DeLand2021

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DeLand2021
BibType ARTICLE
Key DeLand2021
Author(s) Michael F. DeLand
Title Men and Their Moments: Character-Driven Ethnography and Interaction Analysis in a Park Basketball Rule Dispute
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, biography, conversation analysis, ethnography, microsociology, public space, social interaction
Publisher
Year 2021
Language
City
Month
Journal Social Psychology Quarterly
Volume 84
Number 2
Pages 155–176
URL Link
DOI 10.1177/01902725211004894
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

Both conversation-analytic and ethnographic studies of interaction tend to isolate situated conduct from the full biographical context that is meaningful to actors. This article argues that there are good analytic reasons to recover some of that biographical context by incorporating character-driven ethnographic representation within interactionist research. I make this case in reference to a rule dispute captured on video during an ethnography of a public park basketball game. Through a biographically contextualized analysis of players’ situated conduct, I show how character representation allows unspoken threads of actors’ lives to become analytic resources. Incorporating biographical context also opens a methodological path for interactionists to leverage the close-up study of situated encounters for empirical claims about broader forms of social organization. In this case, I argue that character-driven representation allows for an analysis that identifies rule disputes as an interactional mechanism of socially integrative park use.

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