Forschung

Panel at the IIEMCA 2024

The research project is organizing a panel on "Social time(s): Accomplishing temporal structures for ordered action" at the International Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, which takes place from June 24 to 28, 2024 in Seoul, Korea.

Conferences

The research project was represented with two presentations on "Projecting and mitigating risks in mundane planning activities" and "The overall structure of complex planning activities. Analysing extended timeframes as a series of communicative genres" at the International Conference of Conversation Analysis (ICCA) in Brisbane and with a presentation on "The trajectory of an agreement in a complex planning activity" at the 118th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA) in Philadelphia. We are pleased about many new and interesting suggestions for our further work.

Second research field

Since the beginning of April 2023, we have been conducting field research in a community-supported agricultural project that has only recently been established. Here, because the farm is new, there is a lot of planning to be done: establishing structures and procedures, preparing the site (water and electricity, preparing the soil), planting, and always the question: what are we doing today? This is because agriculture is dependent on influences that cannot be anticipated and planned for, or only partially: If it rains too much, seedlings cannot be put into the ground; whether it is possible to harvest depends on how well the plants have grown, etc. Because the farm is in the process of being established, much of this planning has not yet been institutionalised. Many questions arise for the first time. The staff have to agree on procedures and coordinate in order to prepare systematic action. In doing so, they often draw on everyday skills and use everyday genres of communication. True to the concept of "community-supported agriculture", there are often other people present in addition to the staff who help out and harvest, for example, and who have to be instructed accordingly.
Our second field thus displays similarities with our first field of research, the private everyday life of the family. At the same time, there are fruitful contrasts with communication in families.
We currently visit the farm once or twice a week in order to be able to document the larger and smaller projects in their daily routine, but also in their development. These visits cover entire working days of the field. Besides writing up field notes, we make sound and video recordings.

Start of the data gathering process

A family of three kindly agreed to be accompanied and filmed in their everyday life. In winter 2021, the first two-week field phase was carried out in their private everyday life. Approximately 60 hours of audiovisual material was collected during this time. During this first field phase, the ethnographer was able to familiarize himself with the routines of the field and record several daily interactions in which the family's small and large plans for action are discussed. Thematically, these daily planning conversations include short-term action plans, such as grocery shopping or taking care of the dogs, as well as medium- and long-term action plans, such as planning (and implementing) renovations, vacation or career planning. Currently, the material is being inventoried, transcribed and analyzed. The family under study (son, mother, father) is still willing to be researched as part of the project. After an intensive examination of the data, at least one more field phase is planned in this field in late spring 2022.

Workshop "Projective genres in everyday communication" (27-28.9.2021).

The project "Planning-in-Action: The Communicative Fabrication of the Future in Projective Genres" investigates projective genres of everyday communication. Projective genres are understood as solidified forms of communication with which the future is talked about and processed in everyday life. The forms of speaking about future actions in everyday contexts are investigated, i.e. the communicative forms with which interactors prepare, agree upon, plan their actions in everyday life. Generally, projective genres are to be understood as the totality of forms that interactors have at their disposal for communicatively fabricating their futures. The project thus aims at the empirical analysis of these genres and ties in with the genre research of the 1980s & 1990s (among others Luckmann 1986, Bergmann 1987, Bergmann & Luckmann 1995, 1999).

Methodologically, on the basis of audio and video recordings, it is investigated how actors talk about smaller and larger action projects and how these communications develop and change over time of the intended action in question. In contrast to previous genre research, a longitudinal research design is applied, which accompanies the observed actors trans-situationally over a longer period of time and can thus show how their intended actions gradually develop and unfold, change and take shape in their communications. The usual conversation-analytical method for genre analysis is supplemented accordingly by ethnographic procedures. In addition, the production and handling of artifacts (sketches, notes, calendars, etc.) will be included, insofar as they play a role as communicative resources. Thus, the project investigates the communications associated with "planning-in-action" and therefore strives for a closer link between genre research and action theory.

The project aims at an empirical analysis of projective genres on the basis of selected fields. The focus will be on actors and their everyday communications, who pursue intended actions together and process them communicatively. First of all, it wants to describe the whole of projective forms, i.e. the totality of projective genres, which actors make use of, and show to which genre series projective genres are concatenated in situ and transsituatively. In conversation-analytical sequence analyses, the internal and external structure of the genres is analyzed in detail and it is shown with which means the interactors process their (common) future and negotiate it communicatively. The project thus contributes to the analysis of everyday communication; above all, however, it shows how everyday actors fabricate their futures communicatively.

The two-day kick-off workshop will take place from 27.9.-28.9.2021 with the participation of Prof. i.R. Dr. Jörg Bergmann, Prof. Dr. Stephan Habscheid, Prof. Dr. Karin Birkner, Prof. Dr. Bernt Schnettler, Prof. Dr. Christian Meyer and Dr. Ina Pick at Bielefeld University in the premises of the Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology. In this workshop we want to discuss methodological and theoretical issues of our research project on the one hand. On the other hand, we would like to use the opportunity to explore the potentials, connections, and points of intersection of genre analysis.

Start of the DFG project "Planning-in-Action: The Communicative Fabrication of the Future in Projective Genres" (Prof. Dr. Ruth Ayaß)

In May 2021, the DFG-funded project "Planning-in-Action: The Communicative Fabrication of the Future in Projective Genres" will start at the Faculty of Sociology. The project is dedicated to projective genres of everyday communication. Projective genres are understood as solidified forms of communication with which the future is talked about in everyday life. In projective genres, the future is communicatively processed in the broadest sense. This project is dedicated to the forms of speaking about future actions in everyday contexts, i.e., the communicative forms with which interactors prepare, agree upon, plan their actions in everyday life. Projective genres are to be understood as the totality of forms that are available to interactors for communicatively fabricating their futures. The projects aims at the empirical analysis of these genres. The research project thus ties in with the genre research of Thomas Luckmann and Jörg Bergmann.

On the basis of audio and video recordings, the project investigates how actors talk about small and large-scale intended actions and how this communication develops and changes over time of the intended action in question. In contrast to previous genre research, a longitudinal research design will be applied that accompanies the observed actors trans-situationally over a longer period of time and can thus show how their intended action gradually develop and unfold, change and take shape in their communications. The usual conversation-analytical method for genre analysis is supplemented accordingly by ethnographic procedures. In addition, the production and handling of artifacts will be included (sketches, notes, calendars, etc.), insofar as they play a role as communicative resources. The project thus examines the communications associated with "planning-in-action" and thus strives for a closer link between genre research and action theory.

The project aims at an empirical analysis of projective genres on the basis of selected fields. The focus will be on actors and their everyday communications, who pursue an intended action together and process it communicatively. First of all, it wants to describe the whole of projective forms, i.e. the totality of projective genres, which actors use, and show to which series of genres projective genres are linked in situ and transsituatively. In conversation-analytical sequence analyses, the internal and external structure of the genres is analyzed in detail and it is shown with which means the interactors process their (common) future and negotiate it communicatively. The project thus contributes to the analysis of everyday communication; above all, however, it shows how everyday actors fabricate their future communicatively.

The project is directed by Prof. Dr. Ruth Ayaß. Research Associates are Dr. Sarah Hitzler (previously Dr. Ajit Singh) and Jonas Kramer.