Ethnographic microanalysis

Embodied Interaffectivity in the Emergence and Maintenance of Group Cohesion

“…Then, later in the discussion, reflecting on how they coordinated their conceptual reasoning in a way that secured all-group participation, S1 stated that "it just happened." In light of the richness of the observed evidence of interaffectivity in the emergence and maintenance of group cohesion, the participants' recollections reflect the unlikelihood that these kinds of fleeting, and seemingly typical routine interactions will be readily recalled or recounted retrospectively as potentially significant (Erickson, 2006;Herrle, 2020). Yet, the participants' perceptions at semester end represent their accumulated moments of interaction, thus demonstrating the relevance of micro-temporal everyday behaviors that, taken together, ontologically constituted the group's cohesiveness.…”

“…However, despite the plethora of research, little is actually known about group cohesion as a dynamically emergent and affectively charged phenomenon, how it develops in real time, as research has typically relied on cross-sectional data gathered via self-report measures. As we are often unaware of our own fleeting everyday behaviors in social encounters, let alone recount them later as potentially relevant (Erickson, 2006;Herrle, 2020), interaction analysis can get to the heart of how collective constructs such as group cohesion actually manifest in dynamic social interaction (Lehmann-Willenbrock and Allen, 2018). Capturing the fine-grained nuances of group interaction is critical for understanding the "in-between" space of intersubjectivity, meaning-making, and social understanding in groupwork contexts.…”