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Seminar on Computers, Design, and Work - Wednesday, 6 December

		SEMINAR ON COMPUTERS, WORK, AND DESIGN
		   The Negotiation of Expert Status
			  William D. Rifkin
			 Stanford University
		     Wednesday, 6 December, 12:15
			      Ventura 17

Expert ability differs from expert status.  I argue in this paper that
the office of "expert" represents a provisional social status.  This
negotiated status emerges as a measure of authority in a relationship
conducted between a relative specialist, who is a candidate for expert
status, and someone who is effectively a client consulting the
specialist for help in making a decision.  The client, in attempting
to evaluate whether the specialist has something credible and relevant
to say, gauges the person, the specialist, as much as the utterance.
The client's joint selection of whom and what to heed rests on
understandings of the discourse and social structure of an issue-based
community.  This "issue arena," like other types of communities, is
wrought through with internal stratification (here, based on
occupational affiliation) and interest group conflict.  In presenting
this interpretation, I am engaging in an exercise in discourse design
based on grounded theory.  I am borrowing from literature on language
and community and illustrating my points with examples from three
years of observations of a local water board concerned with toxic
waste issues.  I am designing a discourse for laypersons to link their
feelings of disenfranchisement as relative nonexperts to cultural
understandings of occupational culture, status, and the ritual nature
of relationships between specialists and clients.