Goffman's Analysis Research Articles

Orchestrating National Occasions: The formation of the Irish American athletic league in New York City (1904–1920)

AbstractThis article explores the significance of fun and solidarity in constructing national belonging. Drawing inspiration from Erving Goffman's analysis of social occasions, the article examines the establishment of an Irish‐American Gaelic Athletic League in New York City from 1904 to 1916. Tracing the gradual shaping of the games, it shows how organizers used sporting competitions to draw participants and regulate the interactions between immigrants from different counties in Ireland. Successful regulation of the games allowed immigrants from various counties in Ireland to engage each other in a spirit of friendly competition and develop solidarity. Far from being an obstacle to national belonging, these differences became the basis for fun sociability, leading to broad Irish belonging and pride. The enjoyment derived from participation in well‐regulated occasions contributes to the formation of social bonds and solidarity among potential members, ultimately fostering national identification.

Nurses' decision-making in ethically relevant clinical situations using the example of breathlessness: study protocol of a reflexive grounded theory integrating Goffman's framework analysis

IntroductionDecision-making (DM) in healthcare can be understood as an interactive process addressing decision makers' reasoning as well as their visible behaviour after the decision is made. Other key elements of...

'Rules of Conduct'; Applying Deference and Demeanor to Understand Status Inconsistency and Role Conflict in Family Firms

Erving Goffman's analysis of everyday life interaction rituals as significant social ceremonies (Goffman, 1963:8; 1956:473, 499; 1971: 62-65) is the foundation for the propositions presented in the paper. Applying the concepts of deference and demeanor developed by Goffman (1956), this paper will explore how the “rules of conduct” in regards to managing social position within family businesses may lead to conflict as a result of status inconsistency and role conflict. Subsequently, a typology is provided in which dysfunctional conflict may be managed by family firms based on the degree of individual deference or demeanor.

Whiteness, non-whiteness and ‘faith information control’: religion among young people in Grønland, Oslo

This article is based on a qualitative study of religion among young people in the inner-city multicultural Grønland area in Oslo. We use Goffman's stigma analysis to explore the interplay of ethnicity, race and religion in this particular urban space and beyond. An important observation is that whiteness hides information about faith, or even signals ‘secular’, whereas non-whiteness signifies ‘religious’ across the racial boundary. We examine how visible stigma or prestige symbols connect with invisible ones to different degrees and with various consequences across space. ‘Faith information control’ is closely attached to the status of faith as a stigma symbol, and further to the ethnic and racial marking of the interaction context. By exploring the intersections of ethnicity, race and religion in everyday life, we contribute to the ‘third wave’ of whiteness studies.

“As Far as They Knew I Came from France”: Stigma, Passing, and Not Speaking about the Holocaust

Today we recognize that storytelling plays an important role in helping survivors of traumatic episodes such as sexual abuse, military combat, or genocide refashion a sense of self and “work through” their traumatic experiences. But before the Holocaust was named and widely acknowledged and the diagnosis of post‐traumatic stress had emerged, survivors of Hitler's genocidal policies struggled to tell their stories in a world that did not particularly wish to hear them. While most accounts of Holocaust survivors’ postwar experiences focus on themes of redemption, adjustment, and integration, my analysis of interviews with Holocaust survivors suggests during their first two decades living in the United States they were often silenced by individuals they encountered. I use Goffman's analysis of stigma to document how and why this silencing occurred, and with what consequences, providing an account of the interactions survivors had with family members, neighbors and acquaintances, and the strategies of identity management that survivors devised.

Sexy Ladies Sexing Ladies: Women as Consumers in Strip Clubs

Recent shifts in the consumer base of the sex industry have involved greater female attendance in strip clubs. This article examines how strip clubs and dancers incorporate female patrons into a sexualized space traditionally designed for men by identifying three interactional processes: passing over, sidestaging, and tailoring. We suggest dancers pass over women because they perceive female patron behavior to include resistance to “buying the game” and spending patterns that diverge from male customers. Drawing on Goffman's dramaturgical analysis, we suggest the dynamic relationship between dancer and female patron involves what we term sidestaging, which refers to both dancers’ disclosure and how the club's spatial organization inhibits the construction of women as customers through sharing gendered spaces, such as the bathroom. We argue that when a dancer tailors her lap dance for a female patron, she succeeds in acknowledging the female customer's sexual subjectivity and potential same-sex desires by providing an individualized avenue for exploring an erotic experience. Finally, we discuss data implications for understanding how same-sex desire and sexual identity operate in an environment that eroticizes the female form, and how the strip club becomes a potential space for engaging in same-sex eroticism that includes elements of play.

Playing with masks

Purpose – To investigate the presentation of self of participants in occupational online forums.Design/methodology/approach – Interpretation of more than 300 profiles of participants to a banking‐related occupational online forum based on Goffman's seminal analysis of presentation of self and on the literature on mystification and fragmentation in virtual environments.Findings – Contributors to the occupational online forum adopted one of several main categories of profiles. These categories differed in the degree of detail with which profiles were filled and showed that forum users chose a certain degree of mystification or de‐mystification for their profile. The presentation of self in the online occupational forum was related to the presentation in offline environments, such as in the workplace as well as to other online contexts, such as in electronic chats. The categories of profiles were also associated with strikingly different registration dates and number of posts per year and per contributor.Res...

Dramaturgical analysis of organizational change and conflict

PurposeTo better understand the process of organizational change by broadening Goffman's dramaturgical analysis to apply to the organizational level.Design/methodology/approachIt is a case study of a failed organizational change effort focused on racial and gender harassment and intimidation in a federal organization. The data came from interviews and observation.FindingsGoffman's dramaturgical analysis is expanded from the interpersonal to the organizational level. This study argues that organizations, too, have performances, a front stage, a back stage, and an audience. Conflict in the organization is seen as the management team exerting expressive control to maintain the organization's line, while activist teams (a feminist group and the Equal Employment Opportunity office) create scenes that disrupt it. The researcher/consultants who were called into study the situation were thrust into meta‐complementary position. Dramaturgical analysis is posited as a separate perspective for organizational analysis.Research limitations/implicationsThe ability to generalize from this to other organizations is limited by the case study method used to generate the theory.Practical implicationsThe dramaturgical approach presented in this paper can be used to analyze organizational change and help identify sources of resistance to change that other frameworks do not.Originality/valueGoffman's dramaturgical analysis is a new frame for understanding organizational change.

Between Deference and Distinction: Interaction Ritual Through Symbolic Power in an Educational Institution

In this article I provide a meso-level account of the interactional-institutional link by revisiting Goffman's analysis of deference and demeanor in light of Bourdieu's discussion of institutional fields, cultural capital, and symbolic power. To acquire deference, one must exhibit the appropriate demeanor towards others, and one must be equipped with the cultural capital that fits the institutional context. Once acquired, deference is a kind of credit that can be deployed as the symbolic power to frame (define) actions, situations, and events in ways that induce compliance and shape the social order. I also consider how these dynamics are gendered in particular contexts. Data from a two-year ethnographic study of “Costen Elementary School” brings the emergent theory to life. The theory helps explain interactions at the school and the efforts of administrators who tried to change the institutional order from autonomy to accountability. By analyzing how deference and symbolic power operate in an institutional context, I advance the “negotiated order” branch of symbolic interaction. Because social psychologists have long held that actions are informed by the definition of the situation, I argue that symbolic power is central to the field.

Cultural Trauma and Ethnic Identity Formation Among Iranian Immigrants in the United States

Inspired mainly by Jeffery Alexander's concept of cultural trauma and Irving Goffman's analysis of stigma, this article examines the impact of the Iranian Revolution and the ensuing hostage crisis in 1979 on the formation of ethnic identity among Iranian immigrants in the United States. These events resulted in the loss of cultural and ethnic pride, the rise of anti-Islamic religious sentiments, and the concealment of religious, national, and ethnic identity among Iranian immigrants in America. The article argues that the continuation of negative images of Iran and the equation of Islam with fundamentalism, extremism, and terrorism by American mainstream media had a central role in the construction of new ethnic identities among Iranians in exile.

Contesting Stigma: On Goffman's Assumptions of Normative Order

Goffman's classic analysis of stigma tacitly suggests that it has a conditional nature. An important shortcoming, however, is that his analysis proceeds from the existence of a normatively shared understanding of the criteria for and the distribution of stigma assignment. I use data from Somali immigrants to Canada to further that argument by showing that stigma as a social object cannot be created when its cultural and structural contexts are disjunctive. Through reverse stigmatization, counter devaluation, and rejection of discrimination, Somalis reveal the problematics of stigma establishment and therein raise the question of who is stigmatizing whom.

Handicap et normalisation. Analyse des transformations du rapport à la norme dans les institutions et les interactions

Handicap and Normalisation. The Norms and their Transformations in Institutions and Interactions Myriam Winance In this paper. the author analyses the link between the "handicap" and the way "handicapped (or disabled) people" are integrated into society and normalised. Along the 20th century, "handicap" has been defined in France in terms of defect and deviation to a social norm. This definition leads to a first form of normalisation consisting in bringing the handicapped people into alignment with the norm of the able-bodied. This normalisation is realised through some institutions and through daily interactions. Leaning on Goffman's analysis, the author shows the political and "personal" consequences of this normalisation. Then she shows that Goffman's analysis suggests a second form of normalisation not through bringing into alignment with a norm, but through a work on the norm in order to transform the meaning of interaction and the person. But Goffman does not develop this. For doing this, the author leans on Garfinkel's analysis. She shows how this second form of normalisation shapes some interactions but also some innovating institutional arrangements in the field of handicap in France.

STRATEGIES OF RESISTANCE TO STIGMATIZATION AMONG WHITE MIDDLE-CLASS SINGLES

Goffman's analysis of stigma management recently has been re-examined by scholars who focus on the ways in which actors not only manage but also resist stigmatization. This article represents a similar effort. Building on existing literature and interviews with 28 British middle-class respondents, we explore how single people who are stigmatized and marginalized in a culture that celebrates family and marriage resist cultural devaluation. While we acknowledge singles' reliance on strategies aimed to control social interactions, our primary focus is on their deployment of discursive "tools" to construct and present themselves as fulfilled, successful, and acceptable. As such, resistance is shaped by the existence of positive social representations which can be shared with other people. In this context, our main contributions include a broader view of resistance and the attention we give to the fragmented and contradictory nature of these individual acts. We discuss the implications of this in relation to future studies of singles and analyses of individual resistance.

The Work of Consumption

The Work of Consumption

Credibility, Agency, and the Interaction Order

There are two ways of reading Goffman—as a theorist of trust and ritual accommodation, that is, as a theorist of the interaction order, or as a theorist of deception. I suggest a way of making these two readings compatible, by arguing that Goffman was interested in what I call the “production of credibility.” Credibility is the quality of being believable, and this quality is integral to both trust and deception. Viewed in this way, Goffman explored the ways in which people make their actions convincing to other people. Although Goffman's analysis of the interaction order did not need a theory of the self, his work actually contains two quite different theories of the self: one linked to role analysis, one to his analysis of mental illness. I argue for the latter at the expense of the former. I conclude that Goffman both initiated substantive work about the interaction order and contributed to a synthesis of a theory of the interaction order and a theory of the self.

Going to the Crackhouse: Critical Space as a Form of Resistance in Total Institutions and Everyday Life

This article explores the extent to which organizational identity claims and the formal organization of social control influence how actors in a total institution conceptualize their “real” selves. The setting for this case study is Project Rehabilitate Women, a drug treatment program serving incarcerated female offenders. Using Goffman's analysis of the total institution as a guide, I explore the importance of “secondary adjustments” for self‐definition. This analysis will show that the capacity of residents to distance themselves from the label of “addict” is contingent on the formal structure of social control. I will argue that, in the absence of traditional distancing strategies, residents construct “critical space” as an alternative means to subvert institutional control mechanisms and to creatively acquire the resources necessary to articulate definitions of self that are distinct from staff constructions. It is clear that resistance, whether temporary or sustained, successful or failed, is central to how subordinates maintain their sense of self in an environment committed to radical self‐transformation.

After the Organizing Ends: Workers, Self-Efficacy, Activism, and Union Frameworks

Because union organizing is commonly studied as a single event rather than the beginning of a process, little is understood about how union organizing strategies continue to affect workers after campaigns end. In this article, I analyze interviews with workers organized by two union campaign strategies, the “comprehensive campaign” and the “blitz,” which differ significantly in the degree of participation they foster among the rank and file. I apply Carole Pateman's (1970) participatory democracy theory and Erving Goffman's (1974) framework analysis to understand the meanings workers invoke to understand the campaigns and their relations to the unions. By looking at three stages within these two union organizing processes, I examine the ways that worker activism diffuses after the campaigns and across organizations.

Goffman and Interactional Citizenship

Goffman's analysis of the interaction order and his investigation of deference and demeanor are used to extend and revise the macrosociological theory of citizenship. Goffman's theorizing intimates that individuals claim and are typically accorded a complex of interactional rights and are simultaneously obliged to honor a complementary set of obligations. Taken together, these rights and obligations comprise what we call interactional citizenship. In principle alterations in the interaction order over time can be described and explained, and in this vein we propose that there has been a general, albeit incomplete and unevenly realized, expansion of interactional citizenship to virtually every category of social actor. There are limits to this expansion, however, and little reason to believe that interactional citizenship can ever be fully realized.

Goffman's attitude and social analysis

What can we use in Goffman? Despite his accessible prose, it is difficult for social theorists and researchers to appropriate Goffman. His concern with such mundane matters as lying, play-acting, sport, joking and games means that he slips through the carefully constructed categories of sociological self-appraisal. This is all the more frustrating because what Goffman studies is well known. In the most general terms the domain of Goffman's analyses is social interaction:

Drama as Life: The Significance of Goffman's Changing Use of the Theatrical Metaphor

In this paper I discuss three elements of Goffman's work, all of which have been influenced by his view of the role of metaphor in sociology. The first element is his substantive account of face-to-face interaction. At different times he has described everyday behavior in terms of many different metaphors, although the theatrical metaphor is probably the most important of these. One tendency (among others) in his early work is to see face-to-face interaction as a zero-sum game in which individuals manipulate their performances: each person hides behind a persona (etymologically a mask). According to this account, we are all cynical actors who practice impression management in the pursuit of personal gain. In his writings in the 1960s and thereafter, Goffman placed less and less emphasis on the cynical aspects of impression management and focused more intensely on the importance of trust in everyday encounters. Trust is evident in the rituals that allow routine interaction among strangers in urban settings. Goffman's analysis of the trust displayed in urban anonymity required him to distance himself from the theatrical metaphor. Caution is needed, however. This brief description of Goffman's early work is an oversimplification. To do full justice to his thought we must consider the impact of Durkheim on his work, as Randall Collins has suggested, and also his debt to Simmel (see Smith 1989). Elements of an account of ritual are present in his doctoral thesis and thereafter. In this paper I want only to show that one tendency in his early work-to view people as cynical manipulators-is influenced by a dramaturgical metaphor which itself is used later to challenge this model of human behavior. The transition actually occurs in Goffman's revisions to the second edition of Presentation of Self (1956, 1959). The second aim of this paper is to consider metaphor as a key to Goffman's often puzzling methodology. For understanding of this method, I am greatly indebted to earlier work by Baldamus (1972) and Williams (1988). Combining their work with Goffman's allows us to understand possible connections between social theory and literary theory.