Recognizing mutual ‘proximity’ at a distance: Weaving together mobility, sociality and technology

Abstract The aim of this paper is to analyse the way social gatherings are collaboratively accomplished in two highly different settings, routine mobile phone conversations, and a location-aware mobile game, through a single, sequentially ordered interactional device based on participants producing mutually ratified ‘co-proximity events’. It starts from their doing ‘co-localization work’, that is, collaboratively establishing their locations, which provides them with opportunities to assess their mutual locations as some form of proximity. I show how such ‘co-proximity events’ achieved within talk-in-interaction enact the relevance of a future face-to-face encounter, and project an invitation to meet as a relevant ‘next’ in the interactional sequence. In the location-aware system, the game infrastructure and interfaces assume agency in the discovery of co-proximity, by providing players with opportunities to see the presence of their icons on a single map. I show how players treat such a display as a form of mediated co-proximity, with the same interactional and sequential consequences as in mobile phone conversations. The sequence-sensitive interactional device I identify here allows the collaborative production of social encounters. It weaves mobility and sociality, proximity and hospitality, and can be argued to possess a wider anthropological significance.