Accounting for interactionally troublesome exchanges: Paradoxes, biases, and inequalities in storying, perceiving, and countering problematic social experiences

Social interaction is often about shared enjoyment and solidarity, but it is also a locus of troubling experiences of inequality, discrimination, and disempowerment. The possibility to account for such interactionally troublesome exchanges is key to counteracting their negative effects and to calling for social change.

In this project, we investigate such accounts, hypothesizing that people’s possibilities to address the types of trouble that they encounter on a day-to-day basis are not equal. Drawing on a conversation-analytically informed understanding of the significance of minor details of interaction, insights from narrative theory, and a novel interdisciplinary combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, we investigate the production and reception of these accounts, the concerns of self portrayed in them, and the perceptions and explanations of interactional trouble by different people.

The results of the project will inform interventions to support well-being at work.

Suomen Akatemia