ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the potential of a video-based, visual methodology for understanding the interactional accomplishment of social identity. Drawing on the theoretical framework of ethnomethodological conversation analysis and ‘naturally occurring’ video data of mother–midwife interaction, the chapter explores the spatial and visual orientation of speakers in the social construction of identity during routine home visits by midwives. In focusing on the visual elements of interaction, the chapter responds to an emerging agenda within psychology and the social science which seeks to elaborate how participants experience and re-produce the social world. A focus on the spatial organisation of bodies, and more particularly the ways in which an individual’s embodied actions are co-ordinated in response to the actions of a co-speaker, enables researchers to capture how various forms of self-hood are constituted in diverse spaces.
