As a part of their normative theory of expertise, Harry Collins and Robert Evans proposed that interactional expertise forms the third kind of knowledge, located between formal propositional knowledge and embodied skills. Interactional expertise refers to the capability to grasp the conceptual structure of another’s social world, and it is expressed as the ability to speak fluently the language spoken in that social world. According to their theory, it is a key concept of sociology, because it refers to the understanding and coordination of joint actions between members of different social groups. Collins and Evans have further claimed that minority social group members tend to outpace majority social group members in terms of interactional expertise. Drawing on ethnomethodology, we detail the ways in which interactional expertise is displayed and revealed in experiments. This allowed us to specify the underlying reasons for the distribution of interactional expertise between social groups. Our results indicate that the difference between the groups depends on whether a group is either actively maintained or a passive latent category, because interactional expertise provides for not only the crossing of social boundaries but also their maintenance. The minority social group members’ greater interactional expertise or competence is therefore proven to be illusory.

中文翻译：

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活跃和潜在的社会群体及其互动专业知识

作为他们规范性专业理论的一部分，Harry Collins 和 Robert Evans 提出交互性专业知识构成了第三类知识，位于正式命题知识和具体技能之间。交互性专业知识是指掌握他人社会世界概念结构的能力，表现为能流利地使用该社会世界所讲语言的能力。根据他们的理论，它是社会学的一个关键概念，因为它是指不同社会群体成员之间对联合行动的理解和协调。柯林斯和埃文斯进一步声称，少数社会群体成员在互动专业知识方面往往超过多数社会群体成员。借鉴民族方法学，我们详细介绍了在实验中展示和揭示交互专业知识的方式。这使我们能够详细说明社会群体之间交互专业知识分布的根本原因。我们的结果表明，群体之间的差异取决于一个群体是主动维护还是被动潜在类别，因为互动专业知识不仅提供了跨越社会界限，还提供了他们的维护。因此，少数社会群体成员更大的互动专业知识或能力被证明是虚幻的。我们的结果表明，群体之间的差异取决于一个群体是积极维护还是被动潜在类别，因为互动专业知识不仅提供了社会边界的跨越，还提供了他们的维护。因此，少数社会群体成员更大的互动专业知识或能力被证明是虚幻的。我们的结果表明，群体之间的差异取决于一个群体是积极维护还是被动潜在类别，因为互动专业知识不仅提供了社会边界的跨越，还提供了他们的维护。因此，少数社会群体成员更大的互动专业知识或能力被证明是虚幻的。