Sharing the Tools of the Trade

Despite a growing body of work across the social and cognitive sciences concerned with the relations between inanimate objects and sociality, we still have relatively little understanding of the ways in which participants themselves characterize and discriminate objects in the course of practical activities. This article examines how personnel in a telecommunications control center display their understanding of objects, such as computer screens and documents, and achieve, if only momentarily, some shared sense of (features of) those objects with colleagues. In this way, the article is concerned with interweaving an interest in the interactional constitution of the “interindividual” object with a concern with the organization of collaborative work. The article draws on field observations augmented by audiovisual recordings of “naturally occurring” activities and events.