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Inhabiting the Family Car:Children-Passengers and Parents-Drivers

Chaim Noy

Sapir College

Israel

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Automobility: The social car

A move away from reductionist, functionalist and binary approaches to transportation From “vehicles” or “riding animals” (a-la Verilio) to socio-

semiotic systemic view From a/the car to the “system of automobility”

Merits being… Integrating “car cultures” into sociology: objects and

practices in everyday life: semiotic approaches critical approaches

Technology and sociality… Agency: hybrids/cyborgs, ANT, cognition (route-selection, etc.) emotion (Katz, Noy)

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Families-in-interaction/Families in cars “The socially inhabited car … permits multiple

socialities, of family life, community, leisure” (Urry) Families are “our first institution” (Aronsson) Interactions and conversations in families

in (semi-)domestic settings argumentative interactions in families

Families and automobility: Families’ (family members’) everyday mobilities “The car rivals the house as an alternative zone of

everyday life … a closed realm of intimacy” (Baudrillard) “The domestic car,” where we find “a duplication of

accessories” (Verilio) … the role of the car in sustaining families’ routines

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Inside the car: Communicative affordances All face the same direction (and not each

other, i.e. no face-to-face interaction). “Architecture of visibility” (Laurier et al.)

Division of inner (sub)spaces: 1. Front seat / back seat

entrances/exits sitting apparatuses/arrangement access to the car’s driving equipment views of the outside

Limited mobility

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Research questions

We ask how familial interactions proceed inside the (moving) car?

How members employ cars’ communicative (in)affordnacs? How they accomplish their aims via contextual

affordances? How members establish and engage or disengage

from familial interaction in the car? How family memebrs maintain/disrupt the family’s “o-

space” (Kendon)? What is the interactional formation that sustains the “o-space”?

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Paradigmatic shifts/mobile methods

Challenges: Ethnography of mobilities: actors, places, etc.

ethnography of familial (intimate) places & interactions

The “hectic camcorder”: Supplying a camcorder to the car’s passengers –

children in the backseat Everything recorded is viewed from the perspective of

the passenger who is using the camcorder gestures and orientations

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Interacting in the car

Interacting in the car: (dis)engaging in familial “o-space” widthwise interaction: side-by-side interactions

within cars’ subspaces crossover interaction: interactions that run

across the front-back division bodily gestures, orientations, etc. volume of talk address terms (“mommy”)

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Data

Video recordings of five urban, middle class families residing in (West) Jerusalem.

Heterosexual, secular Jewish families with 2-4 children (9m.-12y)

Camcorder: 2-3 weeks = ~four hours recordings

The “school run”

The Normans: Five family members seated in the car: 1.

DRV/mother (Bella, 40), FP/grandmother (Xaya), BPs: Tom (7.5), Tamir (5.1), Ronit (3.1).

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i. Entering the car

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i. Extract 1

View from rear

Tom narrating

Complaint: mother/driver

-- loud

Topic & orientational shift

to personal transactional

space (Kendon)

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ii. Dispute develops

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ii. Extract 2

Grandmother's soothing interventions Quiet, widthwise

Tom in personal transactional space until Ronit replies

Ronit’s reply: accusing

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iii. Dispute’s conclusion

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iii. Extract 3

Further attempts by Xaya to sooth Bella (quitely)

Tamir enters the dispute,picking up on the resistive thread -

gestures with wrists laterally

Xaya playfully endorses Tamir’s war-against-mom and swiftly (re)turns to Bella:- shift from crosswise to

widthwise interaction- change of volume - change of topic- discourse marker (ma)

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Conclusions

The system of automobility as part of everyday life in cultures effected by modernity.

Not autonomous but intertwined with other social systems, presently families

If interactionists “enter the car” its interior spaces emerge as socially animated interactionally inhabited collaboratively accomplished scenes

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This is accomplished via movements within and between… Members’ personal transactional spaces Car’s subspaces (front seat/backseat) “o-spaces” Car’s shared, overall orientational space (“o-space”)

In the “school run” - less issues of route selection, attractions, etc. as the activities inside the car are most relevant routine

Driving and co-driving family members FPs - mother and grandmother perform two

roles/responsibilities: automobile and familial simultaneously.

Emotions in families/cars