Erving Goffman

Graffiti and organizations

by Gazi Islam

Claiming and displaying (national) identity

by Susan Condor

Analytic techniques currently employed in empirical work on national identity often fail to correspond to the way in... more Analytic techniques currently employed in empirical work on national identity often fail to correspond to the way in which the construct is conceptualised in theory. In particular, approaches that emphasise the strategic and dialogic quality of national identity claims in everyday life do not easily combine with analytic practices that treat interview respondents’ self-descriptions as acts of literal self-disclosure. Applying Goffman’s constructs of frame and footing to a corpus of data collected in England, we consider how national identities may be performatively displayed in interview encounters. We argue that analytic approaches that overlook subordinate channels of communication, which take utterances out of narrative context, and which focus on what respondents report explicitly at the expense of what is elided or assumed in conversation, may contribute to overly literal, and conceptually unsophisticated, interpretations of the process of self-representation.

Nunkoosing, K & Haydon-Laurelut, M (2012) Intellectual Disability Trouble. In: Goodley, D., Hughes, B., & Davis, L. Disability and social theory: new developments and directions. Palgrave Macmillan: London

by Mark Haydon - Laurelut

The total institution was not simply the place where people with intellectual disabilities used to live and work. It... more The total institution was not simply the place where people with intellectual disabilities used to live and work. It was also the place of work for several professions, such as physicians, psychologists, nurses, social workers, speech and language therapists and others engaged in regulating the lives of disabled people. The closure of institutions and there replacement with the group home as one of the places where men and women with intellectual disabilities live still involve these processionals in processes that construct disability. In the context of intellectual disabilities, these professions operate in a collective called the Community Learning Disability Team (CLDT). Staff in the group home can call on the CLDT to assist them to manage men and women with intellectual disabilities deemed to be in need of expert help. They do so by means of writing referrals in which they describe the troublesome actions, often acts of resistance, of the man or woman with learning disabilities. These referrals link the group homes with external agents of control and are also important sources of data about what is going on in the lives of people with intellectual disabilities and the people who support them in group homes. In this chapter we draw upon the insights of Erving Goffman and Michel Foucault to make sense of some aspects of the lives of men and women with intellectual disabilities who live in group homes. We have previously examined referrals to a CLDT to explore discourses of challenging behaviour in these texts. Below are two of the referrals we studied about two men, Dennis and Harry. These are taken from actual referrals made to a CLDT; we will also make reference to 3 other persons, Zoë, Lucy and John (these names are all pseudonyms) who were referred. We use these referrals to illustrate the application of Goffman’s and Foucault’s insights to group homes for men and women with intellectual disabilities. Methodologically our work with these texts is guided by Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Fairclough, 2001). CDA “is critical in the sense that it aims to show non-obvious ways in which language is involved in social relations of power and domination, and in ideology. It is a resource which can be used in combination with others for researching change in contemporary social life” (Fairclough 2001:229). CDA is a resistant and disruptive reading practice aimed at revealing how assumptions operate to serve vested interests. Our position is also informed by critical and social constructionist perspectives of intellectual disability and the lives of people who have been given this label (Goodley 1996; Rapley 2004; Roets 2009; Swain, French, Barnes, & Thomas 2004).

The Performative Body: Symbolic Interactionism, Dramaturgy, Affect, and the Sociology of the Body

by Phillip Vannini

Co-authored with Dennis Waskul, forthcoming in the Handbook of Dramaturgy, edited by Charles Edgley (Ashgate, 2013)

Language and Superdiversity (Blommaert & Rampton 2012)

by Jan Blommaert

A Research in Stigma Theory: An Observational Evaluation of the Prevalence of Stigma in 2010

by Jeanne Spaulding

Brevísima Introducción a la Antropología Urbana

by Daniel Malet Calvo

First theoretical chapter of doctoral thesis: "A ver quem passa". O Rossio. Proceso social y dinámicas interactivas en una plaza del centro de Lisboa.

Significant Moves: Urvashi Butalia's Contribution to the Women's Movement in India.

by Anindya Bhattacharya

Bhattacharya, Anindya. "Significant Moves: Urvashi Butalia's Contribution to the Women's Movement in India." The Gendered India: Feminism and the Indian Gender Reality. Ed. Arnab Bhattacharya. Kolkata: Books Way, 2012. 141-157. Print.

Spaces of multilingualism

by Jan Blommaert

The politics of the web: the case of one newsgroup

by Maxim Waldstein

This is a non-proofread variant of the paper published in Media, Culture and Society, 2005, Volume 27, no. 5: 739-763

New technological advances usually produce waves of utopian hopes and aspirations. At present, this is true to the... more New technological advances usually produce waves of utopian hopes and aspirations. At present, this is true to the Internet, or ‘the web.’ Often portrayed as a borderless liberal space of equal opportunities and unconstrained communication, the web has recently gave a new impulse to the ideas of the public sphere and liberal democracy. However, contrary to these expectations, this paper emphasizes the profoundly contested nature of the communication on the net. Based on tracing an episode in the life of one Internet newsgroup, soc.culture.russian, the paper illuminates specific discursive practices through which domination, cooptation, resistance and exclusion enter the virtual space of Internet communications. Simultaneously, this study draws attention to the relative ‘truth’ of enthusiasm about the liberal affordances of the net. The Internet, it is argued, is liberal indeed but not so much due to the reign of liberal principles as due to the strategic advantage enjoyed by ‘liberal actors’ in newsgroup exchanges. It is thus the purpose of the study to trace the structuring impact of ‘liberal domination’ on the net.

Environmental Reconstruction in Microsociological Theory for Microsociological Reconstruction in Environmental Sociology

by Brad Brewster

PhD Dissertation. Completed in 2011. University of Wisconsin-Madison. Done under the supervision of Michael Mayerfeld Bell.

I survey a collection of pedagogical resources in environmental sociology, including syllabi, textbooks, readers, and... more I survey a collection of pedagogical resources in environmental sociology, including syllabi, textbooks, readers, and handbooks, to show that what’s being taught and perpetuated as environmental sociology, via field-defining theories, is actually environmental macrosociology, leaving out the micro. I argue that pedagogical and theoretical problems follow from such one-sidedness. To correct for this imbalance, I turn to social psychological philosopher George Herbert Mead and microsociological theorist of everyday life Erving Goffman, reconstructing their theories in environmental terms. I show that, contrary to how Mead is often taught in sociology courses as well as how he is often portrayed in environmental sociology, Mead’s broad intellectual interests extended beyond social psychology to the natural world. In doing so, an “environmental Mead” is developed from his socio-environmental thought for a community psychology in environmental sociology. Then, beginning with a partly critical discussion of his view of animals, I move into discussions of how Mead's anti-dualistic philosophy creatively combined social and natural in various ways when it came to his view of objects, of mind, and of nature. Unlike Mead, Goffman was singularly and narrowly interested in everyday social interaction. The problem, then, was how to modify Goffman to environmental uses without losing the distinctive character of Goffman’s work. I address this by formulating a pragmatic construct for exporting Goffman to domains he himself had never been. Along the lines of this construct, then, an “environmental Goffman” is developed from his frame analysis for an environmental sociology of everyday life. I, then, explore applications of Mead and Goffman to fields in environmental studies or closely related to environmental sociology, namely, exploring Goffman’s dramaturgical, ritual, and interaction analysis in terms of community sociology and Mead’s holistic thought by comparison to ecosystem ecology. As a next logical step from the socially contextual, embedded approaches of the self in the community in Mead’s thought and of the self in the social situation in Goffman’s thought, I move up to the next level of analysis, the small group itself, to bring group dynamics into the environmental and conservation social sciences.

The Environmental Goffman: Toward an Environmental Sociology of Everyday Life

by Brad Brewster

Co-authored with Michael Mayerfeld Bell. Published in Society & Natural Resources 2010.

While environmental sociology has imported many macro theorists from the larger discipline, it has almost completely... more While environmental sociology has imported many macro theorists from the larger discipline, it has almost completely ignored Goffman. The primary project of this article is to fill that gap by proposing and initiating a Goffmaneque environmental sociology of everyday life, primarily through Goffman’s 1974 work, Frame Analysis. In doing so we address two issues central to environmentally relevant everyday experience: (1) the commonplace appreciation of “Nature,” such as that experienced at parks, on hikes, and being outdoors generally, and (2) the commonsensical notions of “nature” and “naturalness” as used in everyday conduct. In the first task, we make a contribution both to Goffman’s frame analytic theory and to environmental sociological theory with our notion of an out-in-nature frame. In the second task, we undertake to identify and formalize for environmental sociology instances implicit in Frame Analysis of how notions of nature mask social interests.

L'ordinateur portable en soins à domicile : l'espace interactionnel soignant/soigné en mutation

by Sylvie Grosjean

Bonneville, Grosjean (2009), In Questions de communication, N.15.

Résumé : Dans le cadre de cet article, nous présentons une recherche menée auprès de professionnels de la santé... more Résumé : Dans le cadre de cet article, nous présentons une recherche menée auprès de professionnels de la santé utilisateurs d’un ordinateur portable en soins à domicile. Nous montrons à partir d’extraits d’entrevues et en mobilisant la notion de « territoire » (Goffman) en quoi la présence d’un ordinateur portable en soins à domicile modifie l’environnement de travail du soignant et agit – d’une certaine manière – sur la relation soignant/soigné.

Mots clés : Interaction, soins à domicile, ordinateur, territoires du moi, médiation

Abstract: After having done a research on the use of a personal computer by nurses working in ambulatory care, we show, by using the notion of territory (Goffman), a few transformations in the way healthcare services are given. Especially, we show that the use of a personal computer by nurse in ambulatory care has a specific impact on their work environment, as well as their relation with patients.

Keywords: Interaction, ambulatory care, computer, territories of the self, mediation

Erving Goffman: The Reluctant Apprentice

by Gary Jaworski

Hero takes a fall: A lesson from theatre for leadership

by Brigitte Biehl-Missal

Leadership (Special Issue: Leadership as an Art, ed. by Donna Ladkin & Steven S. Taylor)

Comparing leaders to actors has a long tradition, and researchers and practitioners in the organizational field have... more Comparing leaders to actors has a long tradition, and researchers and practitioners in the organizational field have tried to learn lessons from theatre. For developing this approach, this article takes an interdisciplinary theatre studies perspective and discusses how leaders in organizations compare to actors in the theatre. It makes the assertion that the actor’s role in (dramatic, epic and postdramatic) theatre over several historic epochs can be seen as a complementary, opposed practice that confronts and challenges audiences rather than ‘playing to them’. Theatre does not provide us with ideal or charismatic leader characters but, quite the opposite, teaches us about contentious and problematic heroes. Theatre presents a fundamental disrespect for tenability and positive affirmation and may offer more critical ideas about aesthetic interaction, leadership performance and leader-follower interaction. This illustrates that aesthetic features do not alone turn leadership into an art. ‘Leadership as an art’ through this lens includes critical interaction through increased aesthetic awareness from the viewpoint of followers.

Communautés Virtuelles et Communication Médiatisée par Ordinateur - Analyse de Formes de « Ritualisation Sociale »

by Sylvie Grosjean

The Polish LGBT movement: symbolic conflict and stigma

by Tomek Mossakowski

Répondre en citoyen ordinaire. Pour une étude ethnopragmatique des engagements profanes-Tracés. Revue de Sciences humaines

by Mathieu Berger

“My f***ing personality”: swearing as slips and gaffes in live television broadcasts

by Richard Fitzgerald

Carly W. Butler, Richard Fitzgerald.

Published in. Text & Talk -. Volume 31, Issue 5, Pages 525–551

Abstract

This paper examines instances of swearing in live television broadcasts. While some cable... more Abstract

This paper examines instances of swearing in live television broadcasts. While some cable television shows routinely involve swearing without censorship and recorded shows may include swearing “bleeped out,” our interest is in instances of swearing in contexts where swearing is prohibited. We look at live interviews and panel debates where swearing is clearly noticed and reacted to strongly—and in all cases retracted or apologized for in some way. The examples we examine thus involve a participant visibly moving outside the normative limits of the interaction, and as such reveal the boundaries that serve as organizational structures for the interactions. Drawing on Goffman's work on gaffes and slips and ethnomethodological conversation analysis, the paper explores how swearing is treated by the participants as a practical concern, and how swearing and its management implicates the identities and relationships of the participants and the specific context of the interaction. We discuss how swearing in live broadcasts reveals the limits of authenticity within informal, conversational interviews and debates.

Keywords: news interviews; live broadcast; expletives; ethnomethodology; conversation analysis; Goffman.

Sweet Old Things and Dirty Old Men[England and Rust] submission

by Suzanne England

Inspired by William F. May’s writings on the vices and virtues of the elderly we offer our reflections on his ideas as... more Inspired by William F. May’s writings on the vices and virtues of the elderly we offer our reflections on his ideas as they are revealed by Muriel Spark’s novel, Memento Mori.. May argues that exempting the old from moral criticism positions them as “moral nonentities” and relieves the old, their caretakers, and society of moral responsibility. We, the coauthors of this paper, are from two different disciplines, namely Renaissance and medieval literature (Martha Rust), and social work and critical gerontology (Suzanne England). We offer our individual readings of the ways the novel illustrates May’s ideas, and conclude with our thoughts about how our collaboration opened up space in our own thinking and for continuing cross-disciplinary dialogu