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Ladies and gentlemen,
todays performing.
the self
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Performing the self
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People are giving a performance,
showing one of their fronts
in a face to face encounter.
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Aristotle or Goethe
More systematic work: Kenneth Burke
Idea of dramatism, terministic screens
Distinction of action and motion (things move, menact)
Men are symbol using animals. They build symbolic
structures adding art to life.
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Society is a drama in which actions, in terms of social
symbols, are the crucial events.Examples: politics, mass communications, leadership,
social movements, rituals, ceremonies
Erving Goffman: What is going on in social interaction?
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Its position in research
Epistemology: Constructionism- Meanings are constructed byhuman beings as they engage with the world they are interpreting.
Theoretical perspective: Interpretivism- looks for culturally
derived and historic situated situations of social world.
Symbolic interaction: Explores the understandings of the
culture as the meaningful matrix of our life.
Methodology: Ethnography- documenting the culture of
people in social settings, getting inside the way each group
of people sees the world.
Dramaturgical approach: analogy between life and theater
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Born in 1922 in Alberta, Canada
University of Toronto, University of Chicago
Most incisive contributions to social psychology
Interested in exploring the borders: writing on total
institutions, stigma, gender relations, role distance
and frames
About Erving Goffman
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Very concerned with the microsociology
Everything people did on face to face interactions
The self is the central organizing feature of all socialencounters
Giddens and Habermas -very influenced by Goffman
About Erving Goffman
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1. The presentation of self in everyday life, 1959
2. Asylums: essays on the social situation of mental patients and
other inmates, 1961
3. Encounters: two essays in the sociology of interaction, 1961
4. Stigma: notes on the management of spoiled identity, 1963
5. Behavior in public places: Notes on the social organization of
gatherings, 1963
6. Interaction ritual: essays in face-to-face behavior, 1967
7. Strategic interaction, 19698. Relations in public: microstudies of the public order, 1971
9. Frame analysis: an essay on the organization of experience, 1974
10. Gender advertisements: 1979
11. Forms of talk, 1981
About Erving GoffmanHis mayor publications
Articles, Essays, Monographs published as books
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His basic categories of themes are: Social order
Social structure
Organization
About Erving Goffman
He shows a very subversive writing
Authors of: gender, madness, politics, communication,
and society have written about Goffman, and there is a
wide range of interest in his writings.
Social interaction
The self
Social order
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What exactly Goffman tells us about his view of the world?
What is going on in social interaction? Where individuals present themselves to one another?
Dramaturgy is a way of understanding social encounters
using the analogy of a stage, or theatrical performance
All social relationships are drama; people are masks in
their relations to other.
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What exactly Goffman tells us about his view of the world?
All we can know about a persons self is what the person
show us
Impression managementThe manipulation of cues to control and organize the
impression we give to others
Focus: Interactions with a high level of performance
Small scale interactions more than a bigger stage
More in the individual, rather than in the situation
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The presentation of the self in every day
Rules of social interaction and modes of self presentation
When an individual presents himself before others, they commonly
seek to acquire information about him.
They will be interested in their status, his conception of self, his
attitude toward them, and his trustworthiness..
Information about the individual helps to define the situation,enabling others to know what expect of him.
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The presentation of the self in every day
Face to face interaction influence upon anothers actions
Encounter interaction that occurs one occasion
Performance activity of a given participant on any occasion
Part or routine the pre-established pattern of action
Front stage
Back stage
Front
Setting - Physical layout and backgrounds
Appearance - Everything we can do to our bodies
Manner - What we do with our bodies
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The presentation of the self in every day
What is accepted as reality will have somecharacteristics of celebration. To stay in one room apart
from the party is to stay away from where reality is
being performed. People must follow what it is being
performed. The world is a wedding.
Role- bundles of activities laced together
Dramatic realization - individual must express what he
wishes to conveyRole embracement- Idealized roles incorporate officially
accredited values of society. E.g. Teacher, priests, parenthood,
students.
Role distance
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Interaction ritual: essays in face to face behavior
Face: the social value a person claims to himself in aninteractionpositive
Face-work: so he will not put himself at risk, or wont be
stigmatized or marked
Some of this face work is our responsibility, but there areother works that show up as established by society
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Stigma
When we present a front, we put ourselves at riskWhen a person violates moral demands of society
When is different from the assumed categories
When he posses an attribute that makes him different
1. Discredited: people with apparent stigmas:
Handicapped
2. Discreditable: well known but not apparent stigmas:rigid beliefs, unemployed, homosexuals, homeless,
alcoholism, suicidal attempts, radical political behavior
3. Tribal stigma: race, nation, religion
The rest: Normals
Stigma
When someone does not live to those
expectations others become morally offended.
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On cooling the mark down: some aspects of adaptation to failure
Certain fronts are universally acceptable/unacceptableBeing productive, being successful, not being a criminal
Society is dominated by individualism and competition
We live in a society were failure is common
Mark- a person who has compromised himself, in his
own eyes if not in the eyes of others.
Leaving a role may be interpreted as a mark
Eg: when a woman voluntarily gives up a profession in order
to become a wife and a mother
People have to be cooled out.
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Goffman in education
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Goffman in education
The "Cooling-Out" Function in Higher Education adaptation to failure
gives solutions or cooling-out strategies for students who do not
fulfill schools requirements
Using Goffman's concepts to explore collaborative interaction
processes in elementary school mathematic
the different roles that emerge in the process of collaborative
interaction,
the influence of these roles on group achievement and individual
learning possibilities
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Goffman in education
Lives in 2 languages: An exploration of identity and culture
discussion about the American identity
common misperceptions about immigrants as students
Addressing the baseline: Erving Goffman and ethics in a
postgraduate degree for practicing teachers. Problem: Students generally experience great difficulty with
conceptual thinking
Findings: Students research changed to go beyond simpledescription to observations guided by theoretical ideas
Showed how context relates to the forms of behavior in public and to thesituation of observing these forms.
Provided insights into an ordinary situation and was a valid way to studycharacters in that setting
Observation can be focused on looking for specific things rather than tryingto note everything
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Face-work in facebook
Internet was not invented or in use
Face to face interaction
Online?
New theories or amendments
A Study of Self-Presentation in Light of Facebook
Screw Blackboard... do it on Facebook!: an investigation of
students educational use ofFacebook
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Face-work in facebook
A Study of Self-Presentation in Light of Facebook
How Goffmans approach may be transported to online social
networks
How Facebook contributes to our understanding of self-presentation.
Self-presentation is an especially significant element of Facebook. Facebook is different from face-to-face interactions in that very little
is done spontaneously
This means that the self-presentation I under control. Or not?
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Face-work in facebook
Screw Blackboard... do it on Facebook!: an investigation
of students educational use ofFacebook To observe the social significance of Facebook in the lives of undergraduate
university students in the UK
Micro-management of their social lives
Its combination of self-presentation, viewing of others personalinformation and situational relevance to campus life proved attractive tostudents
They use it for the informal aspects of their education
Education and university-related exchanges - a minor constituent of student
postings Facebook appear to be an important arena within which the behind the
scenes work are performed
Raises important questions about how universities will articulate theirteaching relationships with internal student cohorts
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Conclusions