Convenors
Clemens Eisenmann, University of Konstanz and University of Siegen
clemens.eisenmann@uni-konstanz.de
Christian Meyer, University of Konstanz
christian.meyer@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, addressing the public and intersubjective dimensions of sensoriality and perception in the perspective of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, possibly articulated with phenomenological contributions. The panel focuses on the observable, documentable, videographable dimensions of sensoriality, within approaches situated at the intersections of Ethnography with Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (EMCA). The panel further explores the notion of synesthesia for interaction research. Synesthesia understood not as a psychological or extraordinary condition, but as an everyday practical phenomenon, involving ongoing cross-sensory supplementation and translation, as described by phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty. For example, Sartre noted that we ‘see’ the sourness of a lemon: “each of its qualities is extended throughout each of the others. It is the sourness of the lemon which is yellow, it is the yellow of the lemon which is sour. We eat the color of a cake, and the taste of this cake is the instrument which reveals its shape and its color to what we may call the alimentary intuition.” How to further develop such notions within the epistemology and methodology of EMCA and ethnography is the central focus of this panel.
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. 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. The panel aims to tackle the methodological challenges and avenues of accessing, addressing, and describing sensoriality in empirical studies, using the praxeological and methodological avenues of EMCA – such as studies of work and hybrid studies – as well as phenomenological notions, such as the phenomenal field, Gestalt contextures, and synesthesia. 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 synesthetic 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 synesthetic organization and cooperative sensing?
- Which analytical and conceptual tools to mobilize to tackle a praxeology of the senses and their synesthetic interplay in social interaction?
- How to describe cross-sensorial dynamics such as supplementation, substitution, and translation between the senses during (co-)perception and (co-)sensing?
- How to achieve the unique competence of members through EM/CA inspired ethnographies of sensing?
- What role do unique adequacy, hybrid studies, embodied competencies, and sensorial experiences play in multi-modal analysis?
- How to document and analyze the organization of sensing in social interaction, while considering the interplay of intersubjectivity, intercorporeality, and synesthesia?
Keywords
Multisensoriality, Synesthesia, Multimodality, Intercorporeality, Sequentiality, Gestalt Contexture, Social Interaction, Ethnography, Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis
Sub-disciplines / cross-disciplinary areas
Sociology, anthropology, linguistics, communication, conversation analysis, ethnomethodology, phenomenology
Convenors’ bio
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).
Christian Meyer is a professor of Sociology at the Department of History and Sociology of the University of Konstanz, Germany, where he is also chairman of the Social Science Archive (Alfred Schutz Memorial Archive) and director of the Binational Center of Qualitative Methods (BZQM). Before, he was a professor of sociology at the University of Würzburg and of communication at the University of Duisburg-Essen. His research interests include social and cultural theory, phenomenological sociology, sociology of embodied interaction, studies in comparative sociality, and qualitative methods of social research. Recent publications include “Context-Sensitivity and Context-Productivity: Notions of ‘Practice’ and ‘Practicality’ in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (Frontiers in Sociology 9, 2024), “Alfred Schütz, Aron Gurwitsch, and Harold Garfinkel. The Phenomenological Origins of Ethnomethodology” (Routledge International Handbook of Ethnomethodology, 2025); “Ethnomethodological Ethnography” (Qualitative Research 24, 2022); “The Phenomenological Foundations of Ethnomethodology’s Conceptions of Sequentiality and Indexicality” (Gesprächsforschung 23, 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).