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Sociological Inquiry

44 4): 257 268

The Social Construction of Documentary Reality’

I

Our knowledge of contemporary society is to

a large extent mediated to us by documents of

various kinds. Very little of our knowledge of

people, events, social relations and powers arises

directly in our immediate experience. Factual

statements in documentary form, whether as news,

data, information or the like, stand in for an

actuality which is not directly accessible. Socially

organized practices of reporting and recording

work upon what actually happens or has hap-

pened to create a reality in documentary form,

and though they are decisive to its character, their

traces are not visible in it.’

What is special to our kind of society is that much

which we recognize as that which we know, much

which is classifiable as . . . an ‘observable’ is

already worked up and produced in a process

which mediates its relation to what men have

actually done in the place where the process begins.

That mediating process itself is a practical activity.

Smith, 1972).

A documentary reality is fundamental to the

practices of governing, managing and administra-

tion

of

this form of society. The primary mode

of action and decision in the superstructures of

business, government, the professions, and other

like agencies, is in symbols, whether words, mathe-

matical symbols or some other. It is a mode

of action which depends upon a reality constituted

in documentary form.

The social scientist’s ordinary knowledge of her

society originates in and depends upon these docu-

mentary forms. This is more, much more, than

merely her use of statistical and other information

produced by census bureaux, departments of

health, welfare agencies, internal revenue depart-

ments and the like.

The ordinary forms in which the features of our

society become observable to us as its features-

mental illness, neighbours, crime, riots, leisure,

work, work satisfaction, stress, motivation, etc.-

these are already constructed, some as administra-

tive products, others by our sociological predeces-

sors. Smith, 1972).

The construction of social phenomena in their

‘The original version of this paper was presented

at the meetings of the Canadian Sociological and

Anthropological Association, Queens University,

Kingston, Ontario, May 1973.

3ee Zimmerman and Pollner 1972) quoted later

in this article.

DOROTHY. SMITH

University of British Columbia

familiar and recognizable forms, as they appear

to us is in large part a product of the reporting

and accounting procedures of formal organiza-

tions which in various ways provide for how the

society is governed.

Since this is a problem of the social determina-

tion of knowledge, it belongs properly in the

sociology

of

knowledge. Traditionally, however,

the problem has been located as one

of

how the

knower’s social situation or class membership

renders her perspective partial

or

taints that “dry

light” Bacon, 1900: 322

of

a consciousness

which should be totally transparent t its object.

It is a view of knowledge which holds that to be

properly a knowledge it must somehow transcend

the social contexts to which the knower is neces-

sarily bound. The impediment is seen in the

social detritus that the knower trails along with her

into the relation of knower and known and which

thus contaminates the knowledge it produces.

By contrast the problem which concerns us here

shifts the emphasis from the situated imperfec-

tions of the knower, to the status of knowledge

as a social product. The social organization and

production

of

the knowledge

itself

is the

focus

of

inquiry.

This locus

of

the problem might better be des-

cribed as concerned with “the social organization

of

knowledge” rather than its “sociology.” Fo r

we take first as a basis for our inquiry that knowl-

edge is socially accomplished and that a knowl-

edge which claims to transcend history, society

and culture is itself a highly specialized socially

organized practice. We take as a second basis

the mutual determination of knower and known.

What is attributed to one must be seen as imply-

ing

a

corresponding state

or

movement of the

other. Even the separation of knower and known

as distinct moments is itself taken to be socially

mediated. In the context we are concerned with

here

a

highly complex socially organized practice

mediates the relation of knower and

known.

The

object constituted as known is already socially

constructed prior to the knower’s entry into the

relation. Her relation to it, the act in which she

knows it, has thus already a determinate structure.

She may appear as investigator, discoverer, or

inquirer, but so long as this social determination

remains unexamined, her enterprise is closed by

a boundary which cannot be transcended. The

concept

of

a social organization of knowledge

directs us to attend to both terms of the relation

and to how that relation

is

socially organized.

It therefore brings that boundary under scrutiny.



258 SOCIOLOGICAL INQUIRY

This is more than an epistemological problem.

It is,

I

suggest, another way in which a class

relation may be implicated in social scientific

practice. Our knowledge of society and of the

conceptual procedures apt for accomplishing the

sense of what comes to us in the forms of knowl-

edge,appear to be grounded in a “ruling class”

’

relation to the objects of that knowledge. In

taking this social organizations

of

knowledge for

granted we confine ourselves within that relation.

Empirical inquiry into the social construction

of documentary reality thus promises also a cri-

tique of the ideological presuppositions

of

social

science. The aim of this paper is to develop a

framework for such inquiry.

I1

Before considering factual documents, I want

to look at fact as a social ~rganization.~ shall

suggest that

it

brings about a definite relation

between knower and some actuality which be-

comes thereby the object of her knowledge and

that this also brings about a determinate relation

among knowers.

The factual property of a statement is not

intrinsic to it. It is the knower’s method of

reading a statement and using it or

a

teller’s

method of arriving at a statement which lends

itself to that method

of

reading. The use of the

term “fact” or “in fact”

or

the like announces

that what follows is to be treated by that method.

Of course that usage restricts the kinds of state-

ments which may be made. Some statements

in some contexts) insist on

a

factual usage.

Others do not permit it. Statements asserting

that something is the case ordinarily lend them-

selves admirably to this method of reading, but

are immediately ruled out if they are introduced

by forms such as “I believe. . .” and “I think. . .”

Changing them into factual statements is

a

social

accomplishment, not merely a syntactic or logical

transformation.

It

changes the relation between

teller and what is told and changes accordingly

the relation between knower and known, teller

and hearer.

Facts then are not to be equated with factual

statements.

N o r

are they the actuality which

‘“Ruling class” has acquired a deposit of meaning

since Marx and Engels used it in

The German Ideo-

l o g y to identify that class which disposes of the

means of production. I am using it here with deli-

berate imprecision to draw attention to the class

which in various ways and from various kinds of

position is responsible for the management, govern-

ment and administration of this form of society.

4Treating “fact” as a

form of

organization is to

make a rather different analysis than that of philos-

ophy. However in developing this approach

I

depended greatly upon the work of two philosophers,

N.

R.

Hanson 1961, 1969) and Friedrich Waismann

1965).

factual statements represent. The fact is not

what actually happened in its raw form. It is that

actuality as it has been worked up so that it

intends its own description. Th at actuality has

been assigned descriptive categories and

a

concep-

tual structure. The structure incorporates a tem-

poral organization which both marks the boun-

daries of what actually happened so that it comes

to have the form of an “event,” “episode,” “state

of affairs,’’ etc. It will also be accorded an

internal temporal structure. These categorial and

conceptual procedures which name, analyse and

assemble what actually happens become as it

were) inserted into the actuality as an interpretive

schema which organizes that for

us as

it is or

was. Using that interpretive schema to organize

the actuality does not appear as imposing an

organization upon it but rather as a discovery of

how it is.

The organization which actuality acquires in

the accomplishment of a fact is not simply an

explication of an order which is already perceived,

though it may sometimes be just that. But it

is important t o recognize tha t facts are constructed

in

a

context

of telling.

The organization that

is

created aims at this telling and aims therefore

at the purposes for which it will be told. The

selection

of

categories and conceptual procedures

expresses that structure of relevance. These

become then how it is organized as it is in that

context. There is brought about an inner coher-

ence between the actuality thus composed and the

statements which can be made about it, such that

the actuality can be seen to require its own

descriptive categories and conceptual procedures.

Questions of accuracy, etc., arise about descrip-

tions that have already been made. They there-

fore take for granted the organization which has

already been assigned. Corrections are made

in terms of the organization which has been

already set up by the inaccurate account.

Thus

in the context

of

the social facts, with which

we are primarily concerned here, ideologies can be

seen as important resources of categories and

conceptual procedures with which what happens,

is happening, etc. may be named, analyzed and

assembled and organized into a form in which

it may be told again.

I

suggested above that facts mediate relations

between knower and known as well as between

knowers. Notice next time you see that movie of

wolves hunting caribou how they attend to one

another through the medium of their object.

Each is oriented to that caribou and through that

to each other.

Thus

they coordinate the hunt.

Fact is a practice of knowing which constructs

such an object as a symbolic artefact.

It

is the

caribou of situations in which what is first co-

ordinated is communication. A known is con-

structed as external to the particular subjectivities

of

the knowers. It provides

a

coordinate there-



THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF DOCUMENTARY REALITY

259

fore-whether as what is aimed at or merely as

background-which

is

fixed

for

anyone, external

to anyone, and a context therefore in which “any-

one” is coordinated.

Its externalization creates a complementary

organization of knowers.

A

factual organization

aims not precisely a t a plurality but a t an open-

ended more-than-one. It is not just between us,

it is the same

for

anyone. Although “facts” may

be restricted in their circulation to specific groups

or statuses, they are constituted as the same on

each occasion of their telling or reading. They

would be the same to anyone else-which is of

course the grounds for restricting in some cases

who they reach. This “sameness” is a product

of a social organization in which the knower may

treat her knowledge as what is or could be known

by anyone else. Factual organization implicates

the knower in an act which reaches through the

object to

a

knower “on the other side” for whom

that object is identical. It sets up relations of

equivalence therefore among knowers such that

they are formally interchangeable.

The construction of an utterance or written

statement as fact mediates relations among

persons in ways analogous to how Marx con-

ceived commodities as mediating relations among

individuals. We might indeed rewrite parts of

his account to do some work for

us.

He says

A

commodity is therefore a mysterious thing,

simply because in it the social character of men’s

labour appears

to

them as an objective character

stamped upon the product of that labour.

1954:

77).

Rewrite that substituting ‘fact’ for ‘commodity’

and making other appropriate changes and we get:

“a fact is .

. . a

mysterious thing, simply because

in it the social character of men’s consciousness

appears to them as an objective character stamped

upon the product

of

that consciousness.” Indeed

later in the same paragraph Marx draws

a

like

analogy with religion.) The objectification of

labour in the commodity is brought about in rela-

tions of exchange. Relations between individuals

come

to

appear as relations between commodities.

Similarly we can think of relations between

individual subjectivities appearing as facts and as

relations among facts. Subjectivities are necessar-

ily implicated in the accomplishment

of

facts, but

disappear in their product. Through the fact we

are related to that other or those others whose

observations, investigation or other experience

were the source

of

its original. But that does not

appear. Through the fact

they

are related to

us

But that does not appear. Through the fact we

are related also to other knowers who have

known it and who may know it, since in the social

organization of fact we enter a relation of know-

ing in which it does not matter who we are,

where we stand, for we constitute it as known

the same. Constituted as fact our knowing is

subordinate to what is there. The practice of

fact and the social organizational contexts which

construct it as commodities are constructed in

the social organization

of

production for

exchange) creates not an intersubjective world

known tacitly among those sharing

a

here and

now of co-presence who, as Schutz 1962) said,

“grow older together”), but a world in which

subjectivities are constituted as discrete and

in

opposition to the objectively known. They are

separated from each other

in

the social act which

creates an externalized object

of

knowledge-the

fact. This social organization of knowledge

depends upon but transcends the primary inter-

subjective participation

in

and constitution of a

world known in common.

I

Where factual documents are concerned, their

production and contexts of reading present a more

complex picture. Moreover the socially organized

production of records, accounts, statistics, etc., is

seldom a purely specialized activity as it is, for

example, in the relatively rare instance of the

census, or the registration

of

births, deaths and

marriages. In many

if

not in most cases the

production of factual accounts is done as part

of

the operation

of

formal organization and is an

intrinsic aspect of its regulatory procedures.‘ But

for preliminary purposes

we

will simplify the

process into two phases, the social organization

of the production of the account and the social

organization of its reading and interpretation).

5For a model of inquiry into the socially organized

production and uses

of

factual documents, see

Don

H. Zimmerman, 1969.



260

“what actually happened”

account

w h a t actually happened

SOCIOLOGICAL INQUIRY

reading/hearing

Here is a diagrammatic representation:

1

social organization of

social organization

of

We begin at what actually happened and return

via the social organization to “what actually

happened.” The arrow travelling from reading

through the account to “what actually happened”

represents the method of factual interpretation

which I described in the previous section. The

two social organizations,

of

the production of the

account and of the reading of the account, are

distinguished in the first place because

at

the point

at which the account is put into its final form

it enters what I shall call “document time.” This

is that crucial point at which much if not every

trace of what has gone into the making of that

account is obliterated and what remains is only

the text which aims at being read as “what

actually happened.”

I do not mean by the way

in using the term “what actually happened“ to

be concerned exclusively with events that are

already in the past. This is

a

simplification which

is used to stand in for the variety of events of

which factual accounts may be ‘made.) In reading

back therefore the interpretive procedure bypasses

the processes which produced the account and

lodges directly in the actuality thus constituted.

As we shall see in sections IV, V , and

VI,

the

social organization

of

the production of the

account determines the account in various ways.

A documentary reality is a product of this total

process.

This paper is concerned almost exclusively with

the first phase, the social organization of the

production of the account. From the rupture in

the total organization which occurs where the

document enters document time, different methods

oE

inquiry are required and different though

related methodological problems arise. The rela-

tionship of sociologist to text is then as reader.

The situation of reading and the interpretive work

involved are a distinct and special practice which

cannot be elaborated here see Heap,

1974). I

emphasize however that a documentary reality is

fully constituted only in the completion

of

both

production of account

phases. It has something like a “grammatical”

form which is incomplete in the absence of one

or other.

In many practical instances of course the social

organization

of

the production

of

the account and

the social organization of its reading form a

continuous sequence. Generally the social organ-

ization of the production aims at a particular

context

of

reading and at particular practical

purposes. In many formal organization contexts

the making of factual records of various kinds is a

continuous part of the enterprise. It depends

upon and takes €or granted

a

background knowl-

edge of how things get done and how what is

observed is constituted as observable in the

practices and recognitions

of

participants. It does

not aim at contexts of reading which are not

controlled with respect to the purposes and pol-

icies which structure its relevance. Rules

of

con-

fidentiality provide specifically for keeping docu-

ments within

the

scope of specific interpretive

contexts of reading and use. Except where secrecy

is concerned with the possible uses

of

information,

it is concerned with how the normal documentary

conduct

of

business within

a

formal organization

might be “misunderstood” if placed in a different

context of reading. Most factual documents are

not made to be detachable from specific organ-

izational contexts

of

interpretation.

Nonetheless even where there is a restriction on

who has access to a document, there is a finaliza-

tion of a version of the text. Traces of how it

came about which may appear in documentary

form, its previous drafts, corrections, alternative

wordings, etc., which provide for scholars

of

literature an inexhaustible mine

of

indeterminacies

-all are obliterated Thorpe, 1973). The text is

stabilized. It has no apparent history other than

that incorporated in the text or in features

of

its

frame) and does not acquire

a

history as

a

product of the various occasions of its use. The

fixing

of

a text in an official form, whether by

reading of account



THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF DOCUMENTARY REALITY

261

publication o r by procedures in ternal

to

formal

organization, constitutes it

as the

same on each

occasion of its reading. Rea ders reading the

final version a re held t o be reading

the

sam e text.

Upon this depend such forms of organizational

consciousness as

are

typical of contemporary

bure aucratic an d professional practice.

In the context of formal organization, docu-

me nt time provides

a

kind of “organizational con-

sciousness.” Le t m e clarify this by discussing

some features of two documents I am current ly

analyzing. These doc um ents are two versions

of a single event-a con fron tatio n between police

and street people. On e version appeared as a

letter in

an

underground newspaper, the second

was a response to that letter proceeding from the

office of the mayor and incorporating a repor t

from the police chief. T he versions were

of

course widely different in moral and political

chara cter. They also differed in how the original

event was represented as known and i t is this

difference I am focussing on here.

The letter in the underground newspaper tells

the story as it was witnessed by someone other-

wise unconnected with wh at hap pene d. Th e teller

of the tale gives information about where he was

and what he saw and heard from where he was.

The incident is spatially and temporally bounded

by this observational structure and by the action

which took place within its scope. W hat he

tells is restricted by what he has seen and heard

from where he saw and heard i t .

It

is

not

connected to previous events

or to

later ones.

His version enters document time when it is

published in the newspaper but does not itself

depend upon i t .

The official version is in this respect markedly

different. Ap art from its being based upo n an

inquiry,

it

displays a different internal temporal

struc ture of knowledge. T he incident is articul-

ated to an “administrative” knowledge of events

occurring before it and after it and re-interpreted

in that context. A particula r individual involved

in part of the action is identified as

a

“juvenile.”

Of another it is said that “she later pleaded

guilty.” Observations ma de on the scene are

represented a s ma de by police officers. Police

officers are treated as interchangeable.

Which

individual saw what and was involved in what

is not determined.

No

at tempt i s made

to

pre-

serve the continuity of the person with respect

to how their knowledge of events was put to-

gether. Th e contin uity that is created o r assumed

is an administrative continuity of reports and

records. Such adm inistrative know ledge as is

indicated by “he was a juvenile” and “she later

pleaded guilty” is treated as known equivalently

in the same way and as having the same factual

value as the events on tha t occasion. Th e knowl-

edge which is taken for granted in this version is

produced by precisely these processes upon which

we ar e focussing here. Prio r to

the

official

version of events, prior

to

the enquiry upon which

it

is based, is a n administratively constituted

knowledge incorporated into records, files, and

other forms of systematic collection of “inform a-

t ion.” This make s fo r

a

knowledge which is

const i tuted as the same before any knower,

so

that knowers are interchangeable with one an-

other. Th ere has been a transposition of actual-

i t ies into the forms of factual accounts which

become a “currency” Zimmerman,

1969)

within

the form al organization. They are entered into

document t ime, and therefore enable knowers

to

t ranscend the ordinary l imitat ions

of

observa-

tional situations.

I have suggested elsewhere 1972) that an:

ideological practice is that which creates a rup ture

in the relation between the forms of thought and

the practical activities

of

men. Concepts become

constituted as a kind

of

‘currency’-a medium

of

exchange amon g ideologists . . deological practice

detaches the concept

from

its ground and origin

in real individuals and th eir life activity. It makes

concept over into mere concept. It becomes then

a way

of

thinking about the world which stands

between the thinker and his object.

How concept becomes detached from

its

ground

in real individuals a nd their life activity is viewed

here as an effect

of

the social organization

of

the

production of accoun ts. T h e ideological ‘‘rup-

ture” is accomplished

as

a routine organizat ional

procedure.

As

the diagram has been drawn above,

the

arrow which returns the reader

to

“what actually

happened” passes through the account as if it

were transpa rent. This is a visual me tapho r

for

factual procedures of reading. Th e particular

descriptive features, the conceptual structure and

the tempo ral order an d boundaries,

of

the account

are at t r ibuted to “w hat actual ly happened” an d

are read as its representation. I am here simpli-

fying the practice by describing only the simple

case in which the interp retive procedures which

the reader uses in accomplishing the sense

of

the

account

are

those intended by the account and

which appear as how it is ordered.)

Insofar

as

these properties

of

the account resul t from the

social organization which produces it , the inter-

pretive organization

of

“what actual ly happens”

for the reader of the account builds in those

med iating bu t invisible processes. T h e follow-

ing sections are concerned to make some

of

them

visible.

IV

Implicit in methods and technical processes

used in making accounts are structuring

effects

which are “inserted” into actuality as features of

its organization. The se will be described under

the general term

of

structuring procedures.



262

Yes

SOCIOLOGICAL INQUIRY

Not really a hippie

The actual practices which generate accounts

ar e widely various. They may be definite kinds

of interviewing, investigation, inspection, observa-

tion, etc. These refer to different kinds of prac-

tices aiming at different kinds of accounts in

different organizational contexts. I am not sug-

gesting

a

typological approach to their study,

but directing attention at once to their variety and

our relative ignorance except

of

those specifically

sociological methods of interview and observation.

These activities involve techniques and technol-

ogies

of

keeping records, note taking, measure-

ment, tape recording,

film

etc., each

of

which is

consequential at the primary moment of inter-

change between what happened or what is there

and the account. Among these techniques are

those of eliciting infofirnation or data by qu,estions

or

other strategies. These structure the account

in definite ways. Such structuring procedures

are

of

particular importance because they are ordinar-

ily not visible in document time, while their effects

remain. For example, in sociological enquiries

we routinely treat only what the respondent says

as data. Though the forms of questions are

indeed included somewhere in the report, yet

the data are not treated as elicited by the ques-

Young?

)

tions fo r the purpose of analysis. The questions

become an issue only when there is seen to be a

problem, for instance, with their phrasing, etc.

Let me give an example

of

this as

a

structuring

procedure.

A

student did some interviews with

school children to find out what their images

of

‘deviants’ were.= She took

for

granted,

as

we

normally do, that the images were there prior to

and independent of, the sociologist’s inquiry. I t

emerged from her preliminary work that different

kinds of questions produced answers with distinc-

tively different structures.

She had experimented

with questions in alternative forms to find out

which one gave “the best results.” These were

“What would you say

a

hippie was?” and

“Do

you

know any hippies?”

Question

1,

“What would you say

a

hippie

was?” elicited an additive structure which can

be simply represented thus:

Hippy = someone who is dirty doesn’t like

money doesn’t like work.

Question

2 , “DO

you know any hippies?” elicit-

ed a ‘matching’ procedure which can be represent-

ed thus:

N o

Long

Hair? No

eally a hippie

The difference in content is not relevant here.)

Ordinarily such differences in structure concern

us only when we have thus produced “data” which

is not comparable between interviews. This

example suggests that the structuring effect of

questions upon answers may be quite powerful

and there is no reason to believe that this instance

is a special case.

It

suggests that questions

generate

a determinate structure

in their answers.

If

we reflect on how the questions were chosen

in

terms of the student’s research interest in

children’s images, it becomes

a

problem which

is not restricted to the specifics of question and

answer. Both these structures can be taken as

generated by the concept of “image” and are

different ways in which what we can recognize

as images might be structured. But both are

generated by the questions. Thus although the

conceptual structure of “image” is generated by

6Though the analysis is mine,

I

am indebted to

M . L. Stephenson for the use of this material.



THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION O F DOCUMENTARY REALITY

263

the questions, it appears in the children’s answers

and can therefore be attributed to the children

as theirs. That the children have images of

deviants is an effect of the sociologist’s structuring

procedures.

Another structuring procedure appears to be

at work in the production of clinical reports or

case records. These are typically structured so

that all major items of information appear as

predicates of the individual subject of the report.

Here is an example from Cicourel 1968: 163).

This is a Probation Officer’s report:

Talked to Mr. J. at Jr. Hi. re Audrey-he says

Audrey jumped into the fight to pull white girl

off Jane Johnson- negro) who was beating up

the girl’s younger sister. Audrey hit the oldest

Penn girl a couple of times and then Candy Noland

took over and Audrey withdrew. Audrey was

suspended the rest of that day. A couple of minor

incidents since-yesterday she and some other

girls jumped on a laundry truck at school and

Audrey didn’t obey bus driver on bus. However,

Mr. J. reports that Audrey’s attitude was good

-admitted everything and promised she wouldn’t

any more.

Talked to Audrey at school-lectured her

re

any

fighting

or

disobedience. Told her if she hadn’t

done

so

well up to now she would be in serious

trouble. Audrey promised not to get involved in

anything and “to talk away” if trouble started

around her.

As Cicourel points out “The P . 0 . k remarks . .

constitute the facts of the cases.” These facts

have been abstracted from the events as they

actually happened. Clearly the original events

involved a number of other people, some of

whom are mentioned by name,

but

in this report

they are organized in relation to Audrey. Thus:

Audrey jumped into the fight.

. .

Audrey hit the

oldest Penn girl. . . . Audrey withdrew. . . .

Audrey was suspended. . . . Audrey) and some

other girls jumped.. . . Audrey didn’t obey the

bus driver. . . Audrey’s attitude was good. . . .

Audrey ‘promised. . . .

The account resulting reorganizes the original

events so that they will compose into a back-

ground of which Audrey is figure. What happens

and what happened becomes assigned to her as

her trouble. It doesn’t make any difference who

started it, “if you hit her back you’re in trouble

too” Cicourel, 1968: 144).

It is her record that is being thus compiled.

That is a focus which was not the focus of the

original events, as they were actually coming

about. It is a product of the structuring proce-

dures involved in making

a

report on them in the

context

of

probation work.

Groves’

1973:

152)

description

of

how defense

lawyers prepare their clients provides another in-

stance of structuring procedure. The defense

lawyer’s strategy in eliciting his client’s story is to

confront him with “the particulars” of the police

case against him:

Having to tell his story in comparison with and up

against the particulars structures in obvious and

subtle ways what the client will say; for instance,

he is likely, as a naturally influenced effect,

t

speak to events in the order in which they are

laid out in the particulars

or

in the order in which

he recalls the just read particulars to have laid

them out).

The alternative version is further constrained

because it must account for how the particulars

could have appeared as they did in the police

record. Thus a client

constructs a story that shows us how one set of

appearances as laid out in the particulars) can

be seen to be generated by an alternative course

of action that is not a criminal course of action

153-154).

The client’s story is structured by “the partic-

ulars.’’ “The particulars” are a product of police

practices

of

observation and reporting. The

client’s story mediated in this way may correspond

not at all to what happened

as

the client experi-

enced it. He must draw upon what happened to

him as he experienced it and can remember it, and

upon any other resources of invention, elabora-

tion, etc.) which he commands, to construct jointly

with the lawyer a story that will respond to the

particulars, and which will have some chance

of

standing

up

in court. This complex fabrication

is then

his,

fo r him to tell and to take responsibil-

ity for.

V

Zimmerman and Pollner

1972)

have discussed

how the social scientist depends upon members’

everyday practice of the world as “an unexplicated

and invisible resource.” Using demography as

example, they write as follows of this relation:

Though the investigator relies upon the work

whereby members, including the investigator, do

sex and age, and o recording of such properties,

and

o

the demonstration that such recording was

done in accord with the ideals governing the

procedures

of

counting and categorizing, the

doings

are specifically severed from the subse-

quently produced distributions and interpretations

of them.

For

the demographer, as for the members

he counts, sexness is not a matter

for

speculation.

The observables

of

social science originate in

members’ practices and hence the work

of

demo-

graphers no less than others depends upon

a

social

construction done prior to their abstract symbolic

work. As formulated by Zimmerman and Poll-

ner, there is a direct relationship between the




demographer’s categories, etc. and the normative

order:

the demographer presupposes the operation of a

normative order local

to

the society in

question.

The normative order is presupposed by the demo-

grapher as an enforceable schema of interpretation

and guide to action used by members to present

themselves in a particular fashion and to recognize

the presentation of others in stable ways.

The normative order is treated as unitary and it

appears that members’ practices constitute the

phenomenon j u s t s the demographer knows it.

Recording, counting, etc., are included among

members’ practices but they are not assigned a

distinctive constitutive role. Here

I

want to

examine briefly the role of agencies which come

between where an event originated and where

it has been written into an account. There is an

interchange between members’ constitution of

events as participants in them and practices of

reporting

or

recording them. The construction

of

a demographer’s observable such as “birth” and

“sex” is mediated to her by recording proc-

esses which are active in this constitution

as she

knows it

and which cannot be altogether col-

lapsed into the normative order of society.

in the instance of the Probation Officer’s report

on Audrey cited above, the collection of specific

items which make up Audrey’s misconduct as

well as how those items are recognized as a

reportable matter presupposes not only the pri-

mary work of members who participated in the

fight, etc., but also

a

secondary work

of

control

and administration of the school. That Audrey

participated in a fight, that she jumped on

a

laundry truck, that she falled

to

obey the bus

driver, these become

a

collection which makes

sense together only in the context

of

the school’s

jurisdiction over the settings in which they

occurred. What she did

or

what happened becomes

her misconduct only in that context. The raport-

ing procedures are part of the administrative

practice of the school. What she did was not

reported as

merely

what she did, but as how what

she did was a reportable matter. The mediating

procedures directly enter into the constitution of

the object as it becomes known.

We cannot assume then, as I think Zimmerman

and Pollner do, a simple correspondence between

how an observable may be constituted at

its

point

of

origin and the forms under which it is known

where it is counted. The demographer works

with

a

concept of “mere birth,” for example, not

of

a

birth a s i t is constituted in the experience and

practices of parents, friends, neighbors, etc. The

construction of a birth as merely a birth is the

product of a specialized organizational practice

of reporting. A fact such as “Jessie Frank was

born on July 9th, 1963” appears maximally

unequivocal in this respect. But as we examine

how it has been fabricated it becomes apparent

that its character as

merely

a record is part of

how

it

has been contrived. Everything that a

mother or father might want to have remembered

as how the birth of Jessie Frank was for them is

stored elsewhere and is specifically discarded as

irrelevant in

the

practices of the recording agency.

The latter is concerned only to set up a certified

and permanent link between the birth of

a

particular individual-an actual event, and

a

name and certain social coordinates essential

to

locating that individual-the names

of

her par-

ents, where she was born, etc. These may be

verified practices are ordinarily standardized

within a given governmental jurisdiction) in vari-

ous ways, as by the physician’s signature

or

of

a

representative of the hospital if the child was

born in hospital. It will also be stamped

or

carry

in some way a

mark which establishes

a

proper

connection between this written form and the

actual event

of

birth and its coordinates by

warranting it as an act of the appropriate agency.

This guaranteed relation between written form

and actuality makes the certificate

of

birth de-

pendable as knowledge

for

other bureaucratic

agencies-for example, when the child’s age must

be established

for

school purposes, when second-

ary identification such

as

a passport is needed,

or for various legal purposes. And that same

agency which constitutes that birth as merely a

birth also counts it for the purposes of compiling

government statistics.

That reporting procedure is further mediated

by the routine practices of hospital and medical

profession. The practice of obstetrics, the organ-

ization of delivery and labour rooms, the ward,

nursing practice, etc., provide the settings, contin-

gencies and administrative procedures which are

taken for granted and made use of by the regis-

trars

of

births. Where

the

baby is separated

from the mother at birth, hospital procedures

must provide for and guarantee that this baby is

the child of these parents. Moreover hospital and

medical practices anticipate and provide f or the

conceptual structure

of

the birth certificate and

the demographer’s count if only because their

routine practices also constitute birth as merely

birth. For parents birth is quite differently

constituted. It creates them as parents of this

child and therefore aims at a future. For them

it

is

a beginning

of

something which is not fully

complete. Their practices do not accord it the

form of a unitary event which can be conceptually

detached from the full context

of

their lives. The

administrative and technical organization

of

the

hospital and of medical practice constitutes a birth

as a single episode in a work routine of multiple

such episodes, and thus as merely

a

birth.

I

am

not suggesting that hospitals, nurses and physi-

cians do not treat birth as important, I am suggest-

ing that how their practice intersects with the lives



THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION O F DOCUMENTARY REALITY

265

of

those they treat and the character

of

their

practice, constitutes that birth of that sickness

or that death) very differently from how it is

constituted by those for whom and to whom it

happens.

The. determination

of

“reality disjunctures,”

Pollner 1972) has argued, is political.

The “mere

birthness” of the demographer’s reading, which

is a reading which most if not all professionals are

trained to make, involves our participation in

an authority structure, in this case the authority

structure of hospital, medical profession, and

government bureaucracy. It involves our having

received as ours the interpretive procedures upon

which the documentary reality which they consti-

tute depends for its accomplishment. It may be

that the theoretical work of the demographer

involves explaining events which have never alto-

gether happened as they appear before her for

explanation.

VI

The role of organizational practices in constitut-

ing the phenomena which correspond

to

and

can be described, understood and communicated

in organizationally sanctioned terms may be very

great. The categories and conceptual procedures

which are the enforced linguistic resources of a

given organization or profession) assign determi-

nate properties and order to “what actually hap-

pened” or “what was there” etc.) in its account.

Concerted processes of formal organization de-

pend upon providing an administrative knowledge

independent of particular subjectivities. Such

knowledge must appear in an administratively

recognizable and standardized form capable of

yielding sense to the standard procedures for

reading it and on the standard occasions of its

reading.

The categories, coding procedures, and concep-

tual order sanctioned

for

use in the context of

formal organization are a linguistic and metho-

dological specification of organizational or pro-

fessional) structures

of

relevance. The “objects.”

“environment,” “persons,” “states of affairs,” and

“events,” which are thus given reportable status

are themselves constructed in the everyday organ-

izational practices which realize the enterprise.

In at least one of the instances examined below

an organization virtually invents the environment

and objects corresponding

to its

accounting ter-

minologies and practices.

In

general the termi-

nology depends upon and takes in implicitly,

properties of organization which it does not

explicate. These properties are an essential con-

text to the uses

of

the terminology and an essential

resource in how it makes sense.

Let us examine how the patient is constituted

for the psychiatrist. Whatever has been hap-

pening to and with that individual who becomes

defined as mentally

ill,

happens where she lives,

in the concrete actual conditions of her experi-

ence and in her relations with others-not as

these become specialized into the relations of

talk in clinical settings, but as they are mediated

by her household work and responsibilities.

It

was in this context it all meant and in this context

also there were others whose worlds and experi-

ence intersected with hers as hers with theirs.

The organization of psychiatric care whether in

clinic or hospital serves to separate an individual

from the contexts in which her speaking or doing

arises as part

of a

situation and becomes part of

a situation in which what others say

or

do arises.

She is taken from that for the purposes

of

treat-

ment, if not

for

custody) into a process which

progressively cleans her up and detaches her from

the actualities and the particular contexts of her

living. The reports made of her are, like

the

Probation Officer’s report

of

Audrey’s misconduct,

organized around her as subject Cicourel, 1968).

The organization of psychiatric care substructures

that structuring procedure, She is taken from her

situation and relationships.

They

are left behind.

She is placed in a context which is not hers, but

appropriated by the agency.

The setting is not

her business. Nothing there

is

her business. She

is their business. The organization is set up to

ensure that what she does there is not consequen-

tial for it, is not productive, not meaningful and

does not contribute to it as an enterprise.

She is

constituted as the object of its work not as

participant to it. Therefore what she does ap-

pears as a behavior attached to her and detached

from her situation.

The division of psychiatric labour ensures that

those who have most direct knowledge

of

the

patient’s life outside the hospital or of her daily

routines in hospital are least privileged

to

speak

and be heard. The patient least of all for where

she is privileged to speak

of

her experience it is

not treated as information. The social worker

whose business it is to know of her circumstances

outside may have visited, has talked to her family,

and who is concerned professionally with concrete

problems

of

money, jobs, presence or absence

of

spouse, children, and etc., makes a report.

The

nurse or psychiatric attendant who knows the

patient in the daily routines of the ward, reports

to the psychiatrist only within the sanctioned

terms and forms. Everything else that went on

between them is not given an occasion or a form

of relevance. The hierarchical structure of the

profession means that when the patient reaches

the point where a decision is to be made, she is

abstracted into a merely talking presence and a

bundle

of

reports. Everything that contextualizes

her has been rendered invisible or has been

packaged into reports which have resulted from

the use

of

the observer’s experience

to

replicate

an organizational form, and which practice struc-




turing procedures

of

the t y p e described above.

What can we know about whatever it was that

lay back there and which we talk of as mental

illness? It seems that this work of abstraction

as a practical organizational process is a condition

to psychiatric ideologies considered as

a

means to

describe, inquire into, theorize about and deter-

mine treatment for psychiatric patients. These

then are returned to patients as a means for them

to think about themselves.

These kinds of problems are exaggerated when

the categories used to assemble and recognize the

world for the purposes

of

reporting it do not

correspond to the organization of the actuality

they address. When that is built into an organ-

izational process, an alternative and more fitting

language and procedures may not be freely devel-

oped. The terms and procedures ar e sanctioned

and are enforced. They describe environment

and object in terms that are relevant to policies.

Characteristically the policies are made at the

top or centre of formal organization whereas what

must be reported and where the work of the

enterprise

is

concretely done is in large part

at

the bottom or periphery. This type of problem

is

manifest in accounts of American military

organization in the Vietnam War. It is a problem

which to policy makers even dissident policy-

makers) appears as a defect in information collec-

tion and transmission. Thus Ellsberg writes:

The urgent need to circumvent the lying and the

self-deception was, for me, one of the “lessons of

Vietnam”; a broader one was that there were

situations-Vietnam was one example-in which

the

U.S.

Government, starting ignorant, did not,

would not,

learn.

These was a whole set of what

amounted to institutional “anti-learning” mecha-

nisms working to preserve and guarantee unadap-

tive and unsuccessful behaviour; the fast turnover

in personnel; the lack of institutional memory at

any level; the failure to study history, to analyze

or even record operational experience or mistakes;

the effective pressures for optimistically false

reporting at every level, for describing “progress”

rather than problems or failure, thus concealing

the very need for change in approach or

for

learning. 1972: 18).

Examination of descriptive accounts such as those

of Jonathan Schell 1966, 1968) suggest a

more

fundamental difficulty

of

the kind indicated above,

namely that the actual modes of living and terms

of

social organization

of

Vietnam did not con-

form to the accounting practices of the American

military. The character of the world which the

American military were instructed to fight in,

which they had to report and for which they

were held accountable, did not correspond to

what was there as it happened and could be

observed. Therefore they had to find ways of

acting

so

that what they had done could be

described in the terms they were required to use.

The methods used, in many cases highly ingen-

ious, were various. Schell describes many in-

stances. Here is one:

Most

of

the terms used in the Bomb Damage

Assessment Reports seemed

to

have been devised

for

something like a bombing raid on a large

clearly visible stationary military base and

not

for the bombing of guerilla

n

the setting of fields

villages and jungle

which the FAC pilots actually

guided. Finding himself having to guide air

strikes with the aid of a set of instructions that

had little relevance to his actual task, each FAC

pilot had to improvise his own ways

of

trying to

tell where the enemy was operating. This was

how Captain Reese came to think that he could

spot, on the trails, grass that had been freshly bent

by the passage of enemy troops, and that he could

distinguish enemy houses from civilian houses by

whether they were in the tree lines

or

not; how

Lieutenant Moore came to think that he could

tell a farmer from a soldier by the way he walked;

and how Major Billings came to believe that he

could tell enemy soldiers from civilians by making

a low pass over the fields and seeing who ran for

cover, and that he could judge whether a wisp of

smoke hanging over the woods was rising from the

fire of a Montagnard or from the fire of a Vietcong

soldier. 181, my emphases).

This type of work was done at the front line level

prior to the making

of

any written account or

tally sheet, but directed towards such documents.

These practices made possible their own descrip-

tion in the terms sanctioned and enforced by the

military bureaucracy. They reproduced the world

as those at the top said it had to be.

I

am not

concerned with how scores might be exaggerated

to give an optimistic picture or with misrepresen-

tations

of

that kind.

I

am indicating rather that

the conceptual order and the terms in which those

at the top conceived and communicated their

policies and which had been articulated and spec-

ified in the accounting procedures described, were

confirmed continually in their capacity to accom-

plish the sense of factual accounts. The “actual-

ity on which they were based was one produced

by the enforcement of the accounting procedures

as actual military action.

vrr

In conclusion, I would remind the reader that

these examples have been given not as instances

of

an organizational pathology but as general and

fundamental processes of our society.

I

should

also dispel any misunderstanding with respect to

the intention of this paper.

It has not been meant

as yet another totalistic critique of current social

sciences.

I

am of course attempting to explicate

the basis of the social scientist’s knowledge, among

others and to make apparent how she is posi-

tioned in relation to the object of her knowledge.



THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION

OF

DOCUMENTARY REALITY

267

In specific instances this must have critical force.

But more generally this paper is a preliminary

treatment of aspects of the

social organization

of

our society which are fundamental to

how it

is ruled, managed

and

administered. They

are

aspects which we do not understand very well

partly because it is not very easy to see that they

are there. Our relation to others

in

our society

and beyond it is mediated by the social organ-

ization of its ruling. Ou r “knowledge” is thus

ideological in the sense that this social organ-

ization preserves conceptions and means of de-

scription which represent the world as it

is

for

those who

rule it, rather than as it is for those

who are ruled.

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