Boden, D. & Molotch, H. L. (c1994). The Compulsion of Proximity. In Roger Friedland & Deirdre Boden (Eds.), NowHere: Space, Time and Modernity (pp. 257-286). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* [monitored social control] Although more people may be brought into touch with the whole world, many of these same individuals become mere appendages to their “smart” workstations, making them into the quiescent bodies of modern capitalism – Foucault’s “corps dociles.”… The iron cage is replaced by the electronic trace. (p258)
* When people can’t actually secure a needed state of copresence, they ordinarily strive to approximate it as best they can: the phone, for example, is better than a memo, a swift e-mail exchange better than a letter. (p258)
* By distinguishing what is “lost” in the translation from copresent interaction to other modes, we can learn what people are trying to get back to when they say, as they often do. (p258)
* Interaction is a sequential affair, with the meaning of a particular utterance understood by reference to prior utterances in the same, previous, and anticipated conversational streams. … The statuses of the individuals, their past history together, prior statements in the talk, the intonation of voices, and the physical body attitude – all are simultaneously “read” to constitute the very different, even opposite, senses of the same set of words. (p259)
* [copresence as indexicality] The meaning of any detail – including a word – drives from actors’ work in using each particular to inform or “index” every other. In Harold Garfinkel’s term, copresence best allows this “indexicality” (H. Paul Grice calls it “implicature”) to manage the ambiguity inherent in any term or expression. (p259) It is this richness of information that makes us feel we need copresence to know what is really going on, including the degree to which others are providing us with reliable, reasonable accounts. (p259)
Body Talk
* Copresent people can physically touch. Touching is itself a full vocabulary of “deep significance” in which different meanings are provided by the degree of touch intensity, precise location of the body used (e.g., a physical brush with the shoulder versus the extended finger), and exact spot where the touch is placed. (pp261-262)
* While video allows observers to witness touching, only copresence provides a means to experience it directly. Whatever crosscultural variations may exist in the precise meaning of the touch under different circumstances, touch itself seems universally a form of information. (p262)
* We talk with our hands not because we are signing words, or even necessarily adding emphasis, but because the involvement of our full motor apparatus invigorates speaker as well as hearer. Our ability and insistence on coordinating our body actions with those of others lies at the heart of our sociability. Human behavior that manages to fuse both mind and body in a single collaborated flow is intrinsically more satisfying than one in which just physical movement is involved (e.g., …) or one in which only mental work takes place (e.g., …) (p262)
* Chatting on the phone, we may nod, smile, grimace, even gesture for emphasis. …) (p262)
Self and Dignity
* The need to avoid “loneliness” and its pathological (病理的) consequence apparently continues through adult life. … So important is copresent interaction that people will continue interacting even when the substance of the talk is unfavorable to their felt interests or when they must put up with “small insults” such as frequent interruptions of turns or being forced into topics not of their own choosing. (p263)
Commitment
* Copresent interaction requires participants to set aside not only a specific time but also a shared space, as well as generally constraining other activities at the same moment or location. (p263)
* Gabriel Tarde remarked that conversation “marks the apogee of the spontaneous attention that men lend each other, by which they interpenetrate to a much greater depth than in any other social relationship” (emphasis in original). When we are in copresence, we have some evidence that the other party has indeed made a commitment, if nothing else than by being there. Just getting together, either by making an appointment or stopping one’s routine to stand and talk, provides evidence of commitment. (p263-p264) (p263)
* Being kept waiting is an insult because it unilaterally (單方面地) delays the kind of “quality encounter” that one has mentally and physically organized one’s life around. (p264)
* Through variation in attentiveness, copresence maximizes the opportunity to display commitment and to detect a lack of it in others; hence, it adds substantive and nuanced information. (p264)
* … correspondents can do many things before answering one’s pressing concerns or even while answering them. (p264)
* Even putting someone on “hold” or providing the sounds that begin the closing of a conversation (“well, uh, I’ve got to …”) requires split-second timing and collaborative effort. (p264) Still, compared to copresence, it is easier to fake attentiveness by injecting “speech particle” utterances such as “uh-huh” and other “monitoring responses” at technically appropriate turn transition points than when face-to-face. (p264)
* … it is easier to fake words than disguise both words and the multiple gestures and stance that go with real-time-real-space interaction. The skill of great actors lies not in their diction and inflection but in their ability to synchronize words and body, the split-second timing and pacing of content with form, that makes for distinguished performance. (p265)
Word Position as Information
* Ordinary talk has strong enough organizational pattern that people can, especially when copresent, routinely detect departure from them. (p265)
* One of the findings is that silence and interruption are both quite rare; (p265)
* Even when overlaps occur, they are brief and typically located either in the terminal syllable of a turn or at the earliest recognition point of the turn’s ending. This means that even a brief silence is noticeable (“pregnant”) as information. (p265)
* [positive response] The immediacy of the response is the common timing format for acceptances to various types of invitations and requests. (p265)
* [negative response] [Such terms as “well” (or “gee” or “gosh”)] actively mark the initiation of some dispreferred action such as a refusal, rejection, or cushioning the negative news while signaling its content as well as displaying the speaker’s concern to break the news gently. (p266)
* Among other things by warning the proposer, inviter, or requester that a negative is coming, silences allow the proposer to “pull back,” perhaps qualifying or sweetening the deal with a better offer before the refusal can come. (p266)
* So frequent are such response delays that should they not take place before a refusal, the proposer notices that something is wrong. (p266)… Face denials wantonly rob the proposer of a chance to save face with qualifying interjections or withdrawals; they imply a motivated animosity. That is why they are rare. (p266)
* Copresence provides the best circumstance for inserting delays before a negative response and for such delays (or their absence) to be noticed and exploited by the other party. Thus, the routine preference for solidarity can best operate as a noticeable feature of interaction under conditions of copresence. (pp266-267)
* When people delay a negative response to allow withdrawal of a request, they have taken it on themselves to protect the other interactant – and they have done so without there being any explicit rule, norm, or law requiring them to do so. (p267)
* … a trust that drives from the observable timing and placement of talk and gesture. Such trust, we now know, is not just intrinsic to intimate relations within family units and other primary groups but is an essential mechanism of business and high-level negotiations among powerful state actors. (p267)
* As Michael Storper and Allen Scott mark, “Communities of trust and the social construction of unwritten business norms are important foundations for the maintenance of an effective social division of labor. … Trust and personal experience are … important pre-conditions of much re-contracting behavior in modern business complexes.” For actors to use time to achieve solidarity and trust, there must be a minimum amount of space between them. (p267)
* [monitored social control] Although more people may be brought into touch with the whole world, many of these same individuals become mere appendages to their “smart” workstations, making them into the quiescent bodies of modern capitalism – Foucault’s “corps dociles.”… The iron cage is replaced by the electronic trace. (p258)
* When people can’t actually secure a needed state of copresence, they ordinarily strive to approximate it as best they can: the phone, for example, is better than a memo, a swift e-mail exchange better than a letter. (p258)
* By distinguishing what is “lost” in the translation from copresent interaction to other modes, we can learn what people are trying to get back to when they say, as they often do. (p258)
* Interaction is a sequential affair, with the meaning of a particular utterance understood by reference to prior utterances in the same, previous, and anticipated conversational streams. … The statuses of the individuals, their past history together, prior statements in the talk, the intonation of voices, and the physical body attitude – all are simultaneously “read” to constitute the very different, even opposite, senses of the same set of words. (p259)
* [copresence as indexicality] The meaning of any detail – including a word – drives from actors’ work in using each particular to inform or “index” every other. In Harold Garfinkel’s term, copresence best allows this “indexicality” (H. Paul Grice calls it “implicature”) to manage the ambiguity inherent in any term or ex
Body Talk
* Copresent people can physically touch. Touching is itself a full vocabulary of “deep significance” in which different meanings are provided by the degree of touch intensity, precise location of the body used (e.g., a physical brush with the shoulder versus the extended finger), and exact spot where the touch is placed. (pp261-262)
* While video allows observers to witness touching, only copresence provides a means to experience it directly. Whatever crosscultural variations may exist in the precise meaning of the touch under different circumstances, touch itself seems universally a form of information. (p262)
* We talk with our hands not because we are signing words, or even necessarily adding emphasis, but because the involvement of our full motor apparatus invigorates speaker as well as hearer. Our ability and insistence on coordinating our body actions with those of others lies at the heart of our sociability. Human behavior that manages to fuse both mind and body in a single collaborated flow is intrinsically more satisfying than one in which just physical movement is involved (e.g., …) or one in which only mental work takes place (e.g., …) (p262)
* Chatting on the phone, we may nod, smile, grimace, even gesture for emphasis. …) (p262)
Self and Dignity
* The need to avoid “loneliness” and its pathological (病理的) consequence apparently continues through adult life. … So important is copresent interaction that people will continue interacting even when the substance of the talk is unfavorable to their felt interests or when they must put up with “small insults” such as frequent interruptions of turns or being forced into topics not of their own choosing. (p263)
Commitment
* Copresent interaction requires participants to set aside not only a specific time but also a shared space, as well as generally constraining other activities at the same moment or location. (p263)
* Gabriel Tarde remarked that conversation “marks the apogee of the spontaneous attention that men lend each other, by which they interpenetrate to a much greater depth than in any other social relationship” (emphasis in original). When we are in copresence, we have some evidence that the other party has indeed made a commitment, if nothing else than by being there. Just getting together, either by making an appointment or stopping one’s routine to stand and talk, provides evidence of commitment. (p263-p264) (p263)
* Being kept waiting is an insult because it unilaterally (單方面地) delays the kind of “quality encounter” that one has mentally and physically organized one’s life around. (p264)
* Through variation in attentiveness, copresence maximizes the opportunity to display commitment and to detect a lack of it in others; hence, it adds substantive and nuanced information. (p264)
* … correspondents can do many things before answering one’s pressing concerns or even while answering them. (p264)
* Even putting someone on “hold” or providing the sounds that begin the closing of a conversation (“well, uh, I’ve got to …”) requires split-second timing and collaborative effort. (p264) Still, compared to copresence, it is easier to fake attentiveness by injecting “speech particle” utterances such as “uh-huh” and other “monitoring responses” at technically appropriate turn transition points than when face-to-face. (p264)
* … it is easier to fake words than disguise both words and the multiple gestures and stance that go with real-time-real-space interaction. The skill of great actors lies not in their diction and inflection but in their ability to synchronize words and body, the split-second timing and pacing of content with form, that makes for distinguished performance. (p265)
Word Position as Information
* Ordinary talk has strong enough organizational pattern that people can, especially when copresent, routinely detect departure from them. (p265)
* One of the findings is that silence and interruption are both quite rare; (p265)
* Even when overlaps occur, they are brief and typically located either in the terminal syllable of a turn or at the earliest recognition point of the turn’s ending. This means that even a brief silence is noticeable (“pregnant”) as information. (p265)
* [positive response] The immediacy of the response is the common timing format for acceptances to various types of invitations and requests. (p265)
* [negative response] [Such terms as “well” (or “gee” or “gosh”)] actively mark the initiation of some dispreferred action such as a refusal, rejection, or cushioning the negative news while signaling its content as well as displaying the speaker’s concern to break the news gently. (p266)
* Among other things by warning the proposer, inviter, or requester that a negative is coming, silences allow the proposer to “pull back,” perhaps qualifying or sweetening the deal with a better offer before the refusal can come. (p266)
* So frequent are such response delays that should they not take place before a refusal, the proposer notices that something is wrong. (p266)… Face denials wantonly rob the proposer of a chance to save face with qualifying interjections or withdrawals; they imply a motivated animosity. That is why they are rare. (p266)
* Copresence provides the best circumstance for inserting delays before a negative response and for such delays (or their absence) to be noticed and exploited by the other party. Thus, the routine preference for solidarity can best operate as a noticeable feature of interaction under conditions of copresence. (pp266-267)
* When people delay a negative response to allow withdrawal of a request, they have taken it on themselves to protect the other interactant – and they have done so without there being any explicit rule, norm, or law requiring them to do so. (p267)
* … a trust that drives from the observable timing and placement of talk and gesture. Such trust, we now know, is not just intrinsic to intimate relations within family units and other primary groups but is an essential mechanism of business and high-level negotiations among powerful state actors. (p267)
* As Michael Storper and Allen Scott mark, “Communities of trust and the social construction of unwritten business norms are important foundations for the maintenance of an effective social division of labor. … Trust and personal experience are … important pre-conditions of much re-contracting behavior in modern business complexes.” For actors to use time to achieve solidarity and trust, there must be a minimum amount of space between them. (p267)
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