Hand-ling ‘road rage’

Abstract

Although mobility and movement has recently gained importance within interactionist studies of social action, not much is known about the consequentiality of being on the move for the particular unfolding of interactional episodes. Utilising two publicly accessible video clips of ‘road rage’ situations, we describe and analyse the centrality of hand-work in the escalation and decline of an emotionally charged interaction between members of traffic. Avoiding an a priori cognitivist stance, we show in detail how the work of hands can be constitutive of anger itself, and that it can lead to open conflict on the boundary of physical violence.

Keywords

• ethnomethodology
• road rage
• gesture
• traffic
• mobile interaction