Seeing as Interactive Process: Interaction as Experiment in Miniature

• In Event: 402 - Regular Session. Ethnomethodology

Abstract

Drawing on Garfinkel's (2006) notion of 'experiments in miniature' the analysis considers participants's actions in museums and optometric consultations as experiments that test each other's current orientation to the visual environment. The analysis examines the minute experimental arrangement that participants bring about in order to make "observable-and-reportable" what another is seeing and, in the case of optometric consultations, how clearly another is seeing an object. The paper is based on video-recordings of action and interaction in museums and optometric consultations.

Author

• Dirk vom Lehn, King's College London