The dramaturgical society: A macro-analytic approach to dramaturgical analysis

While the writings of Erving Goffman have illuminated the dramaturgical components of face-to-face interaction, the task of developing a thoroughgoing substantive and theoretical explication of the dramaturgical society remains. This paper explores the utility of a dramaturgical analysis at the macrosocietal level. The character of a dramaturgical society is discussed in the first section. The origins of a critical dramaturgy are presented in the next section. The conditions of social organization which give birth to a dramaturgical society are set forth in the next sections, and the utility of dramaturgy for a self-directed society are weighed in the final section. This paper was prepared with the assistance of Jeanne Boland, New Zealand.     

Self Presentation through Appearance: A Manipulative vs. a Dramaturgical Approach

The sincerity of self presentation through personal appearance was examined through contrasting an interactionist interpretation of Goffman's dramaturgy with an “impression management” approach. “Impression management” position treats dramatization and conscious attention to one's performance as analogous to insincerity. In contrast, a dramaturgical interactionist position regards dramatization as the control of the style of performance, and as irrelevant to issues of sincerity. Analysis of forty accounts (open-ended questionnaires) of British women highlighted the over simplification inherent in the impression management position, and provided support for a dramaturgical interactionist alternative.     

The History of the Social Constructions of Dönmes (Converts)*

This paper investigates the history of social constructions, principally conspiracy theories, about a crypto‐Jewish group, the Dönmes, in Turkey. It considers the socio‐political reasons for the conspiracy theories and their significance by analysing their contents in different periods. The findings suggest that the fluid identity of Dönmes makes them stranger figures, in a sociological sense, creates public mistrust and encourages conspiratorial explanations. Moreover, the study shows that the conspiracy theories surrounding Dönmes are also fed by the ontological insecurities of Turkish politics, and that conspiracy theories tend to have appeal for alienated groups during major social transformations.     

DRAMATURGY, POLITICS AND THE AXIAL MEDIA EVENT

Current theorizing on the role of media in politics and interpersonal relations in contemporary American society not only echoes questions about connections between modernity and viable democratic politics (Ortega y Gasset 1932; Jay 1973; Kornhauser 1959), but also tends to see the media as an insidious and even erosive cultural force (Debord 1983; 1990; Edelman 1967; 1988; Poster 1990; McKibben 1992). Politics is shaped by the mass media and by the dramatic engaging visual spectacles it presents. In this way, a dramaturgical social theory both reflects society and is a means to analyze it. Clearly, drama suffuses modern life figuratively and literally, in part because media genres compete with personal experience as ways of ordering problematic situations. Drama, in various forms, along with war and sport, is the dominant metaphor of our time. A dramaturgical framework emphasizing audience, performance, and theatrical aspects of everyday life, is therefore appropriate for examining changes in the relationships among media, politics, and interpersonal relations.     

Meaningful Performances: Considering the Contributions of the Dramaturgical Approach to Studying Family

This article highlights the contributions of Erving Goffman's dramaturgical approach to both understanding and researching family. With its interest in the performative nature of human interaction and the active construction of social reality, the dramaturgical perspective is particularly well-suited to study a dynamic social institution like the family. This article offers a brief introduction to the dramaturgical study of family by addressing important components of dramaturgy and contrasting it with other approaches to the sociology of family. The authors then demonstrate this approach in action by introducing two research areas that currently employ dramaturgical analyses – work on 'doing family' and the social construction of motherhood – and another that might benefit from such analyses, research on blended families. The article closes with further suggestions for future research attending to the performative aspects of family life.     

Authenticity: The Sociological Dimensions of a Politically Consequential Concept

In this brief essay, I reflect on the concept of authenticity and its potential convergence with topics of sociological concern. I argue that sociologists should consider the topic of authenticity for two reasons: its problematic role in modern social life and its prominence in contemporary electoral politics. I then provide a brief survey of the concept’s historical development in Western thought and argue that the modern notion of authenticity exists in sharp contrast with its antecedents in classical thought. Where once authenticity was associated with external and transcendent goods, the rise of modernity transformed the concept into an individual and interior phenomenon. Thus, contemporary authenticity is coterminous with the sociological theories of dramaturgy and social performance. Finally, I argue that if sociologists integrate the notion of authenticity into dramaturgical analysis, the apparently perplexing role of authenticity in politics will be rendered more intelligible.     

Clarifying the role of belief-motive explanations in multi-stakeholder realist evaluation

In realist evaluation, where researchers aim to make program theories explicit, they can encounter competing explanations as to how programs work. Managing explanatory tensions from different sources of evidence in multi-stakeholder projects can challenge external evaluators, especially when access to pertinent data, like client records, is mediated by program stakeholders. In this article, we consider two central questions: how can program stakeholder motives shape a realist evaluation project; and how might realist evaluators respond to stakeholders’ belief-motive explanations, including those about program effectiveness, based on factors such as supererogatory commitment or trying together in good faith? Drawing on our realist evaluation of a service reform initiative involving multiple agencies, we describe stakeholder motives at key phases, highlighting a need for tactics and skills that help to manage explanatory tensions. In conclusion, the relevance of stakeholders’ belief-motive explanations (‘we believe the program works’) in realist evaluation is clarified and discussed.     

The impacts of the Turkish government’s conspiratorial framing of the Gezi Park protests

What happens when a prime minister frames a momentous protest as a foreign conspiracy? The Turkish government’s reaction to the Gezi Park protests, a reaction centred on a conspiracy theory about an ‘interest rate lobby,’ provides a unique case to explore the impacts of conspiracy theories about big-scale protests. Relying on quantitative and qualitative content analysis of online users’ responses to the government’s conspiracy theories, I discuss the socio-political significance of this conspiratorial rhetoric. The findings demonstrate that (1) the previous political views of online users predict their responses to conspiracy theories, and (2) the users’ comments were centred on their perceptions of the government. These show that people tend to interpret the conspiracy theories in line with their political values and interests, and, accordingly, that the government’s conspiratorial frames concerning the protests seem to have contributed to the political fragmentation by enhancing the division between the Justice and Progress Party (AKP) supporters and opponents.     

Conspiracy theories and social movements studies: A research agenda

It is surprising to note the scarcity of contributions in social movement literature related to so-called conspiracy theories. A considerable amount of the work on these topics has been produced in political science, history, media studies, social psychology and other disciplines. These accounts have often adopted a stigmatizing approach, looking at conspiracy theories as forms of pathologies (whether psychological, social or political). Moving from such a perspective to a constructivist one, I argue that conspiracy theories should represent an object of interest for social movement scholars: conspiracies supporters go into the streets to highlight their issues, protest against authority, propose alternative lifestyles and often claim to look for a better/different society. Applying the social movements toolkit can allow to better understand this phenomenon and apply critical perspectives in a more effective manner. On the basis of this premise, the first part of this article reviews the existing literature on conspiracy theories, also identifying the main lacunae; the second part outlines some possible research questions and lines of inquiry, moving beyond the classical theories in the field of social movement studies. The paper also introduces a number of new concepts, such as conspiracy mobilizations and conspiracy coalitions.     

Scrutinizing impacts of conspiracy theories on readers' political views: a rational choice perspective on anti‐semitic rhetoric in Turkey

Although conspiracy theories have been politically significant throughout history, only a few empirical studies have been about their influence on readers' views. Combining a rational choice approach with a content analysis of an anti‐Semitic best‐selling conspiracy theory book series in Turkey – the Efendi series – and semi‐structured interviews with its readers, this paper reveals the effects of the conspiracy theories on readers' political perspectives. The findings suggest that whereas the rightists are reactive to the Jewish origins of the Dönmes, the leftists oppose the Dönmes as dominant bourgeois figures. This paper concludes that left‐ and right‐wing adherents use the conspiratorial accounts in line with their political views and ontological insecurities. It expands the existing academic literature, which conceptualizes conspiracy theories either as paranoid delusions or as neutral, rational narratives, by showing that they can be both.     

Political parties' perceptions and uses of anti‐Semitic conspiracy theories in Turkey

Despite its ever‐present and at times escalating significance, conspiracy theory is an under‐researched topic in the social sciences. This paper analyses the political influence of conspiracy theories by drawing on semi‐structured interviews with the representatives of four major political parties from the Turkish parliament about widespread anti‐Semitic conspiracy theories regarding Dönmes (converts). The findings indicate that right‐wing political parties problematize the secret character of the Dönme community and use the conspiracy theories to express their own ontological insecurities emerging from the Sèvres syndrome. Left‐wing and liberal parties conversely dissociate themselves from the conspiratorial rhetoric. The research concludes that the political parties reject or accept the conspiracy theories rationally and in alignment with their own ontological insecurities; by doing so, they pragmatically confirm their individual ideological perspective.     

Understanding conspiratorial thinking (CT) within public relations research: Dynamics of organization-public relationship quality,CT, and negative megaphoning

Research on conspiracy theories in the fields of social and political psychology has identified dispositional and situational factors that lead to belief in conspiracy theories. However, there is still a lack of research on how and why individuals engage in conspiratorial thinking (CT) within the area of public relations. This study views CT as individuals’ propensity to consider malicious events and circumstances as secret plots initiated by a powerful organization for its self-serving purposes and applies CT to a government-public relationship context. Using a survey dataset collected from a nationally representative sample of Australia citizens (n = 542), this study examines CT about the Australian government using five survey items that measure CT. CT was found to be significant in fully mediating the relationship between organization-public relationship quality and negative megaphoning.     

Producing Drama: Symbolic Communication and the Police*

Organizational analysis, based on a version of symbolic interactionism, is used here to advance a dramaturgical perspective on the relationships between organization, information and technology. Organizations are defined as meaning-production systems stabilized by relatively permanent interactions that are temporally and spatially-based. Ethnographic data, gathered by fieldwork in two police communication centers in the United States and in England, are presented. Each organization receives messages centrally and processes them through three segments (operators, dispatchers and officers). In semiotic terms, the police can be seen to be a means for producing drama, or the selective presentation of signs which either heighten or reduce the salience of other signs in a message. The primary conditions which increase the likelihood of drama being attached to policing are tentatively advanced. The police reduce the salience of emotive or expressive aspects of communication by encoding (recoding) citizens' messages from an aesthetic mode to a logical classificatory code. The greater the information supplied by a caller, the more ambiguity in the call-classification process, and the more interpretation is required. Interpretations rendered are based in part upon segment specific understandings of the meanings of the calls, and in part on more general or shared meanings based upon the occupational culture. The result of these interpretations is that messages become more poetic in character as they move across segments within the system. The police also reproduce their own metaphoric version or map of society in and by their encoding, decoding and recoding actions. By so doing, they maintain the dramatic importance of the police and their actions, and the centrality of myths that reify the notion that the police can and do control all that needs controlling in a society.     

VICTORY CELEBRATIONS AS THEATER: A DRAMATURGICAL APPROACH TO CROWD BEHAVIOR*

Drawing on data derived from a field study of victory celebrations, this paper suggests a dramaturgical approach to crowd behavior. Existing theories of crowd behavior are either contradicted by the field data or do not adequately account for the heterogeneity of activity observed, for the interaction between the various categories of participants, or for the shifts in the behavior of the participants and the resultant change in the character of the celebrations. Subsequent analysis indicates that the victory crowds are best understood from a dramaturgical standpoint. Several theoretical, conceptual, and research implications of a dramaturgical approach to crowd behavior are suggested and discussed. The paper concludes with an expanded conception of crowd behavior, one which emphasizes its spatial and temporal as well as interactional dimensions.     

Conspiracy culture,blame culture,and rationalisation1

This paper outlines an approach to conspiracy culture that attempts to resolve the conundrum posed by the parallel logics of conspiracy and sociological theorising, without reducing the former to an irrational response to hidden social forces. Rather, from a re‐crafting of Weber's rationalisation thesis as an analysis of the developmental logic of theories of suffering, it argues that conspiracy culture is an outcome of the means of moral accounting, or blame attribution, that inform mundane reasoning in modernity, as also are the human sciences. As part of this, the paper sketches a tentative framework of moral accounting in relation to the notion of ‘blame culture’ based in part on a distinction between a culture of blaming and the blaming of culture. This is used to argue that there is nothing irrational about conspiracy culture – or at least no more so than there is about sociology.     

UNEMPLOYMENT AS A DRAMATURGICAL PROBLEM: TEACHING IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT IN A WORK INCENTIVE PROGRAM

This article is an analysis of aspects of everyday life in a Work Incentive Program (WIN). It is intended to apply and extend Adam's (1978) political phenomenology of domination by analyzing inferiorization as a feature of contemporary human service work. The analysis focuses on dramaturgical instruction of unemployed welfare recipients as a process of inferiorization through which clients are cast as disadvantaged in their dealings with area employers. Clients were taught to strategically manipulate impressions of self in order to positively impress area employers and get jobs. The analysis addresses five primary questions: (1) How is the dramaturgical perspective organized as an ideology of inferiorization in WIN and other human service organizations; (2) What was the context within which dramaturgical instruction was defined by the WIN staff as a legitimate response to their clients' problems; (3) What were the assumptions and claims associated with the staff's dramaturgical framing of unemployment; (4) How was the dramaturgical frame used by the staff to identify concrete rules for proper job-seeking: and (5) How did the staff legitimate the perspective and rules associated with it in their interactions with clients?     

Recalcitrance,compliance and the presentation of self: Exploring the concept of organisational misbehaviour in an English local authority child protection service

This article examines how social workers reinterpreted certain legal requirements to meet their organisation's performance targets. Using an ethnographic approach, I combine organisational misbehaviour theory and Goffmanesque conceptions of dramaturgy to explore the regional activity of one team in a statutory agency. I argue that singly neither misbehaviour theory nor dramaturgical performances account for our understanding of why workers respond differently to organisational changes in a neo-liberalist environment. This study differs from current literature by shifting emphasis away from workers either resisting or conforming with organisational directives on to the ways in which individuals and collectives devise methods which instead give the appearance of co-operation. I demonstrate how workers disguised their resistance in an attempt to achieve potentially unachievable objectives and in turn avoid disciplinary action. I conclude by suggesting that applying Goffman to studies of organisation can advance scholars' understanding of how certain individuals respond to change and might come to be defined as loyal and compliant. This approach can also encourage discussions relating to the concept of recalcitrance and whether it is developed, and enforced, by those in powerful positions on the basis of their own desire to be well regarded by others.