Mead’s Children, II:
ERVING GOFFMAN AND
THE DRAMATURGY OF THE SELF

Introduction

Relative to Blumer, Goffman is less one-sided (less definition-of-the-situation or meaning oriented) because he also emphasizes the structural characteristics of action situations. Based on Collins, Goffman’s work is more indebted to Durkheim than to Mead.

Durkheim’s fundamental sociological question was: what holds society together, how is social order possible? Durkheim finds that contractual theories are inadequate, since they cannot account for the pre-contractual element, while coercive theories cannot account for the rise of the organization of groups (which make coercion possible at all). There have to be pre-contractual norms that individuals in a society share and hold as true. Durkheim studied the mechanisms by which these norms are lived, how they are materially produced and reproduced. His work on religion is in this regard the prototypical example: religion is not just a set or system of beliefs, it is also action. All religions have in common that they divide sacred from secular, and accompanying this, there are ways of behaving, acting towards the sacred and secular. This is ritual: the prescribed ways to behave towards the sacred (and, by implication, the secular). Neither ritual (as behavior), nor religious morality (as ideas, rules) are naturally given: they have to be constructed in and by society. During a specific ritual, the group is most consciously and most actively aware of itself as a group; the group is really the group when it celebrates itself. The group’s cohesiveness, exemplified by the physical assembly and the focus on a symbol (person, animal, object), is thereby secured, the group is renewed, and the individual, as individual and as group member, is strengthened by participating in the group ritual (ritual as energy-producing machine). Particularly the power of symbols is relevant.

1. Interaction Rituals: Stage and Performance

Goffman applies the Durkheimian theory of rituals to interpersonal relations, the ceremonies of everyday interaction (Presentation of Self, 1956). In comparison to Durkheim, this entails a shift from the macro to the micro level of analysis. Everyday relationships also bring people together, albeit for a short time only, and they also have their symbols, their rules which should not be broken and their sanctions when rules are broken (e.g. the everyday soft punishments for violations on politeness). These everyday rituals, though mild and temporary, pervade throughout society. Other rituals of the everyday may be intense yet private (e.g. love).

Goffman’s general approach sees life as a theater, involving a stage, the performance, and the performers (actor and audience), but Goffman admits the "obvious inadequacies" of this model. The stage of the performance includes: 1) the material world, and 2) the social world of others and selves. This dramaturgy of the everyday is a ritual; it creates a shared reality which is not necessarily fleeting. The ritual of interaction creates and manipulates symbols with moral force; they are produced and re-produced but contain an element of coercion.

The mechanisms of everyday interaction as ritual can be described in terms of the frontstage-backstage model. This model clarifies the conditions of everyday interactions as well as the conflicts that may arise and the maneuvers to avoid or handle them. Frontstage and backstage are the regions where interaction takes place:

The performance takes place in the frontstage, where different props are used, making possible a specific type of interaction and creating a specific picture of the self. The frontstage is generally fixed and defines the situation. It consists of the setting, i.e. the physical scene, and the personal front, i.e. the items of expressive equipment that the audience expects of the performer. The personal front is divided into appearance, i.e. the items that reveal the actor’s social status, and manner, i.e. the role which the performer expects to play.

In the backstage, the preparations for the frontstage performance are made, the garbage of performances is there taken care of, actors prepare and rehearse their roles, and they can meet there before and after the performance. Note that any physical space can vary between frontstage and backstage (e.g. the camera is rolling). (There is also a third zone: the outside which is neither front nor back).

How does this relate to stratification in society, to a higher level of sociological analysis? Goffman does acknowledge the structurally predetermined aspects of the division between frontstage and backstage: there are institutionalized stages which are already there when we enter the scene. People therefore can often merely select fronts rather than create them. Nevertheless, most of Goffman’s (early) work focuses on what goes on and happens at a stage with particular attention to the structuring capacities of the actors. Example: workers pretend to work very hard when the boss is there, they are in the frontstage; when the boss leaves, the workplace becomes backstage and they can criticize the boss, etc. Order-giving and order-taking, then, are ritual performances; both sides know the roles they have to play, and in the shared performance they create reality (they create the sacred reality of the group, the organization, the team). It seems, then, that Goffman would argue that these interaction rituals in any case matter in the functioning of large-scale organizations and institutions.

2. The Self in Staged Interaction

Public and private life are sustained by the ritual performances of the everyday. In this interaction process the self is created and manipulated. The self moves between frontstage and backstage. This reveals the tensions and dynamics between Mead’s I and me, the "discrepancy between our all-too-human selves and our socialized selves".

On the frontstage of publicity, the self uses more props and works harder on the right presentation of self than in the backstage of privacy. Even in the most informal settings, Goffman argues, there is a ritual structure, which is more, goes much further, than the meeting itself. An informal conversation, for instance, still builds its own cult, a shared reality, with its own pressures, its sacred objects, and morality (and, of course, some rituals work better than others, last longer, are more structural or formal). In the backstage, as suggested, the frontstage performances are prepared, and this space is therefore in a way more "authentic", more private and less social. Nevertheless, says Goffman, even in these most intimate moments and spaces of social life, some rituality remains (there are no lonely actors).

The self from Goffman’s perspective is not so much private but public; it is built in interaction. The self is first and foremost a public reality; the interactions of everyday life are rituals which create a collective reality that centers around the worship of the self (Intercation Rituals, 1967). People present their selves in a particular way, and in interaction, these definitions of the self are upheld and re-inforced, e.g. people are polite to protect their own as well as others’ definitions of selves. Goffman calls this face-work, i.e. not getting into disagreements but covering up differences. This involves deference, expressed towards others, and demeanor, for the self as seen by others. An interaction ritual is an exchange between ritually enacted selves: each person makes deference to others (respect for others) and gets in return deference (expressiveness of self) to uphold one’s own demeanor (cf. regard for each person’s self as a sacred object). Note that the presentation of self in the frontstage, created in the backstage, can be manipulative (against Mead). People present a line, a face, and this face, while it is often unrealistic and unreal, should always be consistent.

An interesting notion deriving from this analysis is that there are numerous selves. The self can be simply defined as: "the code that makes sense out of almost all the individual’s activities and provides a basis for organizing them", but this code can differ from situation to situation. The fact that people have different roles to play and different selves to present, and the fact that the audience has different expectations and thus creates different selves, can lead to problems (tensions between different selves), a dynamic shift between roles, or a multiple presentation of selves (as well as coping mechanisms to deal with these discrepancies). Under normal circumstances, however, it turns out that people are quite capable of handling these multiple, fluctuating, situational selves. The multiplicity of selves is also clear from a consideration of role-distance and stigma.

Role-distance refers to the degree to which people separate themselves from the role they play (while they’re playing it). People play roles in a double fashion: they enact the role and distance themselves from it (e.g. bored children on a merry-go-round). Role-distance is a function of social status: people in low status roles are more defensive in their role-distance (ashamed of their role).

Stigma (as a kind of coerced role-distance) results from the gap between what a person ought to be, the virtual social identity, and what a person is, the actual social identity. Since such gaps are unavoidable, basically everybody is stigmatized. Stigmas can be a) discredited: the person knows that the audience knows the gap (so the stigma tension has to be handled), or b) discreditable: the audience cannot know the gap (so the information on the gap has to be concealed). Again this emphasizes the point that, for Goffman, there is no real self, only a multiplicity of selves, all of which are real to us (my selves as myself), and which are dynamic: these selves are not pre-determined fractures but emerge in the course of action.

Most of Goffman’s attention goes to the different techniques and processes that are involved with the constitution of the self in interaction. In The Presentation of Self, for instance, Goffman discusses some of these techniques. This includes the use of props to present one’s self, the control of the audience, and impression management. The techniques of impression management include: the concealment of the secret pleasures of previous performances, the concealment of errors, concealment of the process of the performance (only showing the end-product), concealment of dirty-work, and mystification, i.e. performers create a social distance so that the audience cannot question the actor. These techniques can be seen as means of self-control, that is, dramaturgical discipline to handle or avoid embarrassment. Note that the audience is also involved in efforts to cover up this "fakeness" of the performance. Usually, all performers have an interest in maintaining the totality, coherence and smoothness of the performance.

Writes Goffman, "the self is in part a ceremonial thing, a sacred object, which must be treated with proper ritual care". Social interaction in modern society (and only in modern society) requires us to act as if we have a self, but it is a myth; the self is the (real) ideology of the modern everyday. Goffman argues that Mead’s me is actually a plurality of me’s since people belong to different groups and are exposed to many different situations (see the analogy with Durkheim’s theory on the powers and energies of rituals - the self as unreal reality). However, for Durkheim it was society that was sacred (and celebrated in rituals), while for Goffman it is the self which is the sacred product of interaction between actor and audience, as an effect from a performance.

3. Frame Analysis

"Defining situations as real certainly has consequences, but these may contribute very marginally to the events in progress". With his work Frame Analysis (1974), it became clear that Goffman does not agree with an absolute definition of the situation approach: society is external and prior to the individual. This appears a structural-functionalist a priori, and indeed to Goffman "social situations... constitute a reality sui generis". But Goffman refers to the micro-structure, i.e. the strains and possibilities of the microscopic world of face-to-face interactions. At the same time, given these structures, Goffman contends that every individual uses different definitions of a situation. Since situations are often not created and since the adherence to rules is often a fact, Goffman tries to find out what these basic frameworks are within which action takes place.

How does Goffman conceive these frames of action? There are in fact different frames, some of which are more encompassing, more fundamental than others: 1) primary frameworks: the natural world of things and bodies, and the social world of other people; 2) transformations: within the primary frameworks different transformations can occur, e.g. make-believe, contests and ceremonials. Now these transformations can go on and on, layer upon layer, and yet people rarely have trouble with this kind of multiple reality.

These transformations again demonstrate the multiple nature of the self. Frame analysis analytically dissolves the self into different layers of situational orientations. Transformations include fabrications and deceptions, i.e. the introduction of false beliefs about what is actually going on. Frame breaks can occur (e.g. interruption of a wedding), which can be ignored, or repaired, or can lead to the complete disruption of a frame.

Likewise, conversational analysis, from Goffman’s perspective, cannot be limited to just speaker and hearer. A conversation is always part of a larger frame of interaction, a broader social basis which needs to be analyzed since it makes the conversation possible at all. This basis to which conversations refer consists of: 1) the physical world: the speaker says "this" and points to a phenomenon (cf. this is not a physical reductionist view, but Goffman holds that any mental level is always anchored in this fundamental physical frame); 2) social ecology: the speaker talks in front of the bodies of people and refers to them (e.g. by correcting a mistake to hide embarrassment); the social situation is always the center of attention, the reference point even when we are alone; 3) the institutional setting: these determine formal settings of conversations and determine the limited (programmed) nature of turn-taking possibilities.