Identifying the patterns of co-presence and social interactions in the dwellings of contemporary Sri Lankan suburbs through the virtual fieldworks

Abstract

Co-presence is the idea that the presence of other actors shapes the individual behavior and creates the base for social interactions leading to a harmonious society. This paper discusses the structure of the observational means for the fieldwork of a research which clarifies the relationship between co-presence and social interactions while identifying patterns of co-presence in the dwellings of the contemporary Sri Lankan suburbs. Sri Lanka is a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural nation. To identify the lifestyle, patterns of co-presence and social interactions of Sinhala Lower middleclass, which occupies the majority of the population and has the highest influence in the social dynamics of Sri Lankan society, this research has mainly focused on domestic places, in which a major part of their life is spent. Due to COVID19 travel restrictions, onsite fieldwork was difficult. Hence two online field methodologies were developed as alternative fieldwork systems in this research, to clarify the patterns of co-presence and feelings related to them in creation of social interactions. The findings clarify that there are four main types of co-presence patterns which are related to functionality and frequency of co-activities of the co-presence occurrences. It was observed that among these types, co-presence occurrences with functional co-activities have less flexibility leading to limited social interactions while co-presence occurrences with non-functional co-activities have more flexibility leading to higher possibilities of social interactions.