and grammar. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Goodwin, C., & Goodwin, M. H. (in press). Formulating planes: Seeing as a situated activity. In Y. Engestrom & D. Middleton (Eds.), Cognition and communication at work. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Goodwin, M. (in press). Co-construction in girls’ hop scotch. Research on Language and Social Interaction.
Goodwin, M. H. (1990). He-said-she-said: Talk as social organization among black children. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Greenfield, P. M., & Bruner, J. S. (1966). Culture and cognitive growth. International Journal of Psychology, 1, 89–107.
Hacker, P.M.S.(1986). Insight and illusion: Themes in the philosphy of Wittgenstein (rev. ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Hanks, W. F. (1990). Referential practice: Language and lived space among the Maya. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hanks, W. F. (1992). The indexical ground of deictic reference. In A. Duranti & C. Goodwin (Eds.), Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon (pp. 43–76). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Heath, C. (in press). Virtual looking: Spatial transformation and communicative asymmetries. In P. Pelligrino (Ed.), Proceedings of the Colloquiem on the Semiotics of Space. Geneva, Switzerland: University of Geneva.
Heath, C., & Luff, P. (in press). Convergent activities: Line control and passenger information on the London underground. In Y. Engeström & D. Middleton (Eds.), Cognition and Communication at Work. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). New York: Harper & Row.
Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge, England: Polity Press.
Hutchins, E. (1991). The social organization of distributed cognition. In L. Resnick, J. M. Levine, & S. D. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 283–307). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Hutchins, E. (1993). Learning to navigate. In S. Chaiklin & J. Lave (Eds.), Understanding practice: Perspectives on activity and context (pp. 35–63). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Jefferson, G. (1987). Exposed and embedded corrections. In G. Button & J. R. E. Lee (Eds.), Talk and Social organisation (pp. 86–100). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters Ltd.
Knorr-Cetina, K. (1981). The manufacture of knowledge. Oxford, England: Pergamon.
Latour, B. (1987). Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Lynch, M. (1985). Art and artefact in laboratory science. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Lynch, M. (1988). The externalized retina: Selection and mathematization in the visual documentation of objects in the life sciences. Human studies, 11, 201–234.
Lynch, M. (1991). Method: Measurement — ordinary and scientific measurement as ethnomethodological phenomena. In G. Button (Ed.), Ethnomethodology and the human sciences (pp. 77–108). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Lynch, M., & Woolgar, S. (Eds.). (1988). Representation in scientific practice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
McNeill, D. (1992). Hand & mind: What gestures reveal about thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Moore, W. S. (1976). Sampling Ra<228> in the deep ocean. Deep-Sea Research, 23, 647–651.
Parsons, T., & Shills, E. (1951). Toward a general theory of action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Pickering, A. (Ed.). (1992). Science as practice and culture. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Polanyi, M. (1966). The tacit dimension. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rogoff, B., & Lave, J. (Eds.). (1984). Everyday cognition: Its development in social context. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Roskill, M. (Ed.). (1983). The letters of Vincent van Gogh. London: Fontana Paperbacks.
Sacks, H. (1972). An initial investigation of the usability of conversational materials for doing sociology. In D. N. Sudnow (Ed.), Studies in Social Interaction (pp. 31–74). New York: Free Press.
Sacks, H. (1989). On members’ measurement systems. (Edited by G. Jefferson from unpublished lectures: 1966, 1967, 1970.) Research on Language and Social Interaction, 22, 45–60.
Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation: Volume I. (Edited by G. Jefferson, with an Introduction by E. A. Schegloff.) Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell.
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language, 50, 696–735.
Saussure, F. d. (1959). Course in general linguistics. (Edited by Charles Bally & Albert Sechehaye, in collaboration with Albert Riedlinger; W. Baskin, Trans.) New York: Philosophical Library.
Schegloff, E. A. (1972). Notes on a conversational practice: Formulating place. In D. Sudnow (Ed.), Studies in social interaction (pp. 75–119). New York: Free Press.
Schegloff, E. A. (1992a). On talk and its institutional occasions. In P. Drew & J. Heritage (Eds.), Talk at work: Interaction in institutional setting (pp. 101–134). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Schegloff, E. A. (1992b). Repair after next turn: The last structurally provided defense of intersubjectivity in conversation. American Journal of Sociology, 97(5), 1295–1345.
Scheper-Hughes, N. (1994). Embodied knowledge: Thinking with the body in critical medical anthropology. In R. Borofsky (Ed.), Assessing cultural anthropology (pp. 229–239). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Scribner, S. (1984). Studying working intelligence. In B. Rogoff & J. Lave (Eds.), Everyday cognition: Its development in social context (pp. 9–40). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Shapin, S. (1989). The invisible technician. American Scientist, 77, 554–563.
Star, S. L. (1988a). Introduction: The sociology of science and technology. Social Problems, 35(3), 197–205.
Star, S. L. (1988b). The structure of ill-structured solutions: Heterogeneous problem-solving, boundary objects and distributed artificial intelligence. In M. Huhns & L. Gasser (Eds.), Distributed artificial intelligence 2 (pp. 37–54). Menlo Park, CA: Morgan Kaufmann.
Suchman, L. (1992). Technologies of accountability: Of lizards and airplanes. In G. Button (Ed.), Technology in working order: Studies of work, interaction and technology (pp. 113–126). London: Routledge.
Suchman, L. A. (1987). Plans and situated actions: The problem of human machine communication. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Wittgenstein, L. (1958). Philosophical investigations. (Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe & R. Rhees; G. E. M. Anscombe, Trans., 2nd ed.). Oxford, England: Blackwell.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1997 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Goodwin, C. (1997). The Blackness of Black: Color Categories as Situated Practice. In: Resnick, L.B., Säljö, R., Pontecorvo, C., Burge, B. (eds) Discourse, Tools and Reasoning. NATO ASI Series, vol 160. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03362-3_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03362-3_6
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-08337-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-662-03362-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive