Convenors
Clemens Eisenmann, University of Konstanz, University of Siegen
clemens.eisenmann@uni-konstanz.de
Lorenza Mondada, University of Basel
lorenza.mondada@unibas.ch
The panel addresses a growing body of research dealing with the senses, sensing and multisensoriality in social interaction (e.g. Cekaite/Mondada 2020; Gibson/von Lehm 2021; Mondada 2021, Due 2024). The public and intersubjective dimensions of sensoriality and perception are highlighted in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EMCA) (e.g. Mondada 2023) and possibly linked to and articulated with phenomenological contributions (e.g. Meyer 2022). The panel focuses on the observable, documentable, videographable dimensions of sensoriality, within approaches situated at the intersections of Ethnography with EMCA. Ethnographies play a crucial role in foregrounding sensorial relevancies, contingencies, and asymmetries in everyday life and professional settings, while EMCA studies zero in on their actual accomplishment in and through the multimodal details of social interaction (Meier zu Verl et al. 2020; Eisenmann et al. 2024). The panel focuses on the specific contributions of EMCA ethnographies of sensoriality; in particular, it considers the interplay of members competencies and their situational haecceities (e.g., contingencies, social specificities, practical problems) of each next first time, as they are achieved and displayed in social interaction, in its embodied, emergent, and sequential organizations (e.g. Eisenmann/Mitchell 2022; Mondada 2018). The panel aims to tackle the methodological challenges and avenues of accessing, addressing, and describing sensoriality in empirical studies, using the praxeological vocabulary of EMCA as well as phenomenological notions, such as the phenomenal field or Gestalt contextures (Lynch & Eisenmann 2022). We invite empirical contributions articulating Ethnography and EMCA, highlighting any sense – such as smell, taste, touch, vision – in its social organization, as well as their synaesthetic interplay in interactional Gestalt contextures. Papers can address methodological as well as theoretical concerns on these topics, while providing some empirical insights gathered through field studies.
Open questions
- How does ethnography contribute to the research on sensoriality in social interaction?
- How to think about the articulation between ethnography and EMCA?
- How to use video in research about collective and cooperative sensing?
- Which analytical and conceptual tools to mobilize in order to think about the praxeology and phenomenology of the senses?
- How to achieve the unique competence of members through ethnographies of sensing?
- What role do unique adequacy, embodied competencies, and sensorial experiences play in multi-modal analysis?
- How to document and analyze the intersubjectivity of the senses in social interaction?
Keywords
social interaction; multisensoriality; multimodality; sequentiality, ethnography, ethnomethodology and conversation analysis; Gestalt contexture.
Sub-disciplines or cross-disciplinary areas of concern
sociology; anthropology; linguistics; communication; conversation analysis; ethnomethodology; phenomenology.
References
Cekaite, A., Mondada, L. (Eds.)
2020 Touch in Social Interaction. Touch, Language, and Body, London, Routlege.
Eisenmann, C., Meier zu Verl, C., Kreplak, Y., Dennis, A.
2023 «Reconsidering foundational relationships between ethnography and ethnomethodology and conversation analysis – an introduction», in Qualitative Research, https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941231210177.
Eisenmann, C., Mitchell, R.
2022 «Doing Ethnomethodological Ethnography. Moving between Autoethnography and the Phenomenon in “Hybrid Studies” of Taiji, Ballet, and Yoga», in Qualitative Research, https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941221132956-
Gibson, W., vom Lehn, D. (Eds.)
2021 «The Senses in Social Interaction. (Special Issue)», inSymbolic Interaction, 44, 1.
Liberman, K.
2022 Tasting Coffee. An Inquiry into Objectivity. SUNY Press.
Lynch, M., Eisenmann, C.
2022 «Transposing Gestalt Phenomena from Visual Fields to Practical and Interactional Work: Garfinkel’s and Sacks’ Social Praxeology», in Philosophia Scientiæ, 26, 3, pp. 95–122, https://doi.org/10.4000/philosophiascientiae.3619.
Mondada, L.
2018 «Multiple Temporalities of Language and Body in Interaction: Challenges for Transcribing Multimodality», in Research on Language and Social Interaction, 51, 1, pp. 85–106, https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2018.1413878.
2021 Sensing in Social Interaction, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
2023 «The normative order of sensing: Enacting the score sheet in tasting sessions», inText & Talk, https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2022-0195.
Meier zu Verl, C., Dennis, A., Eisenmann, C., Kreplak, Y.(Eds.)
2020 «Ethnomethodology and Ethnography (Special Issue)», in Ethnographic Studies, 17.
Meyer, C.
2022 «The Phenomenological Foundations of Ethnomethodology’s Conceptions of Sequentiality and Indexicality. Harold Garfinkel’s References to Aron Gurwitsch’s ‘Field of Consciousness», in Gesprächsforschung – Online-Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion, 23, pp. 111-144.
Convenors’ bios
Clemens Eisenmann is postdoctoral researcher at the Collaborative Research Center “Media of Cooperation” at the Universities of Konstanz and Siegen (Germany). His research areas range from social theory, sociology of the body, medicine, religion and media studies, to interaction analysis, ethnomethodology and qualitative methods. His dissertation research at Bielefeld University explored spirituality in contemporary yoga as social practice. Eisenmann studied Sociology, Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Augsburg and has taught for many years in the fields of social theory, sociology of culture and qualitative methods. His recent publications include “Doing Ethnomethodological Ethnography. Moving between Autoethnography and the Phenomenon in ‚Hybrid Studies‘ of Taiji, Ballet, and Yoga” (with Robert Mitchell) (2024) and “Spirituality as Social Practice” (in German), De Gruyter: Berlin/Boston (2022).
Lorenza Mondada is Professor for linguistics at the University of Basel. Working on social interaction in ordinary, professional and institutional settings, within an ethnomethodological and conversation analytic perspective, she focuses on video analysis and multimodality. Her research on how the situated and endogenous organization of social interaction draws on a diversity of multimodal resources, articulates language with gesture, gaze, body posture, body movements, objects manipulations as well as multisensorial practices involving vision, touch, taste and smell. She has extensively published in J. of Pragmatics, Discourse Studies, Language in Society, ROLSI, J. of Sociolinguistics, co-edited several collective books, as well as elaborated her approach of sensoriality in the book Sensing in Social Interaction (CUP, 2021).