The (Re)Production, Negotiation, and Navigation of Social Asymmetries‐in‐Action: An Introduction to the Special Issue

This article reconsiders, and argues for, the contribution of ethnomethodological and conversation analytic research (EM/CA) to the understanding of social asymmetries in action. As well as highlighting the significance of the approach in describing the interactional “machinery” of supposedly “Big” social issues such as injustice, exclusion, and discrimination, it also considers some of the tensions that have been discussed by key scholars in the field. We discuss how EM/CA provides an alternate approach to the understanding of social inequality and argue against assessing the contribution of EM/CA within the dominant dualism of formal social science (for example, between “micro” and “macro” or “structure” and “agency”). We return to some classic and foundational works in the corpus of EM/CA studies as well as more contemporary studies which have, in different ways, informed the articles of the special issue that this article introduces. In sum, the article roughly maps the terrain from which this special issue emerged and aims to advance EM/CA research relating to social issues (e.g., ableism, racism) as they are produced, negotiated, and made accountable in situ .