ABSTRACT
Each day as I walk to my office and on the way back I pass people playing with their dogs in a small park. Among the activities through which they give themselves exercise is the very common one of the human throwing an object, most often a ball, the dog chasing it, capturing it and then bringing it back to the human. The ball is transferred then from dog to human, the human throws it again, the dog chases it again. One piece of this activity routine is the transfer of the ball to the human. Each morning I also buy a cup of coffee. As part of that activity I hand money to the server and a bit later she hands me a cup of coffee. Here in Chapter 2 I address the problem of when and under what conditions I am willing to call these transfers of objects ‘handing’. That is, I am concerned with not only how the social practice of handing an object from one to another is constructed, but also with the ontogenesis of this practice from a more mechanical, objectivistic notion of the transfer of an object.
