HCC class lecture 26 comments

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HCC classlecture 26 comments
John Canny4/27/05
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Administrivia
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Goffman

• Probably the best known researcher in identity
  and how we manage it.
• Formerly president of the American Sociological
  Institute, but also considered an outsider to
  sociology for many years.

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Roles

• In order to manage our identity and sustain a
  self-image that others wont challenge to often,
  we cultivate a ritualized life. We
• Play out the role we are comfortable with.
• Strive a little to improve, but
• We attend to the feedback from others around us.
• Seek out familiar persons and situations that
  will re-validate our position and status.

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Ritual

• Ritual is a perfunctory, conventionalized act
  through which an individual portrays his respect
  and regard for some object of ultimate value to
  that object of ultimate value or its stand-in.
• Once upon a time, we did this mostly to deities.
  Now we do it to each other.
• Ritual is a critical form of social exchange. It
  leverages the recipients own positive self-image
  to trigger reciprocation.

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Ratification

• Ritual associated with change in status or role,
  e.g. marriage or promotion.
• They promulgate knowledge of the recipients new
  status throughout their social group.
• The rewards are often proportionate to the degree
  of doubtfulness of the new status, e.g. a new
  beard, or a persons physical appearance after
  surgery or a serious disease.

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Remedial Interchanges

• When an individual offends, they can give an
  account
• Offer various arguments that the action did not
  occur.
• Argue that circumstances made the act necessary.
  Includes shifting blame to the accuser.
• Argue for passive or unintentional
  participation in the act.
• Reduced competency, e.g. too much to drink, had a
  bad day, pressure, depressed, deadline,
• Didnt know what was going to happen,

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Remedial Interchanges

• Apologies The individual separates themselves
  into two parts the part that did the act, and
  the part that distances itself from it.
• The individual can therefore take the side of
  prosecutor against themself, allowing others to
  defend them.

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Games

• Idealized social encounters, a kind of natural
  laboratory for perfect society.
• The uncertainty of the outcome makes it genuinely
  interesting to be involved (as player or
  spectator).
• Its also interesting to the extent that the
  players display their powers.
• Games delicately balance too serious with not
  serious enough.

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Tribalism

• Games may be deliberately staged to cultivate
  tribal bonds, e.g. in schools or universities.
  The teams are aligned with institutional
  boundaries, so that one institution is self and
  the other is the other.
• These differences are even more effective when
  they amplify other differences, like class or
  regional differences. But they must not break
  the barrel.
• Symbolic distance from the actual sources of
  conflict are important.

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Projection

• A device whereby people can project their own
  experiences which are too difficult to deal with,
  into a game or virtual reality mediated by
  dolls.
• Or a patient who was non-communicative who
  gradually started expressing her grief through
  hand gestures.

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Character contests

• Games may also morph into contests of display
  rather than participation.
• That is, the game is not about the actions within
  the game, but about the displays the players make
  while playing it.

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Discussion Topics

• T1 List some of the roles that you play in your
  work and home life. What situations change how
  you play them? What rituals do you use?
• T2 In what situations are you aware of multiple
  roles? i.e. of the distance between yourself and
  the character you are playing?