Structured objects: The organized relationships of parts and wholes
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26485/PS/2026/75.1/6Keywords:
conversation analysis, ethnomethodology, Harvey Sacks, objectivation practices, parts and wholes, structured objectsAbstract
This paper explores the organized relationships of parts and wholes through Harvey Sacks’s work, taking it as an inspiration for empirical studies. This topic is often conceived in terms of gestalts, where each part appears through its functional significations. I propose a complementary examination of parts and wholes as members’ phenomena. In an early lecture, Sacks [1992: 89] notes that “we need ... a notion that what Members see is decomposable by them”, and that they “seem to do this [by] treating something that they see as a combination of parts, some of which have names”. To develop this direction of inquiry, I offer the notion of structured objects: entities with recognizable features such as “left” and “right” sides (e.g., photographs and faces) or “beginnings” and “ends” (e.g., stories and streets). Two illustrations – covering directly and retrospectively available structuredness – elucidate how structured objects are constituted and maintained. Importantly, such a decomposition is not imposed by professional analysts. The structuredness is rather established in practical manipulations with the relevant “parts”, the relevant structures of social objects being produced or discovered in and as these operations.
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