ABSTRACT
This methodological strategy reflects the ‘duplex’ forms of analysis that ethnomethodology and conversation analysis rest upon (Watson, 2009): in this case, an analysis of the pilot’s
communicative and sense-making practices coupled with an analysis of locally situated reconstructions of those practices by a number of authoritative auditors. This analysis of members’ reconstructions of practices, rather than ours as researchers, involved us ‘tacking’ between the video and after-the-fact accounts of what the video could be said to show. In order to explain how we proceeded, we will initially discuss the problems we encountered in transcribing the video and what those difficulties themselves revealed about what the pilots were doing. After that, we turn to the ways in which we established links between the video and the reports published by the official inquiries, reports which offered competing and apparently conflicting interpretations of what happened and why. Through two examples we shall suggest, again, that this reveals something about what is involved in holding military operatives to account morally and legally, but also in opening up soldierly work to view, making it accountable (i.e. observable, reportable), and so available for inspection and evaluation in specific settings like military tribunals, courtrooms or even in the workspaces of journalists or academic researchers. Based on this, and having linked our research to wider work in the field as we go, we will conclude, finally, by returning to the question of what ethnomethodological and conversation analytic research adds to our understanding of action-in-interaction in military settings: namely, a focus on its specificities and the forms of organisation internal to it.
