Sociological Perspectives

1. Sociological Perspectives Week 9 – Erving Goffman and Modern Sociology Dr. Maria do Mar Pereira m.d.m.pereira@warwick.ac.uk

2. Analysing the Social MACRO MESO MICRO

3. Doing ‘Micro-Sociology’ • Key strand of sociological research since early 20th century, and especially from the 1960s. • Less emphasis on structuralist ‘grand narratives’. • These tend to focus on underlying structures, ‘typical’ cases and large-scale patterns, and often adopt a quantitative approach (privileging measurement, prediction and generalisability). • More emphasis on the situational, and on contingency, diversity and agency. • It seeks to examine interaction, identity and meaning, and thus tends to adopt qualitative methods that foreground an ethnographic and interpretative engagement with the social world.

4. The Development of ‘Micro-Sociology’ • Symbolic Interactionism (from the 1920s) • Inspired by Max Weber • Key figures: George Herbert Mead (1863 – 1931), Charles Horton Cooley (1864 – 1929) and Herbert Blumer (1900 – 1987) • Sees society as socially constructed in and through interpretation of meaning in interaction  i.e. we engage with reality on the basis of the subjective meanings we impose on it, and these emerge from collective processes of negotiation • Mead speaks of the ‘social self’: • the individual is embedded in webs of interdependence; • self produced in the interplay of the ‘I’, the ‘Me’ and the ‘generalised other’.

5. The Development of ‘Micro-Sociology’ • The Chicago School (1920s/30s and 1960s) • Specialisedin studies of work and local urban communities in Chicago, particularly marginalised and so-called ‘deviant’ groups (e.g. immigrants, the homeless, youth ‘gangs’) • Inspired by G. H. Mead; Key figures: Everett Hughes (1897 – 1983), Robert E. Park (1864 – 1944), Howard S. Becker (1928 - ) • Ethnomethodology (from 1960s) • Developed by Harold Garfinkel (1917 – 2011) • Studies the everyday methods that people use to produce the social order and make sense of the world • Deploys different methods – inc. ‘breaching experiments’ – to produce estrangement from ‘the life as usual character of everyday scenes’ and thus make visible people’s ‘background expectancies’ (Garfinkel, 1967)

6. Locating Erving Goffman • An extremely influential sociologist who actively engaged with, and participated in, these different strands of micro-sociology  see key reading by Verhoeven (1993) • Canadian. Born 1922, died 1982. PhD from University of Chicago in 1953. • Produced several ground-breaking qualitative studies of institutions and interaction, including: • The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) • Asylums (1961) • Stigma (1963)

7. Goffman’sContribution to ModernSociology (I) ‘Throughout sociology’s short and turbulent history, (…) there have been scholars who have produced startlingly original and influential work, yet who have (…) resisted association with any existing configuration (…). Goffman was one such maverick scholar.’ (Williams, 1998:151) ‘Goffmanwas primarily an observer of face-to-face interaction who possessed an extraordinary ability to appreciate the subtle importance of apparently insignificant aspects of everyday conduct. Goffman made his readers aware of this almost invisible realm of social life, with the result that the banal exchanges and glances observable in any public place become a continual source of fascination.’ (Manning, 1992: 3)

8. Goffman’sContribution to ModernSociology (II) ‘Goffmansaw the practice of social science as discovery. This is not to say that he brought new facts to light or revealed information which was previously unknown, but that he made clear what was previously unclear, pointed to the significance of things which had been regarded as of little or no consequence, and disentangled what was previously an indiscriminate muddle.(…) [His work] consisted in uncovering what happens in trivial and commonplace, or peripheral or bizarre, corners of social conduct(…) – and then peeling off more and more of the covering of seemingly normal behaviour and relationships to reveal similar or analogous structures and processes at work throughout the whole order of society.’ (Burns, 1992: 9, 17)

9. The Interaction Order • For Goffman, the starting point of analysis is not the individual, the group or the social structure, but the interaction order. • The interaction order is the largely invisible and unspoken set of norms and rituals (e.g. greetings, salutations) followed by members of a society in face-to-face encounters.

10. All the World’s a Stage… • In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman uses a dramaturgical (i.e. theatrical) metaphor to conceptualise the functioning of the interaction order • Performance, roles and audience • Scripts and props • Front and back regions (on-stage, off stage) • Presentation of self and impression management

11. Goffman’s Notion of the Self Goffman draws on, and expands, Mead’s notion of the self: • the self is relational; thus, it is irreducible to individuals (hence the importance of the study of interaction) • the self is not fixed • it is contingent on the setting, the audience, the props, etc. • it is a work-in-progress, continuously managed and (re)configured in interaction ‘It is customary to assert that Goffman’s theoretical interests are derived from (…) Mead. Certainly this explains his preoccupation with the concept of self as a product of social interaction, as some-thing assembled from the accumulated perspectives of those around us. (…) Goffman’s distinctive similarity to Mead lies in his stress upon process, upon the interactional programme which results in the audience ascribing particular characteristics to the individual.’ (Taylor, 2000: 239-240)

12. Institutional Analysis: Asylums • Goffman was particularly interested in how identity is managed, and the self is presented, in total institutions. He examined asylums in Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (1961). • Explores the vulnerability of identity in total institutions: • patients admitted against their will to an asylum • BUT also the vulnerability of the asylum’s attempt to impose its own definition of situation and of who/what the patient is. • Goffman’s interest is not in the physical space of the asylum but in the gap between the officially imposed definition of self and the self which the individual seeks to present.

13. Stigma • An attribute that is ‘deeply discrediting’ (1963: 13), i.e. which ‘spoils’ an individual’s identity • ‘defects’ of the body (e.g. disability) • ‘defects’ of character (e.g. mental illness, addiction, gambling) • political or religious beliefs; membership in socially undervalued groups (e.g. racial and ethnic minorities; gender; sexuality) • It is ‘an undesired differentness from what we had anticipated’ (1963: 15).  IMPORTANT: a stigmatising attribute is always contingent and relational; ‘it is neither creditable nor discreditable as a thing in itself’ (1963: 13)

14. Stigma and Discrimination Example: The separation of people into two categories – the ‘normals’ and those who are stigmatised in relation to a particular attribute – acts as the basis for, and legitimation of, discrimination. ‘By definition, of course, we believe the person with stigma is not quite human. On this assumption we exercise varieties of discrimination, through which we effectively, if often unthinkingly, reduce his [sic] life chances. We construct a stigma theory, an ideology to explain his [sic] inferiority and account for the danger he [sic] represents, sometimes rationalizing an animosity based on other differences.’ (1963: 15): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLnv322X4tY&list=PL08E3C06A97617C13&index=5

15. For the Seminar • Essential Reading : • Chapter 1‘(Stigma and Social Identity’) of Stigma • Verhoeven, Jef C. 1993. ‘An Interview With Erving Goffman - 1980’, Research on Language and Social Interaction, 26 (3), pp. 317-348. • Essential Listening: • Thinking Allowed – Erving Goffman(2013), BBC Radio Four:http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b039cy07 REMEMBER: You must readStigma in its entirety by early January.

16. For the Seminar • Reading Questions: • How is Goffman’s approach to Sociology different from, and similar to, the other authors we have studied in the module until now? • Why is it sociologically important to study the micro-level details of everyday interaction? • What did you find interesting, and challenging, in your reading of the first chapter of Stigma? • Verhoeven’sinterview with Goffman sheds some light on the bases of Goffman’s work and the preoccupations and aims that guided it. What does this interview tell us about the ways in which personal, social, historical and academic factors shape the development of sociological thought more broadly?

17. References Burns, T. 1992. Erving Goffman. Oxon: Routledge. Garfinkel, H. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity. Goffman, E. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Goffman, E. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Manning, P. 1992. Erving Goffman and Modern Sociology. Cambridge: Polity. Rafalovich, A. 2006. ‘Making sociology relevant: The assignment and application of breaching experiments’.TeachingSociology, 34 (2): 156–163. Taylor, L. 2000. ‘Erving Goffman’ in G. A. Fine and G. W. H. Smith (eds.), Erving Goffman. London: Sage. Williams, R. 1998. ‘Erving Goffman’ in R. Stones (ed.), Key Sociological Thinkers. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.