ABSTRACT
This chapter describes an approach to the study of social interaction, of the moral concerns that are at work in that interaction, and the moral issues that arise from it. Analytic hermeneutics involves the interpretive investigation of human activity as an ongoing situated accomplishment. Informed by an existential analysis of human being—of the character of the enterprise of research as well as of the human phenomena being studied—it calls for changes in our study of young children’s social relations. These changes include the renunciation of a stance of distance and detachment; entry into the everyday settings where children’s activity occurs; the need to fix action before it can be studied; attention to the forestructure of interpretation; the avoidance of coding systems; and a focus on individual cases.
