Abstract
This volume addresses issues concerning the sensorial and material ecology that composes social actions and interaction in professional settings. It invites the reader to consider a multimodal and nuanced approach to the study of these issues; in particular, the role that materiality plays in practical sense-making processes and action progression. Across the chapters, the authors explore how material objects have categorical and sequential consequences for interactions, and they do it by using a combination of traditional and innovative ways of analysing and presenting video and audio data.
Primarily, the book is oriented towards conversation analysts considering moving beyond a solely linguistic lens to embrace a multimodal approach to data analysis. Therefore, the successful understanding of the content requires a familiarisation with the key ideas and terminology of ethnomethodology and conversation. Despite its technicality, the collection represents a rigorous and methodical approach to data collection, analysis and presentation that is worth attention as it places pertinent questions about the centrality of language when researching social action and interaction.
The main contribution of the volume concerns the conceptualisation of objects and bodies. This is worth careful consideration as it has important epistemological and methodological consequences. Objects and bodies are treated considering their situated significance. They are seen as material entities situationally charged of semiotic value, which is visibly available through the publicly displayed orientations of the body postures, body movements, gaze directions, touch and talk of the participants of an (inter)action.
In this sense, video recordings are used as resources that allow for the viewing and reviewing of the situationally occasioned embodied and verbal actions, as well as the particulars of the spatial circumstances. Thus, enabling an in-depth and multisensorial examination of practices and methods by which members conduct their activities in a rather mundane, visible and intelligible way. The underlying argument is that all these elements are equally important in understanding how social practices unfold and are achieved. This phenomenological shift from language to multimodality is not new. However, the collection offers a series of cases in which different authors have dealt with this issue. In some cases, the authors offer some detailed descriptions of the methods of data collection and in others they focus solely on analytical and conceptual aspects. For example, in some chapters the authors specify the difference between types of cameras (e.g. fixed or on the move) and various ways in which they can be used to achieved different purposes. There are also some brief comments about the use of CLAN, a commonly used software used by conversation analysis researchers to analyse digital media files.
Although the onto-epistemological approach is consistent throughout the volume, the chapters have different analytical aims (sequential progression of action, member categorisation practices, etc.), centre in studying different practices (hair desiring, serving coffee, teaching L2, learning to drive a forklift truck and so on) and take place in different settings (some more public and others more private). These different cases and settings had methodological implications not just in terms of considering the most adequate methods of data collection and analysis but also in data presentation. For example, when anonymity was an issue the frames taken from the videos – and used to illustrate the embodied actions – were edited to avoid personal recognition.
The variations in settings, topic and analytical focus of the studies offer the reader a useful catalogue of possibilities to think about when presenting multimodal data. Most of the studies are heavily guided by the Jeffersonian transcription convention to present verbal actions – although as most of the data is translated, the conventions are used flexibly. While this convention dominates the field of conversation analysis, transcriptions of embodied action are a relatively novel addition. The book includes a transcription convention section that lists particular embodied action notations that the reader might find useful. In this sense, the authors use or adapt some already existing transcription styles to their own empirical examples (sometimes using video frames as inserted pictures, others edited them; using arrows to indicate the gaze direction or body movements, or circles to highlight objects locations; providing literal descriptions of embodied action or transcribing it alongside the talk, and so on).
Although the collection does not set itself the task of explicitly contributing to the multimodality debate in socials sciences, it adds to the conversation by demonstrating some of the affordances of video recording as a resource of data collection, and the ways in which this kind of data can be communicated intelligibly. This contribution would have been enriched by elaborating on the intellectual work put into deciding the benefit of the methods used over potential alternatives, if any. This task requires an ontological discussion about the value of certain kinds of data in relation to each other and how a final standpoint is reached. The reader might see how this point is being made in relation to the traditional transcribing methods in conversation analysis. However, a section that makes this methodological process more transparent would strengthen the promotion of this practice.
In evaluating the book from a standpoint outside ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, it would be reasonable to wonder why the study of a single-case practice of pinning used in dressmaking or of how operators learn to drive a forklift vehicle is relevant to the social sciences. One could imagine someone thinking that, if anything, it would be of interest for fashion students or warehouse managers. However, these kinds of nuanced accounts that prioritise depth over some sort of generalising principle of ‘real societal problems’ reveals the unavoidable entanglement that humans have with their environment at the most mundane and apparently insignificant level. In this sense, the collection constitutes a reminder of the role that objects play in our everyday life. Furthermore, it does this while proposing multimodal methods of data collection and analytic tools to furnish a detailed understanding of objects and bodies in work practice. The authors demonstrate how objects come to matter, and how they can be taken into account in the analysis of social interaction. In sum, the book raises essential issues that must not be overlooked in any serious attempt to analyse social action and interaction.
