Durkheim's cult of the individual as civil religion: Its appropriation by Erving Goffman

The purpose of this article is to provide a systematic analysis of the place of Durkheim's “cult of the individual” in Erving Goffman's sociology.¹ I have reviewed the most pertinent aspects of Durkheim's sociology of religion. This article discusses and/or analyzes the development of the cult of the individual primarily within the context of Durkheim's (1951) monograph on suicide; Durkheim's notions of sacred, profane, and ritual; Goffman's two‐pronged intellectual heritage; and Goffman's “Communication Conduct in an Island Community” (1953) with respect to several key Durkheimian concepts. Also discussed are several important secondary analyses—primarily those of Jurgen Habermas and Stanford Lyman—which help to further delineate the conditions of the Durkheim‐Goffman link. The final section applies Goffman's sociology to the case of Evangelicalism and “political civility.”     

Telling Others How You Live—Refining Goffman's Stigma Theory Through an Analysis of Housing Strugglers in a Homeowner Nation

This article revisits Goffman's stigma theory from the perspective of housing studies. We elaborate on Goffman's approach by exploring how housing tenure can work as a proxy for moral character. We interviewed twenty‐seven people who are excluded from access to homeownership in two cities in Norway, which is a “homeowner nation.” These individuals are unable to enter the dominant “homeowner class” for different reasons, including drug‐dependency, mental illness, refugee background, low socioeconomic status; thus, they must access housing through other tenures; private renting or social housing. To many of them, housing becomes a stigma, in Goffman terms, an “undesired differentness.” Social housing is known to carry stigma in Norway. It was thus a paradox, that those with the softest differentness—private rental—were most likely to practice (Goffman:) “information control” over their housing situation. Goffman's theoretical apparatus, and his distinction between the discreditable and the discredited in particular, helped us make this paradox comprehensible. Through this analysis, refinements to Goffman's theory were discovered. We suggest that “multiple stigmas,” which was not seen clearly by Goffman himself, should be a key notion in stigma studies. We use this notion to distinguish between possible sub‐types to the discredited‐discreditable distinction.     

Food Security: The Elaboration of Contested Claims to a Consensus Frame*

Abstract This article demonstrates Gamson's claim that behind the apparent agreement implied by “consensus frames” lies considerable dissensus. Ironically, the very potency of consensus frames may generate contested claims to the ownership of a social problem. Food security is a potent consensus frame that has generated at least three distinct collective action frames: food security as hunger; food security as a component of a community's developmental whole; and food security as minimizing risks with respect to an industrialized food system's vulnerability to both “normal accidents” as well as the “intentional accidents” associated with agriterrorism. We show that each collective action frame reflects internal normative variation identified here with Goffman's “keying” concept. These keys suggest power differentials in the endorsement or critique of dominant institutional practices. Each frame and associated keys reflect distinct sets of interests by collective actors, such as demands for substantively different applications of science and technology. The prognostic framing of the community food security movement coincidentally holds potential for reducing not only the accidental risks of productivist agriculture but also the uncertainty induced by the risk of terrorist exploitation of those vulnerabilities. The article explores power differentials and variable levels of oppositional consciousness as mechanisms by which keys generate contentious politics within frames while serving as potential bridges between frames. This contested ownership of food security has implications for the associated movements' and organizations' capacity to influence the structure of the agrifood system as well as the broader socioeconomic organization of rural regions.     

Growing Up Punk: Negotiating Aging Identity in a Local Music Scene

Punk music, in its thirty‐odd‐year history, is traditionally conceived of as a youth subcultural phenomenon. As one of many ways to rebel, kids might choose or find in punk rock an anti‐authoritarian, destructive, or anarchistic ideology that helps them manage the tumult of adolescence. But what happens next? In this conceptual article, the author is interested in how punks negotiate their identity as punks, as they age. She examines this by looking at people's experiences in a local punk scene. Based on these observations, she argues that “aging identity” and “the scene” are theoretical tools in a dialectic relationship with one another, which highlights the fluidity of both. This theory helps promote “the scene” as a more useful concept than subculture. Furthermore, looking at the local punk rock music scene as a scene—rather than a subculture—illustrates how identity forms over time as a cumulative process, synthesized in the relationship between changing self and other. From her research on a punk scene, the author argues that to construct a long‐term conception of scene involvement, punk scene members look to real and idealized others to demonstrate what they see as successful and unsuccessful ways of aging in connection with the music scene.     

The Phenomenon Of The Public Wife: An Exercise In Goffman's Impression Management*

Approaching the topic of American leader-image from the perspective of politics-as-theater (political communication as exchange of symbols), this paper examines a taken-for-granted visual symbol which a national political leader is invariably expected to present: a wife. Her contributions to her husband's “impression management” techniques (Goffman, 1959) are studied in Goffman's “defensive” categories of dramaturgical loyalty, dramaturgical discipline, and dramaturgical circumspection. This analysis suggests that the visible presence of a wife in public leadership rituals offers the public voter or viewer important reassurances or symbolic guarantees about her husband's “morality”—and, therefore, his appropriateness for public trust. She has become a necessary partof his public performance because of our everyday need for “cultural absolutes” (Furay, 1977) in the image of our leadership figures.     

Goffman's Interaction Order at the Margins: Stigma,Role, and Normalization in the Outreach Encounter

This article considers Goffman's conceptualization of interaction order at the margins of society in encounters between urban welfare workers and their clients. Observations from these encounters demonstrate practices relating to the situated management of stigma and identity, and the accomplishment of role within these service encounters. A reading of Goffman's theoretical contribution lies in revealing how social actors and social structures are realized in situ within the constraints of the interaction order sui generis. The article discusses three aspects of the outreach encounter, namely, (1) the accomplishment of role and motive, (2) the sequential phases of the outreach encounter, and (3) “the normalization ritual,” and introduces the concept of willful disattention.     

Looking‐Glass Self: Goffman as Symbolic Interactionist

My thesis is that for most of his career, Erving Goffman was a symbolic interactionist in the Cooley line. The only sustained theoretical structure in Goffman's work before 1974 follows Cooley's conjecture of the looking‐glass self. Cooley assumed shared awareness, that we “live in the minds of others.” He also realized that shared awareness is virtually invisible in modern societies and proposed pride or shame as the emotions that resulted. Goffman emphasized embarrassment over shame and implied a fourth step beyond Cooley's three: the management of embarrassment or shame. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life is dense with these emotions. Goffman proposed conceptual definitions of the embarrassment and shared awareness that are central to Cooley's idea. The conjunction of shared awareness and emotion in Goffman's examples may be the main feature that arouses reader sympathy. Two hypotheses are formulated here, along with techniques that might be used to test or apply them.     

Character Contests and Violent Criminal Conduct: A Critique*

Goffman's theory of violent criminal behavior, which is based upon the complementary notions of “character contest” and “stake in conventional institutions,” is relatively unique in that it makes problematic both the violent criminal act and actor. However, the explanation Goffman's work provides is inadequate for three major reasons. First, mutual consent among the conflicting parties to use violence to settle their dispute rarely occurs in violent criminal acts. Secondly, the meanings with which most violent criminal acts are imbued are different from that of a character contest. Finally, violent people cannot be distinguished from non-violent ones merely on the basis of whether or not they have a stake in conformity. Thus, a more accurate and adequate theory of violent criminal behavior which takes into account both the nature of the violent criminal act and actor is needed. The outlines of such a theory are briefly described.     

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.     

Chrysalid Goffman: A Note on “Some Characteristics of Response to Depicted Experience”

Goffman's first substantial sociological work, his M.A. thesis entitled “Some Characteristics of Response to Depicted Experience,” has hitherto escaped critical commentary. Inspection of the thesis yields insights into the early development of Goffman's sociology. It shows that Goffman's later dismissal of positivistic and experimental approaches, his suspicion of interview methods, and his valorization of observational data have their origins in his research experiences in late 1940s Chicago while he worked toward his first graduate degree. The thesis fails to deliver the findings promised by the approved thesis proposal but succeeds as a demonstration of Goffman's methodological acuity.     

A study of disabled children and child protection in Scotland — A hidden group?

This paper is based on analysis of data collected for a study, commissioned by the Scottish Government, which examined child protection work with disabled children. At a conceptual level, the paper draws on Goffman's frame analysis and on different models of disability. Focus groups were conducted with five Child Protection Committees (40 individuals) and semi-structured interviews with a further 21 practitioners from social work, education, health services, third sector organisations and the police. The findings show that, for various reasons, abuse of disabled children may go undetected. Where it is suspected, effective action does not always follow, for example, where practitioners over-empathise with parents. When child protection work is undertaken, disabled children may remain relatively invisible in terms of participation and professional focus. It is suggested that the ways in which practitioners and managers “frame” disabled children has implications for how abuse is responded to and how well these children are protected. Participants also “framed” disability in different ways, and it is suggested that a social relational model seems particularly applicable. In conclusion, in many respects disabled children experiencing abuse may remain absent from or to some extent hidden within child protection services in Scotland. While some creative work is taking place, considerable changes are required to make child protection services accessible to all disabled children, sensitive to their needs and respectful of their rights.     

“I'm the Next American Idol”: Cooling Out,Accounts, and Perseverance at Reality Talent Show Auditions

Drawing on fieldwork at American Idol auditions, I describe how contestants come to accept their fate after being cut from the competition. I revisit Goffman's metaphor of “cooling the mark out,” especially the cooling out strategy of offering people another chance to qualify for roles at which they failed. Contestants' desires to audition and audition again after failure are driven by meritocratic ideals. They develop accounts in line with these ideals to explain how despite being rejected they are talented and can still excel in the future. This study contributes to literature on “cooling out” by highlighting how people draw on larger systems of meaning—ideologies supporting meritocratic values in the case of Idol contestants—when making sense of their failures.     

The Capacity to Intervene: Bullying,Social Pain,and Bystander Empathy

This article is an interdisciplinary exploration of social pain (rejection, exclusion, and humiliation) and its effect on bystanders. It dives deeply into social theory, only to surface and become expository around current neurological research on pain and mirror neurons. It seeks to broaden and advance scholarship around bullying dynamics in order to inform interventions that privilege bystander response. Significantly, the article grounds bullying in intersubjective dances of identity construction, launching it at the very edges of Goffman's social critique: the neuropsychological implications of failed impression management. Does witnessing social pain give rise to empathic responses? This central question leads to an explication of the functioning of mirror neurons as they relate to empathy. Understanding their working bridges to the theorizing of George Herbert Mead and raises the following sociological questions: (1) Do mirror neurons function on the level of Mead's “gestures”? (2) Do cultural realities—for example, social media and narcissism—impair a bystander's capacity to perceive pain/respond to it in others? Exploring the interface between cultural dynamics and neurological capacities paves the way for more effective responses to bullying. What can we expect of bystanders, and what it might take to prompt their intervention in socially aggressive situations?     

The Dual Strategy and Gender Policies of the Women's Movement in Korea: Family Headship System Repeal through Strategic Innovation

Abstract

Social movements sometimes successfully attain their goals by implementing policies and laws that represent their claims. Movement leaders raise issues susceptible to enactment as policies or laws, exploit legally and institutionally assured resources, and even participate at times in governmental policymaking and parliamentary lawmaking processes. This engagement strategy maximizes a movement's power to achieve its goals only when it is combined with the conventional activities of mobilizing collective action and forming dense networks across movement organizations to pressure the state. Based on the case study of Korean women's movements and their efforts to abrogate the patrilineal succession of family headship, I argue that movement activists' strategic innovation of blending “institutional politics” with conventional “movement politics”—that is, pursuing a dual strategy (Cohen and Arato 1992) and evolving into “movement institutionalization”—is critical to accomplishing gender policies and laws that, at least institutionally and legally, ensure gender equality.     

Cooling the Mother Out: Revisiting and Revising Goffman's Account

This article revisits Erving Goffman's important yet neglected metaphor of “cooling the mark out.” Drawing on a study of mothers whose child has Down's syndrome, I explore the value of Goffman's work for capturing how mothers interpret their child's diagnosis as a loss and rectify this breach by constructing an acceptance of their new situation. The mothers' accounts highlight how Goffman's contentions can be enriched by acknowledging the gendered, temporal, and public character of a loss. This article, thus, can be read both as a celebration and critical revision of his theoretical contribution.     

Performing Beauty: Dove's “Real Beauty” Campaign

Dove, a popular beauty brand, impressed some in the advertising world with its unique “Campaign for Real Beauty” and made others cringe. But little is known about how real women respond. “Real” beauty according to Dove means various shapes and sizes—flaws and all—and is the key to rebranding, rebuilding women's self‐esteem, and redefining beauty standards. Drawing on interviews and focus groups with sixteen Canadian women and guided by social semiotics and dramaturgy, I examine Dove's presentation of beauty and women's reactions to it from a “beauty as performance” frame. This study examines processes of interpretation and finds that expressing beauty, the self, and a public image inextricably requires elements of performance.     

Queers in the Line of Fire: Goffman's Stigma Revisited

Using data from in‐depth interviews with young queer people, this article proposes revisions for four areas of Goffman's classic work, Stigma. Interviews reveal a situation between complete acceptance of queer identity and outright hostility, which I term “being in the line of fire,” and three strategies participants use to manage their identity in this situation. Unlike classical identity management, this project considers how their “double consciousness” allows them to respond to stigmatizing situations while remaining insulated from the negative appraisals of others. Instead, they orient toward educating the stigmatizer, minimizing interaction by tailoring their identity, or disengaging. I use these strategies to demonstrate that identity management theory does not properly consider possible responses to hostile reactions, the diversity of stigmatized groups, Goffman's so‐called sympathetic others, or different frames of reference on stigmatized attributes. Orienting to the point of view of the marginalized, this article demonstrates how one manages an accepted identity when one is in the line of fire.     

Postmodern Swing Dance and Secondary Adjustment: Identity as Process

In this article, the author describes activities of strategic consumption that members of a postmodern swing dance scene utilized to construct identity. He deploys Goffman's category of “contained secondary adjustment” for describing social interactions that are moments of purposeful resistance designed to usurp (while also being lodged within) organizational and/or institutional claims and constraints for identity and self. Specifically, the article describes swing dancers' presentations of unique selves, thrift store shopping, tavern socializing, and swing dancing. Swing dancers utilized these secondary adjustments to resist the dictates of corporate‐driven and mass‐mediated claims and constraints for “mainstream” consumer identities. These secondary adjustments add up to an “identity distancing,” which is the individual's and/or group's purposeful distancing and separation from other identities or groups associated with popular culture. Describing the swing dancers' secondary adjustments reaffirms the symbolic interactionist stance that identity construction is a durable social interactional process.     

Framing Atmospheres: Goffman,Space, and Music in Everyday Life

In this article, we synthesize Goffman's microsociology with recent developments in fields such as aesthetics, geography, and urban studies labeled “atmosphere theory.” Our central rationale is if microsociology is to deepen its account of embodiment and the noncognitive it needs a theory of spatialized moods. In the second half, we develop our synthesis with respect to musical atmospheres and conclude by drawing on our own research regarding how social actors use music to shape “involvements” and “disinvolvements” in the spatial ambiances of public transportation, the street, the workplace, and the home.