Analysing Interaction: Video, Ethnography and Situated Conduct

Abstract

In this chapter, we consider the ways in which the social and interactional organization of everyday activities can be subject to detailed scrutiny. The discussion draws from ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. It is concerned with how we can use video recordings of everyday settings, augmented by more conventional field work, to explore the ways in which participants accomplish practical activities in and through interaction with others. It is not however solely or even primarily concerned with the analysis of talk, but rather with ways in which the production and interpretation of action relies upon a variety of resources - spoken, bodily and of course material resources, such as objects, texts, tools, technologies and the like. We would also like to mention in passing the relation between more conventional ethnography and studies of ‘talk-in-interaction,’ and explore some ways in which we might interweave one or two concerns within these very different approaches.