Complexity of Interaction

Reviews / Votes

"The publication of this volume marks a new and much needed development of ideas that complexity is essential in the organization of human conduct. The editors have done a masterful job of bringing together researchers in discussions that explore the multimodal and multisensorial properties of human sociality and provide an illuminating analytical and conceptual framing of complexity and social interaction." (Asta Cekaite, Professor, Department of Thematic Studies, Linköping University, Sweden)

"It is commonplace that social interaction is complex. This volume is the first to systematically explore sources and orders of this complexity in various interactional settings. It shows how technical mediation, multi-activity, the presence of several parties, the wealth of multimodal resources, and multi-sensorial perceptions create complicated and fragile constellations and processes in social encounters. In addition to fine-grained in-depth analyses of video recordings, theauthors establish complexity as a theoretical lens that allows us to gain unprecedented insights into the fabrics of intersubjectivity and interactional organization in our current societies." (Arnulf Deppermann, Professor, Leibniz Institute for the German Language, University of Mannheim)

"This book recognizes that participants in social interactions communicate in a multisensory manner, are often involved in several activities at once, and have unequal access to interpretive resources. This is a challenge for research in multimodal conversation analysis, which is based on extremely rich audiovisual recordings. The authors provide invaluable analytical tools to understanding these and other complexities while embracing the richness of the data captured in audiovisual recordings of real-life situations. A real tour de force!" (Esther González-Martínez, Professor of Sociology, University of Fribourg, Switzerland)

"This book attends to two important developments within conversation analysis. On the one hand, it explores the relevance of a wide array of multimodal and multisensorial resources for the ways in which people make sense of social conduct. On the other hand, it embraces the analysis of rich and multi-faceted interactional, institutional and technological environments. Building on these developments, the authors do not shy away from what they call the 'complexity of interaction', but instead, they treat it as an opportunity to enhance our understanding of the organisational features of everyday life. The book draws together a collection of high calibre authors who are studying social interaction in an impressive range of settings. And, as a collection, the book offers insights at the very cutting edge of conversation analysis, which are of relevance to all those concerned with understanding social interaction in its rich and complex detail." (Jon Hindmarsh, Professor of Work and Interaction at King's Business School, London, UK)

"This volume showcases the broad range of interactional issues that can be addressed through qualitative video analysis. The chapters uncover how people exploit multimodal resources to solve practical problems in multiactivity settings, when dealing with technologies or navigating transient opportunities for participation. The reader will find exquisite accounts on how we systematically use all our senses, material ecologies, as well as language to bring about social life when gaming, singing, eating, playing, and training the military." (Leelo Keevallik, Professor, Department of Culture and Society, Linköping University, Sweden)

"From the perspective of multimodality, social interaction can be truly complex, and the analyst might sometimes be tempted to look away from that complexity, just to be able to produce a coherent analysis. The authors in this book, in contrast, address this challenge head on. In their highly accessible way of teasing apart different sources of interactional complexity - the multiplicity of activities, asymmetricities, participation frameworks and interactional settings - the reader is encouraged to tackle the complexities of interaction one by one. The book is thus essential reading to all analysts of multimodality in interaction." (Melisa Stevanovic, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, Social Psychology, Tampere University, Finland)

"Building on a growing body of work studying interaction from a multimodal perspective, and interested in the study of multi-layered character of action, the book proposes a bold and fecund move: making the complexity of interaction into a central focus of the analysis so as to identify new interactional phenomena. Such a "manifesto for complexity" is not only a great contribution to ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, but it should also be highly relevant to wider communities of researchers and practitioners attuned to the intricacies and "complexity" of human activities." (Christian Licoppe, Professor, The Economics and Social Sciences Department, Télécom Paris)