Considering Ornaments, Necklaces and Floors: Negotiations of Everyday Family Activities Through the ‘Collective Action’ of Multiple Actors

Abstract

This paper explores negotiations of everyday family activities in Swedish family homes between multiple actors such as children, parents, and material things. The family activities involve decorating the Christmas tree, brushing teeth and engaging with necklaces, and siblings’ engagements with cleaning equipment. The data comprises 45 hours of video recordings in 12 Swedish family homes. This study draws on multimodal interaction analysis, Bruno Latour’s concept ‘collective action’ and on key Child Studies sensibilities. Such sensibilities involve approaching children’s everyday lives as emerging from the engagements between multiple entities. By considering how multiple actors accomplish negotiations of family activities (e.g., children, ornaments, necklaces, floors, parents), the results shows that negotiations arise as complex interactional accomplishments. Different types of activities achieve currency in those negotiations which range from more straightforward to more complex and uncertain. The study also found that intimate human–nonhuman relationships are central to how such negotiations are accomplished.