New Directions in Membership Categorisation Analysis

Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA) developed as a refocusing of Harvey Sacks’ original analyses of categories, devices, and sequence in talk-in-interaction. In building empirically an understanding of membership categorisation practices as ‘culture-in-action’, MCA, and this collection, opens up an attention to categorisation practices, in all their forms, as means of doing ethnomethodology and sociology. Indeed, MCA has become a prominent methodological and analytic approach across the social sciences and a range of topics of study as a powerful form of ethnomethodologically grounded inquiry. The aim of this collection is to showcase the cutting edge of MCA research and future new directions.

Richard Fitzgerald is Associate Dean (Research) and Professor of Communication at the University of Macau.William Housley is Professor of Sociology at Cardiff University.Terry S.H. Au-Yeung is a sociologist and interdisciplinary researcher in policing and video research. His methods is grounded in ethnomethodology, especially Sackian methodological thinkings, and a critical engagement with the conception of time.Robin James Smith is Professor of Sociology at Cardiff University. He has studied categorisation practices and their accomplishment in a range of settings, and their relation to mobilities and spatiality. He is also Visiting Professor at the Univeristy of Witwatersrand.