Il Senso del vedere

Il Senso del Vedere  (an Italian collection of some of Professor Goodwin’s work) examines the public, interaction organization of vision, perception and knowledge in a range of professional and scientific settings. Among the phenomena investigated are the discursive practices used by lawyers in the Rodney King trial to shape the jury’s perception of what was visible on the videotape of the beating so as to secure the acquittal of the policemen who beat Mr. King, archaeologists making maps, how airline workers construe images on the monitors they are working with, and the public practices used by archaeologists and chemists to classify color in ways that allow them to accomplish their scientific work. Rather then emerging from the psychology of the individual, professional vision is lodged within public, communicative interactive practice as participants work in concert with each other to accomplish the work that defines their communities.