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The Duality of Mobilisation—Following the Rise and Fall of an Alibi‐Story on its Way to Court 1
Author(s) -
Scheffer Thomas
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
journal for the theory of social behaviour
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.615
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1468-5914
pISSN - 0021-8308
DOI - 10.1111/1468-5914.00220
Subject(s) - alibi , narrative , sociology , emic and etic , ethnography , epistemology , law , political science , linguistics , philosophy , anthropology
This article suggests a discourse analysis suitable for multi‐dimensional processes. The exemplar in focus is a single narrative that travelled a long way through an English criminal pre‐trial to the finalising Crown Court‐hearing. The following case study asks how this story was mobilised by the defence to challenge the prosecution's case. The resulting sequential analysis of the story's career profits a good deal from Laboratory Studies. Like ethnographies in Science and Technology Studies, the analysis involves an extended production process—and the productivities of the artefacts produced. It shows, furthermore, how the mobilisation of the alibi is at some points threatened by emerging potentialities to undermine it. All in all, the resulting micro‐history on the story's career hinges on as well as exceeds common preferences in social constructivism: for collaborative and local accomplishments, for structural and antagonistic oppositions, and for success stories.