May 14, 2007

The 47th Meeting of Mind and Activity



Saturday, June 2, 2007

15:30 pm. - 19:00 pm.
Honkan (Main building)
Room 1555
Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo

Presentations

We plan to hold two presentations.

1. Tom Hope, "Ubiquitous Community Practices in Japanese Conferences ."

In my research I am focussing on how 'community' can be co-constructed/produced in technologically-enhanced settings. For this session I will bring one or two extracts of conversation around a social-network visualisation that occurred at an international conference, held in Japan. I wish to seek particularly for instances where participants orient towards communality or 'sharedness', with particular interest in the doing of shared 'culture' or cultural Identity (cf. Nishizaka 1999, "Doing Interpreting within interaction:The interactive accomplishment of a "Henna Gaijin" or "Strange Foreigner"). I will welcome any analytical comments on the data in this M&A.

2. Aug Nishizaka, "Some observations from interaction at a midwife house.--2"

I focus on internal (vaginal) examinations cunducted by a midwife. I noticed three prominent things about interaction there: 1. pregnant women do not express their pain, as is very different form other types of examinations in medical settings; 2. the entire interaction appears to be oriented to problems brought up explicitly or implicitly in the preceding exchanges; and 3. the midwife explains what she is currently doing, the explanation having evaluative connotations related to those problems forming the orientational framework for the current interaction. I will focus on the third point in this session.



If anybody is interested in bringing their own data, analyses, observations, arguments, or whatever, to a next meeting to discuss together, please contact Aug Nishizaka at augnish(a)soc.meijigakuin.ac.jp.