Participation, stance and affect in the organization of activities

Abstract

The organization of embodied participation frameworks, stance and affect is investigated using as data a sequence in which a father is helping his daughter do homework. Through the way in which they position their bodies toward both each other and the homework sheet that is the focus of their work the two contest the interactive and cognitive organization of the activity they are pursuing together. The father insisted that their work be organized in a way that would allow him to demonstrate the practices required to solve her problems. However the daughter refused to rearrange her body to organize the participation framework that would make this possible, and demanded instead that Father tell her the answers. When the daughter consistently refused to cooperate Father eventually walked out, but returned later, and they constructed a very different affective and cognitive alignment. Such phenomena shed light on range of different kinds of epistemic, moral and affective stances that are central to both the organization of cognition and action, and to how participants constitute themselves as particular kinds of social and moral actors in the midst of the mundane activities that constitute daily family life.