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.     

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.     

Sociology of Humor and a Critical Dramaturgy

Goffman's analytic framework can provide tools useful for a critical theory of modern society. While commentators have remarked on Goffman's apparent technical neutrality, a sociology of humor can help reveal his critical thrust. Using a latent content analysis, we demonstrate how several frames found in Jerry Seinfeld's humor are both dramaturgical and covertly critical. We use these themes to illuminate the critical analyses of modern social life provided by Goffman's method.     

A Guide to Training Your Own Horses: The Flaneur Appproach and Erving Goffman's Uninhibited Research Practices in Sociology

While Erving Goffman's sociology has enjoyed great popularity and is cited often, the career of his work has been largely confined to other scholars reaping, adapting, and utilizing his concepts. Goffman was opposed to science that just reproduces and orders concepts, and opposed to his students using his concepts as easy tools. Instead, he recommended they train their own horses: While there is much to use in Goffman's work, there is little scholarship that continues the genius of his practical approach. As valuable as Goffman's categories are, his collection practice and his analytical scheme may be even more valuable. On the one hand, they offer an intricate framework for research that is as open as it is directed; on the other hand, they allow researchers to argue freedom from the ever more imposing bad imitations of natural scientific method that threaten to overgrow the social sciences. Together, they allow Goffmanesque work without merely parroting his concepts. This article attempts to outline Goffman's eclectic way of collecting material and his technique for fashioning this material into analyses, reordering this material around different metaphors that make Goffman's contribution distinct. I call Goffman's practical research a flaneur approach, and outline it. The paper then makes an argument for its continuation.     

Little naked pangs of the self: the real performance of the self and the function of trust in Goffman's action theory

The aim of this article is to discuss some of the leading features of Erving Goffman's action theory as an alternative to the ‘orthodox’ paradigms of sociology, viewed as a structuralist and functionalist science that defines social constructs by their shared rules and values, and as a drifting of action, in the sense of intention, toward an individualistic version. The author examines Goffman's shift of the focus of attention from the boundaries of a social sense of action to the social dialectic of ‘defining a situation’ (W. Thomas) as conducted by the social actors in a renewal of Simmel's ‘empowering covenants’ (wechselwirkung) in the multiple casual social connections that make up the ‘social buzz’ in a society. The author moreover discusses Goffman's action as a kind of playacting regulating cognitive and expressive face-to-face ‘traffic’ between the social actors. This relational dynamic creates an interactive play based on encounters – in which one's opening to another is fraught with risks of deception – regulated by trust as a central resource for social interactions. Trust, in its interpersonal and systemic variants, constitutes a universal social datum and an elementary precondition for social exchanges and the cooperation between individuals. Trust, thus, functions as comparer between reciprocal expectations and a regulator of freedom tending to the stability of the social system.     

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.     

The Effort of Being in a Fictional World: Upkeyings and Laminated Frames in MMORPGs

On the basis of ten months of fieldwork studying a role‐playing guild in the game World of Warcraft, this article shows that contrary to the idea that virtual worlds are seductive illusions, technology does not necessarily support players' feelings of being immersed in fictional worlds. Applying Goffman's frame theory, the author explains how role‐players in the game actively upkey elements from primary frameworks in order to create and uphold the frame of being in a fictional world. This kind of narrative immersion is rather hindered than facilitated by technology.     

“Hoes can be hoed out,players can be played out,but pimp is for life”—The Pimp Phenomenon as Strategy of Identity Formation

The pimp's ubiquity in popular and youth culture belies its divergent interpretations along racial lines. This article is an ethnographic study of how adolescents at a multiracial urban high school vary in their performance and interpretation of the pimp and how they create racialized identities through these variations. All peer groups studied understood the pimp as representing sexual prowess, but for the African American peer group, the pimp more importantly represented manipulation and generalized power. Departing from Goffman's concepts of performance and stigma, the study illustrates the limitations of both in capturing the racializing and empowering aspects of the pimp persona for the African American students who enacted it. Merging symbolic interaction with the poststructuralist concepts of identity as lodged in discourse and with performance as transgression, this article explains how adolescents' pimp performances produced identities that were informed by white supremacist logic but also subverted this logic in their construction of racial differences.     

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.”     

'Estrogen-filled worlds': fathers as primary caregivers and embodiment

Within the wide body of scholarship on gender work and caring, sub‐strands of research have grown tremendously in the past decade, including largely separate studies on fatherhood and embodiment. Drawing on a qualitative research project with Canadian fathers who self‐identify as primary caregivers of their children, this article focuses on recovering largely invisible links between theoretical and empirical understandings of fatherhood, caring and embodiment. The article builds on the work of key sociologists of the body as well as the work of Goffman and Merleau‐Ponty. Specifically, Merleau‐Ponty's concept of ‘body subjects’ and Goffman's work on the ‘moral’ quality of bodily movements through public spaces are utilized as lenses for understanding fathers' narratives of caring, particularly how men speak about their movements with children through what several fathers refer to as “estrogen‐filled” worlds. As caring for others involves forming social networks and relations, embodiment can matter in the spaces between men, between male and female caregivers, and between men and the children of others. This article argues that through the changing stages of caring for children, male embodiment constantly shifts in the weight of its salience in the identities and practices of fathers and caregiving.     

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.     

Interpreting the needs of lone mothers

This article focuses on the relationship between welfare services in some districts of the municipality of Venice and their lone-mother clients. First, it outlines briefly the panorama of Italian support policies. As there is no national law on social assistance, but a variety of fragmentary and complex local systems of rights, the social rights of lone mothers have to be examined at the local level. The article then attempts to reconstruct the de factopolicies for lone mothers in a welfare system that has no provisions specifically for lone mothers. It interprets discursive and ideological dimensions of social policies from the social workers' viewpoint, highlighting the mechanisms by which the welfare programmes and practices define the needs of lone mothers. It outlines the dynamics of negotiation in the welfare services, which try to reconcile the legislative and administrative norms with the social workers' professional practices and the perceived claims of lone mothers. Despite the Veneto region's universal law on social assistance, access to economic support tends to be determined selectively on the basis of a 'qualifying need'. Interpreting lone mothers' claims to qualifying needs along psycho-social and educational dimensions serves to transform their expressed claims into needs that can be dealt with institutionally. Social workers' image of the two subculturesof lone mothers influences their attitudes and the strategies they set in motion for lone mothers. Lone mothers are provided with a broader range of discretionary support than other users of welfare services, as social workers perceive their problems as more complex and pressing. Social workers' discretion in supporting lone mothers in maternity and in accommodating paid employment and family responsibilities compensates for the gaps left by national and local welfare policies.     

Embodied versus Disembodied Information: How Online Artifacts Influence Offline Interpersonal Interactions

This article examines how the sheer volume of personal information recorded and searchable online (online artifacts) has transformed the situated activity system central to Goffman's dramaturgical theories. In‐depth interviews reveal that individuals believe disembodied information based on online artifacts is a more accurate representation of others than embodied information from spatially and temporally bounded face‐to‐face (FTF) processes because they represent how others have behaved over time and are attested by their online contacts. However, the n‐adic structure of online interaction leads to mismatched expectations about whether disembodied information is taken into account during FTF encounters, and consequently can result in embarrassment.     

Face and the Dynamics of Its Construction: A Relational and Multilayered Perspective

This article proposes a new understanding of the concept of face as coconstructed and characterized by various and not always polarized dynamics, such as gain/loss. In elaborating on this conceptual frame, I revisit Goffman's work on social appraisal and argue it is marked by a shift from an expositional to a relational approach. Using this reading of Goffman, together with characteristics of the Chinese concept of face, I analyze interview data about users' interpretations, motivations, and intentions behind public exchanges of information on Facebook. The data illustrate both interactive processes of gradual acquisition/erosion of mien‐tzu and loss of lien.     

Falling Out of Time: The Challenges of Synchrony for Children with Incarcerated Fathers

Using a temporal lens, the article shows how fathers’ incarceration leads to a loss of attunement to the temporal rhythms of their children's everyday lives. This lack of synchrony has implications for both the being and the becoming of the child. Through in‐depth interviews, the article draws on data from a Danish study of mothers and children, aged 5–27, whose father/stepfather was incarcerated. Findings show the significance of a multifaceted understanding of time showing the implications of fathers’ imprisonment for children, suggesting that policy initiatives would be enriched by a focus on challenges to synchrony from the child's perspective.     

Reclothing the Emperor: The Swimming Pool as a Negotiated Order

This article examines the unspoken rules, routines, and rituals of the swimming pool, using ideas from negotiated order theory, Foucault, Goffman's dramaturgical theory, and symbolic interactionism. It identifies three sets of social norms: respect for personal space, respect for individuals' disciplinary regimes, and the desexualization of encounters. I show how these rules are (normally) followed or (occasionally) breached through various rituals, and examine the consequences for interaction order. The tale of “The Emperor's New Clothes” is used analogously to explain why actors cannot consciously attend to their precarious construction of reality, yet remain poised to defend it.     

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.     

“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.     

Domestic Violence,Children's Agency and Mother–Child Relationships: Towards a More Advanced Model

Although domestic violence research increasingly recognises children's agency, this awareness has not extended to our understanding of children's relationships with their abused mothers. Findings suggesting that some children actively support their mother, and encourage her to leave the perpetrator, have been consistently under‐discussed. This article argues that the model of parent–child relationships used by most domestic violence research sees children as passive and contributes to mother‐blaming discourses. Analysing key quantitative and qualitative research, I suggest that a more sophisticated model of parent–child relationships is needed to understand how children's agency affects them, their mothers and the domestic violence situation.