Central and East European
Society for Phenomenology

Conference | Paper

Meaning Production and Interactive Situation. From Intersubjectivity to the “Organization of Action

Ion Copoeru

Thursday 2 December 2021

15:40 - 16:20

Zoom 1-1

Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology influenced two major schools of sociology, namely those of Alfred Schütz and Harold Garfinkel. They both extended and deepened Husserl’s conception of social action by integrating empirical methodologies in their view of social action.

In my paper, I will show not only how these studies fit the phenomenological conception of action and sociality, but also how recent developments of these methodologies succeed in capturing essential aspects of embodied action. In the 1940s, for instance, Garfinkel underlined the importance of the organization of practical actions, through which intersubjectivity is achieved. Later on, this organization was described by Scheglof as “sequentiality,” which provides the basis for understanding meaning as arising moment by moment.

In the second part of my paper, I will present some ongoing investigations inspired by the conversational analysis, in which the meaning production is strongly associated with the “organization of action.” Relying on Goodwin’s ethnographic study of conversation, Gallagher proposes a fuller description of the interactive situation as “a shared agentive situation,” “a shared context within which encounter each other.” Goodwin’s interactionist model manages to capture not only the entirety of the situation, but also its dynamics.