Interaction practices in social encounters in public city spaces in daily life: A field research in Ankara public bus

In this study, city buses, one of the public transportation vehicles, were examined with a phenomenological approach based on interpersonal interaction. Phenomenological approach requires examining a phenomenon with all aspects. In this line, in this thesis where first of all the municipal city buses and private public buses in Ankara were chosen for field research, the flow of everyday life affecting the interactions of individuals in Ankara, thoughts of the participants regarding the city, and the influence of the city on interpersonal interaction were examined. Afterwards, issues such as which ones of the public transportation vehicles the interviewees preferred and for which reasons they did so and what their public transportation behaviours are, the spatial properties of buses, the factors that cause social interaction in buses and how the interaction is established, and the impression management of passengers were examined. In addition to the interaction between the passengers, the communication between the driver and passengers is also highly important. Therefore, the working conditions and the authorities of the drivers and the problems they experience, which shape the passenger-driver interaction, and their influence on the passenger-driver interaction formed another aspect of the study. All these issues were discussed with the theoretical background provided by the interaction and everyday life theories, which fall into the field of micro sociology, urban sociology and transportation sociology literature. Since no field of public transportation has been examined within such a scope and by referring to the opinions of both passengers and drivers before, it was aimed that this thesis would fill a significant gap in the field. As the consequence of the study, it was concluded that there were some utmost basic and essential problems arising from the administrative sphere in the field of public transportation, such problems caused issues in communication between passengers and in the communication between drivers and passengers, passengers developed important relations of cooperation and solidarity with each other and with drivers in spite of the existing problems, bus passengers also used this space as a place of spare time utilisation in spite of the adverse conditions, and this place served passengers both as a private space and a public space, and similar findings and data were reached.