Abstract
Public space can be understood as a place where strangers encounter each other in certain ways. This has been the common conceptual understanding of the public sphere in sociology and urban studies since Georg Simmel (cf. works by Jane Jacobs, William H. Whyte, Hans Paul Bahrdt, Jan Gehl, Richard Sennett, and many more). However, this understanding of public space often centers around unclear notions of how these encounters are interactively structured. So far, research on this topic has mainly addressed what Goffman termed focused interactions, such as talks between strangers in public. His notion of unfocused interactions, for fleeting encounters, has yet to receive adequate academic attention. Thus, the aim of this article is to engage in an in-depth empirical study of fleeting encounters in public places by drawing on three examples of people passing each other along city streets. Based on video recordings, the multimodal interaction analysis shows that when people pass each other they engage in interactional processes expressed through bodily dimensions, which carry specific social implications. Gaze, along with other visually accessible bodily behaviors, is the most important interactive resource people use to make themselves accountable for passing strangers without making contact. The analysis suggests that through passing each other, strangers generate specific kinds of interactive relations that are typical within the public sphere. Fleeting encounters thus prove to be highly structured, interactively achieved processes through which strangers establish their situated relations in a way that allows them to remain as separate interactional units.
Enacting sabotage in siblings’ conflicts: Desired objects and deceptive bodies
