Establishing Shared Knowledge in Political Meetings: Repairing and Correcting in Public (Directions in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis)

This book investigates the ways in which participants in political activities use micro-practices for solving issues of speaking, hearing and understanding as fundamental for the activities they engage in. Based on extensive video recordings of public meetings within a political grassroots project in the field of urbanism, it adopts a conversation analytic and ethnomethodological approach to social action, examining the use of interactional repair in processes of claiming, negotiating, contesting, distributing and establishing knowledge in public. As a study of the ways in which people interact in political meetings, address problems of intersubjectivity and manifest their understanding – or lack of understanding – of political talk, Establishing Shared Knowledge in Political Meetings sheds light on the relationship between interactional problems and political problems. It will thus appeal to scholars in sociology and political sciences with interests in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, social interaction, social order, and political practice.

Hanna Svensson is Associate Researcher at the University of Basel, Switzerland.