Embodying the institution: object manipulation in developing interaction in study counselling meetings

Participants in interaction are faced with the practical issues of delineating one situated practice from another, transitioning into and out of bounded activities and across successive juncture points within an activity. These may need to be furnished with some form of individual demarcation in order to avoid disorientation between co-interactants with regard to the particular frame in which they are currently engaged. This paper discusses the emergent progression of courses of action proposed and negotiated between co-participants in institutional interaction. Particularly, we will focus here on how objects in the material surround are used in conjunction with talk, gaze and postural orientation to construct local social order in study guidance counselling meetings at a university. We explore here how co-participants utilize aggregates of interactional components to construct such sequentially relevant action