Sociological Inquiry
44(4): 257-268
The Social Construction of Documentary Reality*
I familiar and recognizable forms, as they appear
Our knowledge of contemporary society is to
a large extent mediated to us by documents of
various kinds. Very little of our knowledge of
people, events, social relations and powers arises
directly in our immediate experience. Factual
statements in documentary form, whether as news,
data, information or the like, stand in for an
actuality which is not directly accessible. Socially
organized practices of reporting and recording
work upon what actually happens or has hap-
pened to create a reality in documentary form,
and though they are decisive to its character, their
traces are not visible in it.'
What is special to our kind of society is that much
which we recognize as that which we know, much
which is classifiable as . . . an 'observable' is
already worked up and produced in a process
which mediates its relation to what men have
actually done in the place where the process begins.
That mediating process itself is a practical activity.
(Smith, 1972).
A documentary reality is fundamental to the
practices of governing, managing and administra-
tion of this form of society. The primary mode
of action and decision in the superstructures of
business, government, the professions, and other
like agencies, is in symbols, whether words, mathe-
matical symbols or some other. It is a mode
of action which depends upon a reality constituted
in documentary form.
The social scientist's ordinary knowledge of her
society originates in and depends upon these docu-
mentary forms. This is more, much more, than
merely her use of statistical and other information
produced by census bureaux, departments of
health, welfare agencies, internal revenue depart-
ments and the like.
The ordinary forms in which the features of our
society become observable to us or itf features
mental illness, neighbours, crime, riots, leisure,
work, work satisfaction, stress, motivation, etc.
these are already constructed, some as administra-
tive products, others by our sociological predeces-
sors. (Smith, 1972).
The construction of social phenomena in their
'The original version of this paper was presented
at the meetings of the Catiadian Sociological and
Anthropological Association, Queras Uidverdty,
Kingston, Ontario, May 1973.
*See Ziaimetman and Pollner (1972) quoted later
in this article.
DOROTHY E . SMrni
University of British Columbia
to us. is in large part a product of the reporting
and accounting procedures of formal organiza-
tions which in various ways provide for how the
society is governed.
Since this is a problem of the social determina-
tion of knowledge, it belongs properly in the
sociology of knowledge. Traditionally, however,
the problem has been located as one of how the
knower's social situation or class membership
renders her perspective partial or taints that "dry
light" (Bacon, 1900: 322) of a consciousness
which should be totally transparent to its object.
It is a view of knowledge which holds that to be
properly a knowledge it must somehow transcend
the social contexts to which the knower is neces-
sarily bound. The impediment is seen in the
social detritus that the knower trails along with her
into the relation of knower and known and which
thus contaminates the knowledge it produces.
By contrast the problem which concerns us here
shifts the emphasis from the situated imperfec-
tions of the knower, to the status of knowledge
as a social product. The social organization and
production of the knowledge itself is the focus of
inquiry.
This locus of the problem might better be des-
cribed as concerned with "the social organization
of knowledge" rather than its "sociology." For
we take first as a basis for otir inquiry that knowl-
edge is socially accomplished and that a knowl-
edge which claims to transcend history, society
and culture is itself a highly specialized socially
organized practice. We take as a second basis
the mutual determination of knower and known.
What is attributed to one must be seen as imply-
ing a corresponding state or movement of the
other. Even the separation of knower and known
as distinct moments is itsdf taken to be socially
mediated. In the context we are concerned with
here a highly complex socially organized practice
mediates the relation of knower and known. The
object constituted as known is already socially
constructed prior to the knower's entry into the
relation. Her relation to it, the act in which die
knows it, has thus already a determinate structure.
She may appear as investigator, discoverer, or
inquirer, but so long a> this social determination
remains unexamjned, her enterprise is closed by
a boundary which cannot be tranacended. The
conc^t of a social (M-gaitizatioa of knowledge
directs us to attend to both terms of Oie rdaticrii
and to how that rdatioa is sodally o r t a a i n d
It dierefote things that boundary under acniti&y.
258
This is more than an epistemological problem.
It is, I suggest, another way in which a. class
relation may be implicated in social scientific
practice. Our knowledge of society and of the
conceptual procedures apt for accomplishing the
sense of what comes to us in the forms of knowl-
edge appear to be grounded in a "ruling class"'
relation to the objects of that knowledge. In
taking this social organizations of knowledge for
granted we confine ourselves within that relation.
Empirical inquiry into the social construction
of documentary reality thus promises also a cri-
tique of the ideological presuppositions of social
science. The aim of this paper is to develop a
franiework for such inquiry.
II
Before considering factual documents, I want
to look at fact as a social organization.^ I shall
suggest that it brings about a definite relation
between knower and some actuality which be-
comes thereby the object of her knowledge and
that this also brings about a determinate relation
among knowers.
The factual property of a statement is not
intrinsic to it. It is the knower's method of
reading a statement and using it or a teller's
method of arriving at a statement which lends
itself to that method of reading. The use of the
term "fact" or "in fact" or the like announces
that what follows is to be treated by that method.
Of course that usage restricts the kinds of state-
ments which may be made. Some statements
(in some contexts) insist on a factual usage.
Others do not permit it. Statements asserting
that something is the case ordinarily lend them-
selves admirably to this method of reading, but
are immediately ruled out if they are introduced
by forms such as "I believe..." and "I think " in terms of the organization which has been
Oianging them into facttial statements is a social
accomplishment, not merely a syntactic or logical
transformation. It changes the relation between
teller and what is told and changes accordingly
the relation between knower and known, teller
and hearer.
Facts then are not to be equated with factual
statements. Nor are they the actuality which
'"Ruling class" has acquired a deposit of meaning
since Marx and Engels used it in The German Ideo-
logy to identify that class which disposes of the
means of production. I am using it here with deli-
berate imprecision to draw attmtion to the class
whidi in various ways and from various kinds of
position is responsible for the management, govern-
ment and administration of this form of society.
'Treating "tact" as a form of organization is to
make a rather diffnent analysis than that of philos-
(^y. However in developing this approach I
dcpwded greatly upon the work of two philosoirfiers,
N. R. Hanson (1961, 1969) and Friedrich Waismann
(1965).
SOCIOLOGICAL INQUIRY
factual statements represent. The fact is not
what actually happened in its raw form. It is that
actuality as it has been worked up so that it
intends its own description. That actuality has
been assigned descriptive categories and a concep-
tual structure. The structure incorporates a tem-
poral organization which both marks the boim-
daries of what actually happened so that it comes
to have the form of an "event," "episode," "state
of affairs," etc. It will also be accorded an
internal temporal structure. These categorial and
conceptual procedures which name, analyse and
assemble what actually happens become (as it
were) inserted into the actuality as an interpretive
schema which organizes that for us as it is or
was. Using that interpretive schema to organize
the actuality does not appear as imposing an
organization upon it but rather as a discovery of
how it is.
The organization which actuality acquires in
the accomplishment of a fact is not simply an
explication of an order which is already perceived,
though it may sometimes be just that. But it
is important to recognize that facts are constructed
in a context of telling. The organization that is
created aims at this telling and aims therefore
at the purposes for which it will be told. The
selection of categories and conceptual procedures
expresses that structure of relevance. These
become then how it is organized as it is in that
context. There is brought about an inner coher-
ence between the actuality thus composed and the
statements which can be made about it, such that
the actuality can be seen to require its own
descriptive categories and conceptual procedures.
Questions of accuracy, etc., arise about descrip-
tions that have akeady been made. They there-
fore take for granted the organization which has
already been assigned. Corrections are made
already set up by the inaccurate account. Thus
in the context of the social facts, with which
we are primarily concerned here, ideologies can be
seen as important resources of categories and
conceptual procedures with which what happens,
is happening, etc. may be named, analyzed and
assembled and organized into a form in which
it may be told again.
I suggested above that facts mediate relations
between knower and known as well as between
knowers. Notice next time you see that movie of
wolves hunting caribou how they attend to one
another through the medium of their object.
Eaibh is oriented to that caribou and through that
to each other. Thus they coordinate the hunt.
Fact is a practice of knowing which constructs
such an object as a symbolic artefact. It is the
caribou of situations in which what is first co-
ordinated is communication. A known is con-
structed as external to the particular subjectivities
of the knowers. It provides a coordinate there-
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF DOCUMENTARY REALITY
forewhether as what is aimed at or merely as
backgroundwhich is fixed for anyone, external
to anyone, and a context therefore in which "any-
one" is coordinated.
Its externalization creates a complementary
organization of knowers. A factual organization
aims not precisely at a plurality but at an open-
ended more-than-one. It is not just between us,
it is the same for anyone. Although "facts" may
be restricted in their circulation to specific groups
or statuses, they are constituted as the same on
each occasion of their telling or reading. They
would be the same to anyone elsewhich is of
course the grounds for restricting in some cases
who they reach. This "sameness" is a product
of a social organization in which the knower may
treat her knowledge as what is or could be known
by anyone else. Factual organization implicates
the knower in an act which reaches through the
object to a knower "on the other side" for whom
that object is identical. It sets up relations of
equivalence therefore among knowers such that
they are formally interchangeable.
The construction of an utterance or written
statement as fact mediates relations among
persons in ways analogous to how Marx con-
ceived commodities as mediating relations among
individuals. We might indeed rewrite parts of
his account to do some work for us. He says
A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing,
simply because in it the social character of men's
labour appears to them as an objective character
stamped upon the product of that labour.
(1954: 77).
Rewrite that substituting 'fact' for 'commodity'
and making other appropriate changes and we get:
"a fact is . . . a mysterious thing, simply because
in it the social character of men's consciousness
appears to them as an objective character stamped
upon the product of that consciousness." (Indeed
later in the same paragraph Marx draws a like
analogy with religion.) The objectification of
labour in the commodity is brought about in rela-
tions of exchange. Relations between individuals
come to appear as relations between commodities.
Similarly we can think of relations between
individual subjectivities appearing as facts and as
relations among facts. Subjectivities are necessar-
259
ily implicated in the accomplishment of facts, but
disappear in their product. Through the fact we
are related to that other or those others whose
observations, investigation or other experience
were the source of its original. But that does not
appear. Through the fact they are related to us.
But that does not appear. Through the fact we
are related also to other knowers who have
known it and who may know it, since in the social
organization of fact we enter a relation of know-
ing in which it does not matter who we are,
where we stand, for we constitute it as known
the same. Constituted as fact our knowing is
subordinate to what is there. The practice of
fact and the social organizational contexts which
construct it (as commodities are constructed in
the social organization of production for
exchange) creates not an intersubjective world
known tacitly among those sharing a here and
now of co-presence (who, as Schutz (1962) said,
"grow older together"), but a world in which
subjectivities are constituted as discrete and in
opposition to the objectively known. They are
separated from each other in the social act which
creates an externalized object of knowledgethe
fact. This social organization of knowledge
depends upon but transcends the primary inter-
subjective participation in and constitution of a
world known in common.
Ill
Where factual documents are concerned, their
production and contexts of reading present a more
complex picture. Moreover the socially organized
production of records, accounts, statistics, etc., is
seldom a purely specialized activity as it is, for
example, in the relatively rare instance of the
census, or the registration of births, deaths and
marriages. In many if not in most cases the
production of factual accounts is done as part of
the operation of formal organization and is an
intrinsic aspect of its regulatory procedures.* But
for prdiminary purposes we will simplify the
process into .two phases, the social organization
of the production of the account and the social
organization of its reading (and interiHvtation).
'For a model of inquiry iQto the todaUy o g
productioit and uses of fBctual documeats, lee Don
H. Zimmenntui, 1969.
260
Here is a diagrammatic representation:
"what actually happened"
account
what actually happened
>
social organization of
production of account
We begin at what actually happened and return
via the social organization to "what actually
happened." The arrow travelling from reading
through the account to "what actually happened"
represents the method of factual interpretation
which I described in the previous section. The
two social organizations, of the production of the
account and of the reading of the account, are
distinguished in the first place because at the point
at which the account is put into its final form
it enters what I shall call "document time." This
is that crucial point at which much if not every
trace of what has gone into the making of that
account is obliterated and what remains is only
the text which aims at being read as "what
actually happened." (I do not mean by the way
in using the term "what actually happened" to
be coticemed exclusively with events that are
already in the past. This is a simplification which
is used to stand in for the variety of events of
which factual accounts may be made.) In reading
back therefore the interpretive procedtire bypasses
the processes which produced the account and
lodges directly in the actuality thus constituted.
As we shall see in sections IV, V, and VI, the
social organization of the production of the
account determines the account in various ways.
A documentary reality is a product of this total
process.
This paper is concerned almost exclusively with
the first phase, the social organization of the
production of the account. From the rupture in
the total organization which occurs where the
document enters document time, different methods
of inquiry are required and different t h o u ^
related methodological problems arise. The rela-
tionship of sociologist to text is then as reader.
The situation of reading and the interpretive work
involved are a distinct and special practice which
cannot be elaborated here (see Heap, 1974). I
csaphasize however that a documentary reality is
bdly constituted only in the completion of both
SOCIOLOGICAL INQUIRY
reading/hearing
\ social organization of
reading of account
phases. It has something like a "grammatical"
form which is incomplete in the absence of one
or other.
In many practical instances of course the social
organization of the production of the account and
the social organization of its reading form a
continuous sequence. Generally the social organ-
ization of the production aims at a particular
context of reading and at particular practical
purposes. In many formal organization contexts
the making of factual records of variotis kinds is a
continuous part of the enterprise. It depends
upon and takes for granted a background knowl-
edge of how things get done and how what is
observed is constituted as observable in the
practices and recognitions of participants. It does
not aim at contexts of reading which are not
controlled with respect to the purposes and pol-
icies which structtire its relevance. Rules of con-
fidentiality provide specifically for keeping docu-
ments within the 9cope of specific interpretive
contexts of reading and use. Except where secrecy
is concerned with the possible uses of information,
it is concerned with how the normal documentary
conduct of business within a formal organization
might be "misunderstood" if placed in a different
context of reading. Most facttial documents are
not made to be detachable from specific organ-
izational contexts of interpretation.
Nonetheless even where there is a restriction on
who has access to a document, there is a finaliza-
tion of a version of the text. Traces of how it
came about which may appear in documentary
form, its previous drafts, corrections, alternative
wordings, etc., which provide for scholars of
literature an inexhaustible mine of indeterminacies
all are obliterated (Thorpe, 1973). The text is
stabilized. It has no apparent history other than
that incorporated in the text (or in features of its
frame) and does not acquire a history as a
product of the various occasions of its use. The
fixing of a text in an official form, whether by
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF DOCUMENTARY REALITY
publication or by procedures internal to formal
organization, constitutes it as the same on each
occasion of its reading. Readers reading the
final version are held to be reading the same text.
Upon this depend such forms of organizational
consciousness as are typical of contemporary
bureaucratic and professional practice.
In the context of formal organization, docu-
ment time provides a kind of "organizational con-
sciousness." Let me clarify this by discussing
some features of two documents I am currently
analyzing. These documents are two versions
of a single eventa confrontation between police
and street people. One version appeared as a
letter in an underground newspaper, the second
was a response to that letter proceeding from the
office of the mayor and incorporating a report
from the police chief. The versions were of
course widely different in moral and political
character. They also differed in how the original
event was represented as known and it is this
difference I am focussing on here.
The letter in the imderground newspaper tells
the story as it was witnessed by someone other-
wise unconnected with what happened. The teller
of the tale gives information about where he was
and what he saw and heard from where he was.
The iiKident is spatially and temporally bounded
by this observational structure and by the action
which took place within its scope. What he
tells is restricted by what he has seen and heard
from where he saw and heard it. It is not
connected to previous events or to later ones.
His version enters document time when it is
published in the newspaper but does not itself
depend upon it.
The official version is in this respect markedly
different. Apart from its being based upon an
inquiry, it displays a different internal temporal
structure of knowledge. The incident is articul-
ated to an "administrative" knowledge of events
occurring before it and after it and re-interpreted
in that context. A particular individual involved
in part of the action is identified as a "juvenile."
Of another it is said that "she later pleaded
guilty." Observations made on the scene are
represented as made by police officers. Police
officers are treated as interchangeable. Which
individual saw what and was involved in what
is not determined. No attempt is made to pre-
serve the continuity of the person with respect
to how their knowledge of events was put to-
gether. The continuity that is created or assumed
is an administrative continuity of reports and
records. Such administrative knowled^ as is
indicated by "he was a juvenile" and "she later
pleaded guilty" is treated as known equivakntly
in the same way and as having the same factual
value as the events on that occasion. The knowl-
edge which is taken for granted in this version is
produced by precisely these processes upon which
261
we are focussing here. Prior to the official
version of events, prior to the enquiry upon which
it is based, is an administratively constituted
knowledge incorporated into records, files, and
other forms of systematic collection of "informa-
tion." This makes for a knowledge which is
constituted as the same before any knower, so
that knowers are interchangeable with one an-
other. There has been a transposition of actual-
ities into the forms of factual accounts which
become a "currency" (Zimmerman, 1969) within
the formal organization. They are entered into
document time, and therefore enable knowers to
transcend the ordinary limitations of observa-
tional situations.
I have suggested elsewhere (1972) that an:
ideological practice is that which creates a rupture
in the relation between the forms of thought and
the practical activities of men. Concepts become
constituted as a kind of 'currency'a medium of
exchange among ideologists . . . i(teological practice
detaches the concept from its ground and origin
in real individuals and their life activity. It makes
concept over into mere concept It becomes then
a way of thinking about the world Much stands
between the thinker and his o b j e c t . . .
How concept becomes detached from its ground
in real individuals and their life activity is viewed
here as an effect of the social organization of the
production of accounts. The ideological "rup-
ture" is accomplished as a routine organizational
procedure.
As the diagram has been drawn above, the
arrow which returns the reader to "what actually
happened" passes through the account as if it
were transparent. This is a visual metaphor for
factual procedures of reading. The particular
descriptive features, the conceptual structure and
the temporal order and boundaries, of the account
are attributed to "what actually happened" and
are read as its representation. (I am here simpli-
fying the practice by descriinng only the simple
case in which the interpretive procedures which
the reader uses in accomplishing the sense of the
account are those intended by the account and
which appear as how it is ordered.) Insofar as
these properties of the account result from the
social organization which produces it, the inter-
pretive organization of "what actually happens"
for the reader of the account builds in those
mediating but inviuble processes. The follow-
ing sections are concerned to make tome of them
visiUe.
IV
InH>licit in itiethods and technical procettes
used in making accounts are structuring effects
which are "inserted'* into actuality as features of
its organization. These will be Ascribed under
the gmeral term of structnring i^ocedtint.
262
The actual practices which generate accounts
are widely various. They may be definite, kinds
of interviewing, investigation, inspection, observa-
tion, etc. These refer to different kinds of prac-
tices aiming at different kinds of accounts in
different organizational contexts. I am not sug-
gesting a typological approach to their study,
but directing attention at once to their variety and
our relative ignorance except of those specifically
sociological methods of interview and observation.
These activities involve techniques and technol-
ogies of keeping records, note taking, measure-
ment, tape recording, film, etc., each of which is
consequential at the primary moment of inter-
change between what happened or what is there
and the account. Among these techniques are
those of eliciting infortnation or data by questions
or other strategies. These structure the account
in definite ways. Such structuring procedures are
of particular importance because they are ordinar-
ily not visible in document time, while their effects
remain. For example, in sociological enquiries
we routinely treat only what the respondent says
as data. Though the forms of questions are
indeed included somewhere in the report, yet
the data are not treated as elicited by the ques-
Long Hair?
Yes
1
Young?
. Yfcs
Really a hippie
(The difference in content is not relevant here.)
Ordinarily such differences in structure concern
us only when we have thus produced "data" which
is not comparable between interviews. This
exuapie suggests that the structuring effect of
questions upon answers may be quite powerful
and tltere is no reason to believe that diis instance
is a special case. It suggests tliat questions
gnerate a determinate structure in their answers.
If yre reflect on how the qutions were chosen
in tertiM at the student's researdi interest in
SOCIOLOGICAL INQUIRY
tions for the purpose of analysis. The questions
become an issue only when there is seen to be a
problem, for instance, with their phrasing, etc.
Let me give an example of this as a structuring
procedure. A student did some interviews with
school children to find out what their images of
'deviants' were.' She took for granted, as we
normally do, that the images were there prior to
and independent of, the sociologist's inquiry. It
emerged from her preliminary work that different
kinds of questions produced answers with distinc-
tively different structures. She had experimented
with questions in alternative forms to find out
which one gave "the best results." These were
"What would you say a hippie was?" and "Do
you know any hippies?"
Question 1, "What would you say a hippie
was?" elicited an additive structure which can
be simply represented thus:
Hippy = someone who is dirty + doesn't like
money -f- doesn't like work.
Question 2, "Do you know any hippies?" elicit-
ed a 'matching' procedure which can be represent-
ed thus:
No
i
Not really a hippie
No
children's images, it becomes a problem which
is not restricted to the specifics of question and
answer. Both these structures can be taken as
generated by the concept of "image" and are
different ways in which what we can recognize
as images might be structured. But both are
generated by the questions. Thus although the
conceptual structure of "image" is generated by
*Though the analysis it mine, I am indebted to
M. L. Steidienson for the uie Cft this material.
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF DOCUMENTARY REALITY
the questions, it appears in the children's answers
and can therefore be attributed to the children
as theirs. That the children have images of
deviants is an effect of the sociologist's structuring
procedures.
Another structuring procedure appears to be
at work in the production of clinical reports or
case records. These are typically structured so
that all major items of information appear as
predicates of the individual subject of the report.
Here is an example from Cicourel (1968: 163).
This is a Probation Officer's report:
Talked to Mr. J. at Jr. Hi. re Audreyhe says
Audrey jumped into the fight to pull white girl
off Jane Johnson(negro) who was beating up
the girl's younger sister. Audrey hit the oldest
Penn girl a couple of times and then Candy Noland
took over and Audrey withdrew. Audrey was
suspended the rest of that day. A couple of minor
incidents sinceyesterday she and some other
girls jumped on a laundry truck at school and
Audrey didn't obey bus driver on bus. However,
Mr. J. reports that Audrey's attitude was good
admitted everything and promised she wouldn't
any more.
Talked to Audrey at schoollectured her re any
fighting or disobedience. Told her if she hadn't
done so well up to now she would be in serious
trouble. Audrey promised not to get involved in
anything and "to talk away" if trouble started
around her.
As Cicourel points out 'The P.O.'s remarks . . .
constitute the facts of the cases." These facts
have been abstracted from the events as they
actually happened. Clearly the original events
involved a number of other people, some of
whom are mentioned by name, but in this report
they are organized in relation to Audrey. Thus:
Audrey jumped into the fight.. . . Audrey hit the
oldest Penn girl. . . . Audrey withdrew. . . .
Audrey was suspended. . . . (Audrey) and some
other girls jumped Audrey didn't obey the
bus driver. . . . Audrey's attitude was good. . . .
Audrey promised. . . .
The account resulting reorganizes the original
events so that they will compose into a back-
ground of which Audrey is figure. What happens
and what happened becomes assigned to her as
her trouble. It doesn't make any difference who
started it, "if you hit her back you're in trouble
too" (Qcourel, 1968: 144).
It is her record that is being thus compiled.
That is a focus which was not the focus of the
original events, as they were actually coming
about It is a product of the structuring proce-
dures involved in making a report on them in the
context of probation work.
Groves' (1973: 1S2) description of how defense
lawyers prepare their clients provides another in-
stance of structuring procedure. The defense
lBwya''s strategy in ^kdtiag his client's story is to
263
confront him with "the particulars" of the police
case against him:
Having to tell his story in comparison with and up
against the particulars structures in obvious and
subtle ways what the client will say; for instance,
he is likely, as a naturally influenced effect, to
speak to events in the order in which they are
laid out in the particulars (or in the order in which
he recalls the just read particulars to have laid
them out).
The alternative version is further constrained
because it must account for how the particulars
could have appeared as they did in the police
record. Thus a client
constructs a story that shows us how one set of
appearances (as laid out in the particulars) can
be seen to be generated by an alternative course
of action that is not a criminal course of action
(153-154).
The client's story is structured by "the partic-
ulars." "The particulars" are a product of police
practices of observation and reporting. The
client's story mediated in this way may correspond
not at all to what happened as the clien.t experi-
enced it. He must draw upon what happened to
him as he experienced it and can remember it, and
upon any other resources (of invention, elabora-
tion, etc.) which he commands, to construct jointly
with the lawyer a story that will respond to the
particulars, and which will have some chance of
standing up in court. This complex fabrication
is then his, for him to tell and to take responsibil-
ity for.
Zimmerman and Pollner (1972) have discussed
how the social scientist depends upon members'
everyday practice of the world as "an unexplicated
and Invisible resource." Using demography as
example, they write as follows of this relation:
Though the investigator relies upon the work
whereby nmnbers, inchidiog ttw investigator, do
sex and age, and do recording of such [ffopertio*,
and do thb demonstration that such recording w u
done in accord with the Ideals governing the
Iocedtires of counting and cmtegodzing, the
doings are spedfically severed from the aibsc-
quentty produced distributions tuid tntn^eiatioiu
of them. For the demographer, u for dte members
he counts, texness is not a matter for speculati<m.
The observables of social science originate in
members' practices luid hence the worii of dono-
gra]4iers no less than others depends upon a social
construction done prior to their abstract syinbdJc
work. As formulated by Zunmennan and Pdl
ner, there is a direct relationsiiip betweeo
264
demographer's categories, etc. and the normative
order:
the demographer presupposes the operation of a
normative order local to the society in question.
The normative order is presupposed by the demo-
grapher as an enforceable schema of interpretation
and guide to action used by members to present
themselves in a particular fashion and to recognize
the presentation of others in stable ways.
The normative order is treated as unitary and it
appears that members' practices constitute the
phenomenon just as the demographer knows it.
Recording, counting, etc., are included among
meh]bers' practices but they are not assigned a
distinctive constitutive role. Here I want to
examine briefly the role of agencies which come
between where an event originated and where
it has been written into an account. There is an
interchange between members' constitution of
events as participants in them and practices of
reporting or recording them. The construction of
a demographer's observable such as "birth" and
"sex" is mediated to her by recording proc-
esses which are active in this constitution as she
knows it and which cannot be altogether col-
lapsed into the normative order of society.
In the instance of the Probation Officer's report
on Audrey cited above, the collection of specific
items which make up Audrey's misconduct as
wdl as how those items are recognized as a
reportable matter presupposes not only the pri-
mary work of members who participated in the
flght, etc., but also a secondary work of control
and administration of the school. That Audrey
participated in a fight, that she jumped on a
laundry truck, that she failed to obey the bus
driver, these become a collection which makes
sense together only in the context of the school's
jurisdiction over the settings in which they
occurred. What she did or what happened becomes
her misconduct only in that context. The r^wrt-
ing procedures are part of the administrative
practice of the school. What she did was not
reported as merely what she did, but as how what
slw did was a reportable matter. The mediating
procedures directly enter into the constitution of
the object as it becomes known.
We cannot assume then, as I think Zimmerman
and PoUner do, a si!mple correspondence between
how an observaUe may be constituted at its point
of origin and the forms under which it is known
where it is counted. Tlie denuigrapher works
with a concept of "mere birth," for example, not
of a birth as s is constituted in the experience and
practices of parents, friends, neighbors, etc. The
coostmcdcm of a birth as merdy a birth is the
product of a ^pedaiized organizational practice
of reporting.. A fact such as "Jesae Frank was
bom on July 9th, 1963" aj^ears maximally
unequivocal in this respect. But as we examine
SOCIOLOGICAL INQUIRY
how it has been fabricated it becomes apparent
that its character as merely a record is part of
how it has been contrived. Everything that a
mother or father might want to have remembered
as how the birth of Jessie Frank was for them is
stored elsewhere and is specifically discarded as
irrelevant in the practices of the recording agency.
The latter is concerned only to set up a certified
and permanent link between the birth of a
particular individualan actual event, and a
name and certain social coordinates essential to
locating that individualthe names of her par-
ents, where she was born, etc. These may be
verified (practices are ordinarily standardized
within a given governmental jurisdiction) in vari-
ous ways, as by the physician's signature or of
a representative of the hospital if the child was
bom in hospital. It will also be stamped or carry
in some way a mark which establishes a proper
connection between this written form and the
actual event of birth and its coordinates by
warranting it as an act of the appropriate agency.
This guaranteed relation between written form
and actuality makes the certificate of birth de-
pendable as knowledge for other bureaucratic
agenciesfor example, when the child's age must
be established for school purposes, when second-
ary identification such as a passport is needed,
or for various legal purposes. And that same
agency which constitutes that birth as merely a
birth also counts it for the purposes of compiling
govemment statistics.
That reporting procedure is further mediated
by the routine practices of hospital and medical
profession. The practice of obstetrics, the organ-
ization of delivery and labotu* rooms, the ward,
nursing practice, etc., provide the settings, contin-
gencies and administrative procedures which are
taken for granted and made use of by the regis-
trars of birth8. Where the baby is separated
from the mother at birth, hospital procedures
must provide for and guarantee that this baby is
the child of these parents. Moreover hospital and
medical practices anticipate and provide for the
conceptual structure of the birth certificate and
the demographer's count if only because their
routine practices also constitute birth as merely
birth. For parents birth is quite differently
constituted. It creates them as parents of this
child and therefore aims at a future. For them
it is a beginning of something which is not fully
complete. Their practices do not accord it the
form of a unitary event which can be conceptually
detached from the full context of their lives. The
administrative and technical OTganization of the
hospital and of medical pnctict constitutes a birth
as a single episode in a work routine of multiple
such episodes, and thus as merely a birth. I am
not suggesting that hospitals, nurses and physi-
cians do not treat birth as important, I am s u g g ^ -
ing that how their practice intersects with the lives
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF DOCUMENTARY REALITY
of those they treat and the character of their
practice, constitutes that birth (of that sickness
or that death) very differently from how it is
constituted by those for whom and to whom it
happens.
Thei determination of "reality disjunctures,"
Pollner (1972) has argued, is political. The "mere
birthness" of the demographer's reading, which
is a reading which most if not all professionals are
trained to make, involves our participation in
an authority structure, in this case the authority
structure of hospital, medical profession, and
government bureaucracy. It involves our having
received as ours the interpretive procedures upon
which the documentary reality which they consti-
tute depends for its accomplishment. It may be
that the theoretical work of the demographer
involves explaining events which have never alto-
gether happened as they appear before her for
explanation.
VI
The role of organizational practices in constitut-
ing the phenomena which correspond to and
can be described, understood and communicated
in organizationally sanctioned terms may be very
great. The categories and conceptual procedures
which are the enforced linguistic resources of a
given organization (or profession) assign determi-
nate properties and order to "what actually hap-
pened" or "what was there" (etc.) in its account
Concerted processes of formal organization de-
pend upon providing an administrative knowledge
independent of particular subjectivities. Such
knowledge must appear in an administratively
recognizable and standardized form capable of
yielding sense to the standard procedures for
reading it and on the standard occasions of its
reading.
The categories, coding procedures, and concep-
tual order sanctioned for U9e in the context of
formal organization are a linguistic and metho-
dological specification of organizational (or pro-
fessional) strxictures of relevance. The "objects,"
"environment," "persons," "states of affairs," and
"events," which are thus given reportable status
are themselves constructed in the everyday organ-
izational practices which realize tiie enterprise.
In at least one of the instances examined below
an organization virtually invents the environment
and objects corresponding to its accounting ter-
minologies and practices. In general the termi-
nology depends upon and takes in implicitly,
IH-operties of organization which it does not
explicate. These properties are an essential con-
text to the uses of the terminology and an essential
resource in how it atakea sense.
Let us examine how the patient is constituted
for the psychiatrist Whatever has been hap-
pening to and with that individual who becomes
26S
defined as mentally ill, happens where she lives,
in the concrete actual conditions of her experi-
ence and in her relations with othersnot as
these become specialized into the relations of
talk in clinical settings, but as they are mediated
by her household work and responsibilities. It
was in this context it all meant and in this context
also there were others whose worlds and experi-
ence intersected with hers as hers with theirs.
The organization of psychiatric care whether in
clinic or hospital serves to separate an individual
from the contexts in which her speaking or doing
arises as part of a situation and becomes part of
a situation in which what others say or do arises.
She is taken from that (for the purposes of treat-
ment if not for custody) into a process which
progressively cleans her up and detaches her from
the actualities and the particular contexts of her
living. The reports made of her are, like the
Probation Officer's report of Audrey's misconduct
organized around her as subject (Cicourel, 1968).
The organization of psychiatric care substructures
that structuring procedure. She is taken from her
situation and relationships. They are left behind.
She is placed in a context which is not hers, but
appropriated by the agency. The setting is not
her business. Nothing there is her business. She
is their business. The organization is set up to
ensure that what she does there is not consequen-
tial for i t is not productive, not meaningful and
does not contribute to it as an enterprise. She is
constituted as the object of its work- not as
participant to it. Therefore what she does ap-
pears as a behavior attached to her and detached
from her situation.
The division of psychiatric labour ensures that
those who have most direct knowledge of the
patient's life outside the hospital or of her daily
routines in hospital are least privileged to speak
and be heaid. The patient least of all for where
she is privileged to speak of her experience it is
not treated as information. The social worker
whose business it is to know of her circumstances
outside may have visited, has talked to her family,
and who is concerned professionally with concrete
problems of money, jobs, presence or absence of
spouse, children, and etc., makes a report. TIM
nurse or psychiatrk attendant who knows the
patient in the daily routines of the ward, reports
to the psychiatrist only within the sanctioned
terms and forms. Everything dse that went on
between them is not given an occasion or a form
of relevance. The hiaarchical structure of the
profession means that when the patient reaches
the point when a decision is to be made, she is
abstracted into a m e r ^ talking presence and a
bundle of reports. Eveiything mat contcxtuaUxes
her has been reitdo-ed invisible or has been
packaged into reporu which have resulted from
the use of the observer's experience to icidieate
an organizatkntal fonn, and <^uch practice struc*
266 SOCIOLOGICAL INQUIRY

turing procedures of the type described above. The methods used, in many cases highly ingen-
What can we know about whatever it was that ious, were various. Schell describes many in-
lay back there and which we talk of as mental stances. Here is one:
illness? It seems that this work of abstraction
as a practical organizational process is a condition Most of the terms used in the Bomb Damage
to psychiatric ideologies considered as a means to Assessment Reports seemed to have been devised
describe, inquire into, theorize about and deter- for something like a bombing raid on a large,
mine treatment for psychiatric patients. These clearly visible, stationary military base, and not
then are returned to patients as a means for them for the bombing of guerilla in the setting of fields,
to think about themselves. villages, and jungle which the FAC pilots actually
guided. Finding himself having to guide air
These kinds of problems are exaggerated when strikes with the aid of a set of instructions that
the categories used to assemble and recognize the had little relevance to his actual task, each FAC
world for the purposes of reporting it do not pilot had to improvise his own ways of trying to
correspond to the organization of the actuality tell where the enemy was operating. This was
how Captain Reese came to think that he could
they address. When that is built into an organ- spot, on the trails, grass that had been freshly bent
izational process, an alternative and more fitting by the passage of enemy troops, and that he could
langukge and procedures may not be freely devel- distinguish enemy houses from civilian houses by
oped. The terms and procedures are sanctioned whether they were in the tree lines or not; how
and are enforced. TTiey describe environment Lieutenant Moore came to think that he could
and object in terms that are relevant to policies. tell a farmer from a soldier by the way he walked;
Characteristically the policies are made at the and how Major Billings came to believe that he
could tell enemy soldiers from civilians by making
top or centre of formal organization whereas what a low pass over the fields and seeing who ran for
must be reported and where the work of the cover, and that he could judge whether a wisp of
enterprise is concretely done is in large part at smoke hanging over the woods was rising from the
the bottom or periphery. This type of problem fire of a Montagnard or from the fire of a Vietcong
is manifest in accounts of American military soldier. (18), my emphases).
organization in the Vietnam War. It is a problem
which to policy makers (even dissident policy- This type of work was done at the front line level
makers) appears as a defect in information collec- prior to the making of any written account or
tion and transmission. Thus Ellsberg writes: tally sheet, but directed towards such documents.
These practices made possible their own descrip-
The urgent need to circumvent the lying and the tion in the terms sanctioned and enforced by the
self-deception was, for me, one of the "lessons of military bureaucracy. They reproduced the world
Vietnam"; a broader one was that there were as those at the top said it had to be. I am not
situations^Vietnam was one examplein which concerned with how scores might be exaggerated
the U.S. Government, starting ignorant, did not,
would not, learn. These was a whole set of what to give an optimistic picture or with misrepresen-
amounted to institutional "anti-learning" mecha- tatiotis of that kind. I am indicating rather that
nisms working to preserve and guarantee unadap- the conceptual order and the terms in which those
tive and unsuccessful behaviour; the fast turnover at the top conceived and communicated their
in personnel; the lack of institutional memory at policies and which had been articulated and spec-
any level; the failure to study history, to analyze ified in the accounting procedures described, were
or even record operational experience or mistakes; confirmed continually in their capacity to accom-
the ^ectlve pressures for optinustically false
reporting at every level, for dMcribing "ptogxeaa," plish the sense of factual accounts. Tlie "actual-
rather an problems or failure, thus concealing ity on which they were based was one produced
the very need for change in approach or for by the enforcement of the accounting procedures
learning. (1972: 18). as actual military action.

Examination of descriptive accounts such as those

of Jonathan Schell (1966, 1968) suggest a more VII
fundamental diffictilty of the kind indicated above,
namely that the actual modes of living and terms In conclusion, I would remind the reader that
of 8odal organization of Vietnam did not con- these examples have been given not as instances of
foim to the accounting practices of the American an organizational pathology but as general and
military. The character of the world which the fuifdamental processes of our society. I should
American military were instructed to fight in, also dispel any misunderstanding with respect to
which they had to report and for which they the intention of this paper. It has not been meant
Were held accountable, did not correspond to as yet another totalistic critique of current social
what was there as it happened and could be sciences. I am of course attempting to explicate
obterved. Hierefore they had to find ways of the basis of the social scientist's Imowledge, among
ictinf so that what they had done could be others and to make a|^>arent how she is posi-
itetcrlbed in the terms they were required to tise. tioned in relation to the object of her knowledge.
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF DOCUMENTARY REALITY
In specific instances this must have critical force.
But more generally this paper is a preliminary
treatment of aspects of the social organization
of our society which are fundamental to how it
is ruled, managed and administered. They are
aspects which we do not understand very well
partly because it is not very easy to see that they
are there. Our relation to others in our society
and beyond it is mediated by the social organ-
ization of its ruling. Our "knowledge" is thus
ideological in the sense that this social organ-
ization preserves conceptions and means of de-
scription which represent the world as it is for
those who rule it, rather than as it is for those
who are ruled.
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