The methodology presented in this section was set-up to investigate the work of the concierge service of the Red Road highrise flats. The estate was earmarked for redevelopment in 2006, a process that entails demolition of the massive steel-constructed slab building at 213/183/153 Petershill Drive. During the period of field-work for this research, tenants of this building were being relocated, flats emptied, letterboxes sealed over, and systems shut down. Whilst the clearing process proceeded, some tenants continued living in the building. The residential routine of the building had to be maintained. Although the concierge service operated under changing circumstances, it continued investing in the organisation, management and maintenance of the building.

Introduction

We have carried out an in depth videoethnography on the repair and maintenance activities of the eleven concierges working in the concierge station that is situated in the entrance hall of 213 Petershill Drive in Red Road, Glasgow (hereafter mentioned as 213 workstation).

The 213 workstation serves the triple 26 to 28-storey slab block 213/183/153 Petershill Drive and the 30-storey point block at 21 Bernie Court. The concierge station is run 24hrs a day and seven days a week. In total, 3 concierges work together in a 12hrs shift. These three concierges rotate throughout the day. One is always in the station the other two are doing various work in the blocks and the nearer surroundings of the building.

The service as it runs today involves 24 hour presence of council employees on site, CCTV surveillance, security locked and remote controlled main entrance doors, interphone for all tenants and cleaning service for elderly people. Furthermore, concierges are in charge of cleaning and maintenance of entrance halls, stairs and waste disposal.

The methodology for the concierge study built on a simple observations: This is that concierges are not necessarily delivering an analysis of what they do, but are concerned with accomplishing their work tasks. For this study we do not only need the methodological tools to capture the complexity of social and material interaction, but need to move from what people say about their work to what people do when they work in highrise buildings.

Using Video

In order to move away from questioning and listening to detailed observation and recording of maintenance work, we accompanied and videoed the work of the concierge on block checks, during cleaning work in the buildings and in the nearer environment.

There is today a debate about the generation and use of video in social research. On the one hand video technology is given a quasi-neutral impact on the data, the video footage is seen as reflecting the recorded event. On the other hand the camera is seen as having a distorting effect on the recorded event. Research participants would demonstrate a reactive effect and that special precaution must be taken if data has to be valid (like, for example, the hidden camera or the implication of research participants in the validation / analysis of the data).

A way to circumvent these two positions is to turn to a praxiological understanding of production and use of video footage.

Demonstrating that we are always filming with and not through the camera, Monica Büscher (2005) recalls Jean Rouch (quoted in MacBeth, 1999, 147) reflecting on the film shot as follows:

“[...] the only way to film is to walk about with the camera, taking it to where it is the most effective, and improvising a ballet in which the camera itself becomes just as much alive as the people it is filming […]. I often compare this dynamic improvisation with that of the bullfighter before the bull. In both cases, nothing is given in advance, and the smoothness of a faena (strategy of play) in bullfighting is analogous to the harmony of a travelling shot which is in perfect balance with the movements of the subjects… [...].“

Lorenza Mondada (2006, page 11) argues that “video shooting actively co-produces the orderliness of the events, gestures, actions, and talk it displays and documents”. She proposes considering shooting as “an embodied exercise of inquiry and analysis” (Mondada 2006, 51) or as Douglas MacBeth (1999, 152 also quoted in Mondada 2006, 51) puts it the "work of assembling visible social fields."

From the begining and in similar ways like Mondada (2006) we can distinguish between two different ways of how such visual analysis and inquiry was carried out when filming in Red Road: 

Firstly, ‘while the action takes place’. The visual analysis involved in the video shot happens ad hoc and members in their activities will very likely take in account the recordinng camera and people involved in the recording process.

Secondly, ‘before the action takes place’. Filming happens from a fixed vantage point, which involves a preanalysis of the workplace, positioning of video cameras and microphones. The researcher is not actively involved in the filmed interaction. It is more likely that people involved in the filmed interaction ignore the recording camera.

Ethnography

In order to become knowledgable about concierges’ work practices we started with interviewing all eleven concierges, on their professional history, biographies, work expericences, daily routine, and issues of working in a socially deprived area of Glasgow.

On various occasions we have also asked concierges to take us on tours in the buildings and to turn to single objects in the concierge station, to explain technologies, forms, work instructions, work organisation (shift changes, work tasks, hierarchies, supervision), the buildings and the estate. Interviews and tours were recorded on video. Such ethnographic work turned out to be crucial to familiarise with the work setting of the concierge. Knowledge gathered through interviews and tours useful to position cameras and microphones, but it is also indispensible for the analysis of the data.

For example, just from looking at a concierge using CCTV technology in the work station we know very often not what the individual buttons of the control desk are, which he is manipulating. The possibility to go back to video footage of a senior concierge introducing us to the various possible manipulations of the control desk is crucial to descirbe courses of activities in work situation involving surveillance technology.

The work in the 213 workstation was recorded on one day with a set up of three video cameras from three fixed vantage points. Cameras were running from 6am to 12am with a break of two hours at lunchtime, and then again from 3pm through to 11pm. The three cameras where set-up to focus on the work of the stationary concierge. He carries out his work from the main chair, involving a lot of movement to get, for example, a key from the big cupboard to his left, a form from the drawers in his back. The workstation was assessed in relation to expected activities of the concierge on duty, cameras were therefore positioned to frame these movements.

Videoing workers 'on the move', as opposed to filming from fixed vantage points, involves research participants extensively and permanently accounting for the presence and the action of researcher and camera. As the concierge study was carried out over a time period of three months and space in the station and on block-checks was relatively limited we deliberately decided against the researcher being supported by a cameraman.

As filming was carried out by the field researcher while walking and talking to the concierge a more automated way of filming needed to be invented. Specifically the filming of block-checks - during which concierge and researcher would walk systematically stairs and landings from the top to the ground floor of the building - required to a large extent a technique of 'semi-blind filming'. While following the concierge on his control tour the researcher would hold a continuously recording miniDV camera against his chest. He would check the display of the camera only once in a while, to control, for example, the focus of the camera or how much recording time was left on the tape.

Framework for Analysis

The concierge study is analytically framed by way of an ethnomethodological approach (Garfinkel, 1967, 1986; Lynch, 1993; Livingston, 1987; Heritage, 1984) to the analysis of audio visual data (developed in the work of Goodwin, 1994, 1995; Heath, 1984; Hindmarsh and Heath, 1998; Laurier, Strebel and Brown, 2009; Mondada, 2006; Lomay and Casey 1998).

Analysis proceeds through ‘data sessions’ involving group analysis of interview transcripts, ethnographic notes and video data. These sessions shift from watching video clips without predefined ‘motive’ to an analysis gradually stabilising phenomena. The approach is inductive and concerned with the careful description of how concierges interactionally and technically situate, produce, recognise and co-ordinate their maintenance activities in those work settings.

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