The orderliness of flow
Description
This paper follows Sharrock and Anderson’s recommendation (derived from their
comparison of the practice of general ethnographic enquiry to ethnomethodological
studies) in order to consider what ‘can be found from a small amount of data.’ Our
data comprises 60 seconds of audio-video materials contained in an advertisement,
materials that are publicly available. The advertisement employs a range of commonplace
idioms and understandings from everyday life that are simultaneously
embellished and manifest a strong element of fantasy to fashion an entertaining and
amusing advertisement, a component within what Schutz has termed ‘multiple realities’.
The advertisement comprises a collection of behavioural episodes that are
located in a range of common place everyday settings, that display real people working
with real items of material culture, what Goffman has termed ‘commercial realism.’
The episodes within the advertisement draw upon the viewers’ knowledge of
how scenes within everyday life exhibit an orderliness and are made sense of in
context. As viewers of an advertisement, we however recognise that the depicted
behavioural episodes are contrived choreographed scenes in which real people work
with ‘real world’ objects (Garfinkel). Following these analytic directions, we explore
aspects of how the advertisement is assembled and of how it operates to market the
advertised product.
Notes
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