An ethnography of reason: following a recipe

Abstract

In this document, I carry out what Livingston (2008) calls an ethnography of reason as a way to make audible and visible the actions that I take in carrying out a simple task, that of cooking when following a written recipe. The ethnography of reason is a form of empirical description adapted from Livingston’s studies using ethnomethodological methods of inquiry. The ethnography of reason involves a first-person account of an individual carrying out a task within an environing context. The account produced makes explicit what the skilled actor does, often without conscious thought, while they are busy within the midst of the activity itself.