Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman is a sociologist, American Linguiste of Canadian origin born with Mannville, Alberta Canada, the June 11th 1922 and deceased with Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania, the November 19th 1982. With Howard Becker, it is one of the principal representatives of the second École of Chicago.

Biography

Goffman undertakes studies of sociology at the university of Toronto (1944) where he is the pupil of Ray Birdwhistell, then at the university of Chicago (1945) where he is the pupil of Herbert Blumer and Everett Hughes. In 1952 it leaves for the Islands the Shetland, in the north of Scotland, to observe the local life for twelve months. It is made pass for a student interested by the agricultural economics: actually, it data-gathering for its Thesis of doctorate which he supports in 1953.

Moving in 1954 for Washington, accompanied by his wife Angelica Choate and its son Tom, Goffman decides to go to live several months among Mentally ills, within the psychiatric hospital of Holy-Elisabeth to Washington, to observe the life of the recluses. Teaching at the University of California of Berkeley since 1958, it is named professor in 1962. Meanwhile, it published Asiles , on the basis of its stay in the private clinic of Holy-Elisabeth, introducing the concept of total Institution . In 1963, it will publish Stigmate . His wife sinks in the madness and commits suicide in 1964.

It is centered not on the individual, but on the interaction , using of didactic metaphors. With the presentation of oneself (the setting in scene of the daily life, volume 1) , it develops the theatrical metaphor , considering the people in interaction as actors who carry out a representation. In the rites of interaction , he speaks about metaphor of the ritual to give an account of the meetings face to face.

In 1968, Pierre Bourdieu makes publish his French work with the Editions of Midnight.

After a stay in Harvard, with the Center for International Affairs , it will occupy a Chaire at the university of Pennsylvania where it finds Ray Birdwhistell of 1968 to 1982.

In 1974, it publishes the executives of the experiment , taking as a starting point the cinematographic metaphor . The life is, according to him, made up of multiple constructions of reality, of framings, which articulate the ones with the others.

In 1981, it remarie with Gillian Sankoff, with which he has a girl Alice. He dies the November 20th 1982 at 60 years.

Concepts

Attached to the School of Chicago , it deviates from the methods known as quantitative and statistics to privilege the participating observation. Thus for Asiles it devotes two years to study an asylum. It takes share with the current of the Ethnométhodologie and the Interactionnisme symbolic system, even if it always refused its filiation with the latter. The difficulty in formally associating Goffman with the Interactionnisme symbolic system rises owing to the fact that the work of this last is not reduced to an analysis interactionnist. For him, the social interaction is guided by the concern of not losing the face. The concept of interaction takes a very important place in its work.

Total institution

Goffman defines the concept of total Institution like a work and place of residence where a great number of individuals, placed in the same situation, world cups outside for one relatively long period, carry out together a cloistered life whose methods are explicitly and thoroughly regulated (Asylums, p. 41). Prisons, concentration camps, asylums, convents, but also boarding schools, orphanages, etc can be regarded as total institutions (that one can bring closer to the disciplinary Institutions besides according to Michel Foucault). Those destroy the identity of the recluses. Characteristics:

• Coupure of the outside world
• All the needs are dealt with by the institution
• bureaucratic Operating process
• Contacts between limited recluses and supervisors
• Changement for temporality

Theatrical metaphor

Goffman, in presentation of oneself , considers social life as scene (area where the representation proceeds), with its actors, its public and its slides (space where the actors can contradict the impression given in the representation). It names frontage various elements with which the actor can play, the such decoration , but also the personal frontage (distinctive signs, statute, clothes, mimicry, sex, gestures, etc). The actors put themselves in scene, offering to their public the image which they give each other. They can have several roles, without there being of them one more true that the other, and to take their distance with respect to them, exploiting the amount of respect to the rule which it considers necessary or adequate.

The actors of representation build a joint definition of the situation. A wrong note is a rupture in this definition, following a blunder or an odd clerk by one or more actors. That produced a contradictory representation, a handing-over in question of common reality, causing a faintness general. To avoid these odd, of the techniques of protection, also called tact , are implemented, like the repairing exchanges the such ritualized excuses, the blindnesses by delicacy , etc

An individual is known as stigmatized when it presents an attribute which disqualifies it at the time of its interactions with others. This attribute constitutes a variation compared to normative waitings of the others in connection with its identity . Each individual is more or less stigmatized according to the circumstances, but some are it more than others: all can be placed on a continuum . The marks many and are varied: among them, the past of the individuals, the handicaps, the tares of character, homosexuality, the membership given, etc the actor thus all will implement in order to hide this mark or in any case to prevent that he does not constitute a faintness at his public. Goffman names mixed contacts the interactions at the risks between normal and stigmatized. The risk of wrong note is theoretically higher there.

The author warns however his readers against the risk to take too much with serious this metaphor.

Metaphor of the ritual

The face is the positive statutory value that a person asserts indeed through a line of action that the others suppose that it adopted during a particular contact , explains Goffman in the rites of interaction . In interaction with others, the fundamental rule that any individual must respect is to preserve its face and that of its partners . It is the condition of possibility of any interaction, because the face is crowned. A work of figuration ensures the respect of its face and that of the others, avoiding compromising them: it is tact, the good manners or the diplomacy. repairing exchanges come to restore the order when an incident took place: (S the) faulty one (S) is excused (NT), the public forgives him, in order to find a balance.

In any interaction, a certain level of engagement is required, as well as a support for the engagement of the others. This engagement can be defined by the maintenance of a intellectual and emotional attention for the official object of the interaction. It is not easy to maintain, but if it is the case, the interaction is merry, it goes.

Cinematographic metaphor

The work the executives of the experiment does not limit to the interactions, but milked an experiment. Goffman borrows the concept of framework from the anthropologist Gregory Bateson. Any experiment, any social activity, lends itself, according to him, with several versions, or framings. Those maintain the reports/ratios the ones with the others. They fix the representation of reality, directing perceptions, and influence engagement and the conduits. Normally, they pass unperceived and are divided by all the involved people.

Erving Goffman distinguishes:

• primary education executives . Is primary education a framework which allows us, in a given situation, to grant a direction to such or such of these aspects, which differently would be deprived of significance . Among them, the natural frameworks imply the action of forces or of natural laws and the social frameworks is the fact of actions or human intentions.
• transformed executives , if it are modalized are transformations which do not hide. On the other hand, if they result from deliberated efforts intended to disorientate the activity of an individual or a whole of individuals without those realizing there, one speaks about manufacture. This one can be benign or abusive.

These transformations and modalisations of framework can superimpose the ones with the others: one speaks then about first, second, etc degree. Certain framings present ambiguities , the significance of the situation being not very clear, the behavior to be adapted in their connection being difficult to envisage. errors of framing, i.e. misunderstandings, can also occur: framing seems clear, but it directs nevertheless perceptions and behaviors of the people in a direction which proves thereafter to rest on false premises . One calls rupture of framework the moment, often painful, where the individual realizes that it perceived the situation in an erroneous way: the culture even of our beliefs is some suddenly upset.

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