This edited collection is a tribute to John Heritage, as noted in N. J. Enfield's ‘Series editor's preface’ (vii). Most chapters (except the first) have an opening footnote in which the chapter authors make their personal tributes to Heritage.
The first chapter is a review by Jeffrey Robinson, the editor of the volume, on the multiple senses of accountability in social interaction. It provides an extended and detailed discussion of relevant concepts and issues underlying the following ten chapters, which report on empirical conversation analysis (CA) studies of aspects of accountability in interaction. Each of the empirical chapters is mentioned at least once in Robinson's opening chapter, but the mentions are brief, and that is the extent of any explicit explanation of the choice of studies included in the volume, of the ways in which the various studies relate to each other, or of the organisation of the studies into three sections: ‘Accountability and trouble’, ‘Accountability, stance, and status’, and ‘The accountability of action’.
Seven of the empirical chapters analyse English-language data, two analyse Korean-language data (chapter 6 by Seung-Hee Lee and chapter 10 by Stephanie Hyeri Kim), and one analyses Japanese-language data (chapter 7 by Kaoru Hayano). The studies address contexts ranging from aphasic-therapist interaction (chapter 2 by Paul Drew & Claire Penn) to interviews with politicians (chapter 5 by Steven E. Clayman) to service interactions (chapter 6 by Lee) to conversations between friends and/or family members (e.g. chapter 9 by Robinson & Heidi Kevoe-Feldman), and, as is typical of CA, they present very detailed micro-analyses of particular interactions presented as transcripts.
Most chapters focus primarily on how participants in interactions hold themselves and others accountable for their actions within their interactions. For example, Chase Wesley Raymond & Tanya Stivers (chapter 11) analyse contexts where it is not clear that there is any potential trouble or threat to social relationships, and they show that a participant can nevertheless solicit an account in an off-record manner. By contrast, Jenny Mandelbaum (chapter 4) takes the interesting approach of analysing how participants at times avoid accountability.
Emanuel A. Schegloff (chapter 8) is the only contributor who does not make it explicit in his chapter how his analysis relates to accountability. Robinson does make a link in his introductory chapter, noting that Schegloff's chapter shows ‘how increments can modify actions so as to prospectively manage the possible accountability of subsequent action’ (17), but readers of the chapter are then left to figure out the connections with accountability for themselves.
The volume ends with the final empirical chapter. There is no concluding chapter to pull together threads from the various studies or to discuss possible future ways forward in the analysis and understanding of accountability. While the book is rich in interesting content and worthwhile and insightful analysis and discussion, its coherence as a whole could be stronger if readers were not left to do quite so much work themselves to make relevant connections.
