Seeing as accountable action: The interactional accomplishment of sensorial work

Abstract

In this article it is argued that the growing field of the sociology of the senses has had a strong methodological focus on people’s accounts of their sensorial experiences at the expense of studying the practical achievement of sense work as an interactional phenomenon. Recent work has called for more innovative methods in sensorial scholarship and the use of creative approaches to explore the senses. While applauding this move, in this article the authors show the importance of a focus on micro-behavioural actions in studying the senses. Drawing on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, they analyse video recordings of near vision tests in optometry consultations illustrating the highly routinised, but also the embodied and improvised character of the actions through which the vision is made available for scrutiny. They argue that sensorial scholarship has sidelined the study of social context as a lived-order and demonstrate the importance of treating sensorial actions as routinised, embodied and improvisatory. The authors agree that using more creative methods would be valuable but caution against relying exclusively on methods that do not sufficiently contextualise the senses as a lived and practical social accomplishment.

Sensory communication in YouTube reviews: The interactional construction of products

“…The initial sampling frame for this study involved identifying particular categories of sense work – smell, taste, hearing, vision and touch – and searching for examples of reviews that dealt with those categories. One of the key conceptual points in the sociology of the senses is that these conventional categories of sensing are cultural constructs that potentially over-simplify our lived experiences of the world, which may involve experiences that do not fit well into these rough categories (Howes, 2006; Paterson, 2007; Pink, 2010; Vannini et al, 2011a; Gibson and vom Lehn, 2019). However, perhaps because such categories are so culturally enshrined, most studies of the senses do use them as the basis of their work (Gibson and vom Lehn, 2019).…”

“…One of the key conceptual points in the sociology of the senses is that these conventional categories of sensing are cultural constructs that potentially over-simplify our lived experiences of the world, which may involve experiences that do not fit well into these rough categories (Howes, 2006; Paterson, 2007; Pink, 2010; Vannini et al, 2011a; Gibson and vom Lehn, 2019). However, perhaps because such categories are so culturally enshrined, most studies of the senses do use them as the basis of their work (Gibson and vom Lehn, 2019). In the case of this study, I am interested in how conventional categories are used, and I too use them to inform the sampling and the organisation of the analysis to come.…”

“…I noted earlier that a common starting point for studies of the senses has been an observation that conventional sense categories are problematic as they operate as culturally specific articulations of sense that may misrepresent people's lived phenomenological experience (Gibson and vom Lehn, 2019). While this critique is useful for illustrating the cultural relativity of sense language and experience, in this article, my concern has been with how people use conventional language (including sense categories) to bring about accounts of their experiences and to order other people's experiences.…”

“…The theorisation of the relations between body, sensing, thought and action is beyond the constraints of this article (see Crossley, 1995, 2006; Shilling, 1993, 2007 for contributions to this issue); instead, I focus on the ways that people articulate sensorial experience to others in the process of reviewing products. The analysis draws on interactionist studies of the senses – particularly from Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (EMCA) – which is an emerging sub-field of the sociology of the senses (Gibson and vom Lehn, 2019) that looks at how people make their senses ‘accountable’ to others in interaction (Mondada, 2019; Pillet-shore, 2019).…”

Sensoriality, Social Interaction, and “Doing sensing” in Physical–Cultural Ethnographies

“…The importance of subjecting to detailed sociological analysis of our mundane, everyday practices has recently been highlighted with regard to the sensing body, and the senses as played out in social interaction (Allen-Collinson and Hockey 2017;Gibson and vom Lehn 2019;Sparkes 2017;Vannini, Waskul, and Gottschalk 2013). In this article, drawing on two ethnographic studies, we address the ways in which sensory interaction is done, produced, and "worked," in terms of being interpreted, made sense of, and communicated between individuals in particular settings.…”