ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines Sacks’s and Garfinkel’s propositions to “respecify” the study of socialisation by analysing parents’/adults’ and children’s orientations to the “developmental scheme” as a topic of investigation in its own right. This “scheme” partitions parents/adults and children into two asymmetrically related categories: those who are “not-yet-fully competent” (children) versus those who are “competent” (parents/adults; see next section). Second, it discusses the notion of “omni-relevance” as introduced by Sacks (1992 I) in his spring 1966 lectures (third section). Arguing that EMCA studies on parent/adult–child interactions have so far paid little attention to these two research endeavours initiated by Sacks, two short transcripts of parent–child food-preparation activities will be analysed in order to show what gets lost when the “omni-relevance” of participants’ orientations to the “developmental scheme” is merely claimed instead of being tested and examined in its own right.
