A situated perspective on the regulation of practice.

This article investigates the construction of a building and focuses on the uses of technical drawings. The conventional approach to understanding a construction process claims that workers follow the engineers’ and architects’ drawings systematically and consistently, which is, on the whole, considered a problem-free course of events. Arguing from a situated perspective, this paper will demonstrate that this is not always the case. Owing to the situated nature of actions, the drawings cannot be understood as the pivotal tool for restraining the construction practice; instead they are resources for meaningful actions. It is argued that the construction practice is better understood as constituted and regulated as a matter of reciprocal “give-and-take” relations between participants in different professions. These give-and-take relations are based in the continual negotiations that take place between participants from different professions. Depending on their profession, these participants have different priorities founded on the underlying contradictions within the object of practice. The cooperation between participants in different professions therefore involves a conflictual premise, which is termed “conflictual cooperation.” Introducing an empirical example of a breakdown in the construction work demonstrates how these contradictions may become conflicts. The empirical example shows how a shift in the usage of the drawings resulted from the breakdown, as they came to be used as precise precepts legitimizing the workers’ actions. In this way the drawings are understood differently in different contexts, and the interpretation thereof inevitably involves give-and-take relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]