Читать книгу Essentials of Sociology - George Ritzer - Страница 158

Another interactionist theory of great relevance here is ethnomethodology, which focuses on people’s everyday practices, especially those that involve interaction. The basic idea is that interaction is something that people actively “do,” something they accomplish daily. For example, the simple act of two people walking together can be considered a form of interaction. Engaging in certain practices makes it clear that you are walking with a particular someone and not with someone else (Pantzar and Shove 2010; Ryave and Schenkein 1974). You are likely to walk close to, or perhaps lean toward, a close friend. When you find yourself walking in step with a total stranger, you probably behave differently. You might separate yourself, lean away, and say, “Excuse me,” to make it clear that you are not walking with that stranger and are not engaged in interaction with her. More complex forms of interaction require much more sophisticated practices. In the process of interacting, people create durable forms of interaction, such as those that relate to gender (West and Zimmerman 1987) and the family.

Ethnomethodology also spawned conversation analysis, which is concerned with how people do, or accomplish, conversations (Heritage and Stivers 2012). For example, you must know and use certain practices to carry on a successful conversation: You must know when it is your turn to talk and when it is appropriate to laugh at a comment made by someone else (Jefferson 1979). Conversation analysts have taken the lead in studying conversations, and interaction more generally, in great depth. They typically record conversations using audio or video devices so that they can study them in detail. Later, they transcribe the conversations to create written records of them.