A body and its gestures

This paper is about gestures made by a car-mechanic during a single extended episode of work. Some of these gestures are recurrent and appear to be parts of a repertoire of communicative forms with which this man responds to understanding tasks that routinely occur in his work; others appear to be abstracted from instrumental actions that he has recently completed. Both types of gesture reveal the specific stance and knowledge that the body making them has acquired in its day-to-day coping, the body’s being-in-the-world. Gestures thus articulate the grasp that hands have of their life-worlds.