Abstract
Societies are undergoing enormous upheavals in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. High levels of psychological distress are widespread, yet little is known about the exact impacts at the micro-level of everyday life. The present study examines the ordinary activity of buying bread to understand changes occurring early in the crisis. A dataset of over 50 social interactions at a community market stall were video-recorded, transcribed and examined in detail using multi-modal conversation analysis. With COVID-19 came an orientation to a heightened risk of disease transmission when selling food. The bread was placed in bags, a difference which was justified as a preventative measure and morally normalised by invoking a common-sense prohibition of touching produce. Having the bread out of immediate sight was a practical challenge that occasioned the expansion of turns and sequences to look for and/or confirm what was for sale, highlighting a normative organisation between seeing and buying. The analysis shows how a preventative measure related to the pandemic was adjusted to interactionally. More broadly, this research reveals the small changes to daily life that likely contribute to the overall negative impacts on health and well-being that have been reported.
Highlights
Societies are undergoing enormous upheavals in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic
Our analytic approach uses discursive psychology, which draws upon ethnomethodology and conversation analysis to examine how the rapid social changes associated with COVID-19 impacted on what would in typical times be an ordinary aspect of everyday life – selecting what bread to buy at a local market
Our analyses show how these are consequential for the micro moments of daily life
Summary
Our analytic approach uses discursive psychology, which draws upon ethnomethodology and conversation analysis to examine how the rapid social changes associated with COVID-19 impacted on what would in typical times be an ordinary aspect of everyday life – selecting what bread to buy at a local market. The first woman to speak (Cus1) demonstrates not knowing through her verbal and embodied conduct She claims she doesn’t ‘kno::w what (.) we’re after’ (line 2) as she shifts her gaze from right to left across the bagged produce (Figure 1). The seller’s response retrospectively casts the bags as a reason for the customer’s visual search and not knowing what to buy Her offer to remove the loaves from the bags so the customers can ‘see it a bit better’ (lines 3–4) displays an understanding that seeing properly precedes buying. The analysis so far has established that the bags are at once a visual barrier to overcome that extends the sales encounter interaction, and a hygiene measure that allows for the safe functioning of the market This complexity is evident in Extract 6 where the customer arrives at the stall, formatting her request by naming the bread while visually searching for it
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