Part of my interest in sociology came from being caught up in that time. I was in SDS; I was very involved in the student movement. Sociology was a way to try and understand the dynamics of society…

Most sociologists’ studies of work have almost nothing about the work itself. Focusing on the details of how work actually gets done is what interested me...

The intersection of life history with history. How does being caught up in historical events shape the course of individual lives? … I guess the one thing that you could use to summarize their lives was they needed to remain morally accountable to who they had been…

I finally decided if I really wanted to understand dispatching, to study 911 operations and public safety, I would have to actually do the work… Well, I went to them and I explained that I had done all this other work… They said, "This is interesting. Why don’t you come and actually do this job if you think you really want to understand it?" I didn’t think they would ask that or say that. So I did.

The introduction of computers and automation into these operations was occurring as we started to study them. Previously these places had manual operations… So I had the opportunity to participate in the introduction of this technology…

There were these computer scientists, mathematicians, AI guys, who were trying to build the world’s greatest expert system. They built what they thought was a pretty cool one and found that the users did not want it...

…instead of an expert system, let’s build the system for experts. It changed their whole view. It’s been almost 180-degree turn... technicians should have more control over their own work. This gives them that control…

The telephone was initially envisioned as something that only business would use. The idea that ordinary people would want one of these in their homes and would spend hours chatting to each other, this was not anticipated at all.…

We’ve moved from critique to the initial forays of actual involvement… The next step is the most frightening one. It is to step into this world and say, "I’m going to have to open myself up to responding to other people’s needs and ways of thinking. It’s not enough just to stand on the sidelines and point out all the things they’re doing wrong." …

Because essentially practices are shared ways of dealing with the world…

For all the talk about communities of practice, I think there’s been way too much attention to the community and not enough attention to practice… …organizations are lifeless, bloodless creatures, compared to communities that are rich…

Core practice 1: Openness and building emotional connections to people… Core practice 2: Appreciation for other professions and disciplines… Core practice 3: The discipline of endless wonderment…

Whalen’s research focuses on the social organization of work activity and technology. Early on, he became interested in social reality from two different perspectives. At the macro-level, he studied the dynamics of society and the kinds of social and cultural changes that shape the world. For example, he did his Ph.D. dissertation on the intersection of life history with history, tracing the life stories of a group of people who where involved in a tumultuous event during the 1968 riots in California. At the micro-level he focuses on understanding the dynamics of ordinary activity and everyday interactions.

Whalen’s ethnographic method aims at getting close to reality, close to the enactment of social practices. His key learnings include the understanding that the social and the technical can’t be separated, and that intervening successfully in the work place (with introducing new technologies) requires a profound and detailed understanding of that environment.

Throughout his career, Whalen has conducted his work as a social scientist in a multitude of roles. These roles have involved observation, participant-observation, capacity-building (for practitioners), and becoming a practitioner himself who performs the practices that he studies.

Reflecting on his own experiences, Whalen identified the following core practices for doing his kind of work: openness and building connections to people; an appreciation of other professions and disciplines; and the "discipline of endless wonderment."