ABSTRACT
While interpersonal touch is increasingly being addressed within the ethnomethodological and conversation analytic literature, touching materiality has so far been largely neglected. While touching another involves the other’s embodied responses, touching an object has a different intersubjective dimension, which relies on the visible, observable, and witnessable dimension of touch as well as on its consequentiality for ongoing social activity. This chapter proposes an ethnomethodological and conversation analytic approach toward touching objects in social interaction, revealing how this form of touch addresses specific material qualities in a public and accountable manner, sharing an understanding and consequentiality for further actions in social interaction. The focus is on the way in which professionals and amateurs touch cheese in gourmet shops. This focus enables the systematic study of the sequential environments in which these two categories of participants engage in the touching of products, with different tactile practices, different rights and obligations, and different consequences for the progression of the course of action. The data are video recordings of encounters in cheese shops in different European countries.
