Goffman, and Total Institutions

1
Goffman, and Total Institutions

• Definition
• place of residence and work, where a large number
  of like-situated people live cut off from the
  wider society for an appreciable period of time.
  Characterized by walls around it, barriers.
  Leading to an enclosed formally administered
  round of life.

2

• Goffman stresses situationalism (physicality) of
  a phenomenon knowing a matter as it is
  situated in every day life. This is seen
  primarily in physical situations of activities
  and integrity of situation. We refer to him as
  naturalistic sociologist. He mainly describes
  everyday experience and looks primarily to
  physical situating of every day life. Thus he
  makes a basic distinction between primary (face
  to face) situations and secondary situations) and
  saw the primary situations as basic to social
  experience.

3

• The concept of the self ceremonial Interaction
  rituals
• Through Role Playing 1- Achieving an equilibrium
  by evoking reciprocal feelings
• 2- Social Control Face or reputation is a
  fundamental mechanisms of social control.
• The ways others define the setting and our
  selves is the ways we see ourself not possible
  in TI

4

• How asylum different from other areas of life
  front stage and back stage cannot be segregated
• Why is it total? Breakdown of barriers
  ordinarily separating sleep, work, play.
• Front stage Front stage is your appearance,
  performance that is going right The way you want
  others to see you.
• Back stage refers to the work you put into making
  your performance come off.

5
Institutional Side

• All phases of the days activities tightly
  scheduled
• Activities brought together into single rational
  plan to fill official aims of institution

6

• People handled by large bureaucratic organization
  , moved around as blocks. Can be supervised by
  surveillance,
• Primary adjustment people do what they have been
  told is required
• Stratification Basic split between large managed
  group and small staff and social mobility (even
  communication) between them restricted.
• Complete society A social hybrid part
  residential community, part formal organization
• Ordinary arrangements of living, authority of
  work pace stops with the workers receipt of
  payment, how they spend it is the workers
  private affair. Here, the inmates have a full day
  scheduled for them and all needs planned for. No
  real incentive to work as on outside.
  Demoralized there. Total institutions
  incompatible with work-payment structure of
  society.
• Total institutions also incompatible with another
  basic element, the family.

7

• primary (face to face) situations and secondary
  situations
• Front stage vs back stage Standards, decorum
  Implications, changing expectations of front and
  back stage over time.

8
InterPersonal Issues

• Symbolic interactionist perspective on the self
  In Total Institutions, territories of the self
  not given face Disruption of usual
  relationship between actor and acts
• In Asylums--describes the processes by which it
  goes about depersonalizing and establishing new
  identity,
• plus letting people keep their face by fighting
  back, getting secondary identities through
  creation of secondary adjustments

9

• They tell us something about persisting in a
  difficult situation and keeping our identity
  about us. Primary adjustments legitimate,
  contribute to institutional stability

10
Total Institution

• Reason for study (305) when ones existence cuts
  to the bone, can learn what people do to flesh
  out their lives.

11
Secondary Adjustments working the system

• Agency creates a defensive response on part of
  inmate, and then attacks the very response it
  created.
• Goffman not concerned with what the participant
  is expected to do alone but what he actually does
  in relation to what he is expected to do

12

• What do they get out of living in such a place?
  They may not rise up where we think they will.
  Goffman talks about how this kind of organization
  provides areas to work the system, using both
  instrumental, and moral incentives.
• Moral you are acting your role well.
• Instrumental You get something out of it. The
  nature of what you get by working the system is
  set by the system. At same time each has its
  limits.

13

• Primary adjustments some things are considered
  very legitimate, eg extra curricular activities
  in school even though it takes lots of time from
  studies.
• Secondary adjustments Disruptive, any habitual
  arrangement by which a member of an organization
  employs unauthorized means or ends getting around
  assumptions as to what should do and get. It
  shows us how an individual can stands apart from
  his role and self that were taken for granted of
  him by institution. (298) Creates a rich
  underlife in institution

14

• Grey Zones pilfering,
• where the accommodations to the system more
  important and overlook the original goals

15
Informal organization develops in total
institutions because

• 1) Inmates are isolated from society
• 2) Institutionalization generates common problems
  of adjustment, which require cooperation for
  solution, while simultaneously providing
  opportunities to interact with others like
  themselves.
• 3) Formal organization cannot control everything,

16

• The subculture takes over inmates begin to
  regulate their own behavior, they take over the
  organizational functions of regulating behavior.
• The organization becomes subverted to subculture,
  rather than reform. Especially in prisons.
• The structure affects their responses.

17
Contained Secondary Adjustments His goal to
show how these contribute to underlife of social
establishments.

• 1) Sources of materials used
• 2) Working the system
• 3) Workable Assignments
• 4) Places All have some self and develop a
  place to hide their own things
• 5) Social Structure coercion, exchange

18
Applied to Kaysen, Girl Interrupted

• Her story is about the craziness of the outside
  world
• Against that, the strength of the inmate group
  that pulls together to subvert the cure/reform
  goals of the organization

19
When the institution is not total

• Some prisons or other total institutions are not
  total have other goals than control and
  coordination
• examples institutions that are treatment
  facilities, vs. custodial
• These provide a number of alternative goals and
  rewards for compliance, and secondary adjustments
  do not emerge.

20

• Research by Berk, compares attitudes toward
  prison in three types of institutions
• The more centralized the system, the more
  centralized are inmates resistance.
• The longer they spend in these institutions
  mainly the less they conformed. Subcultural
  effects. (the inmate secondary subculture) took
  precedence over the primary subculture)
• The goal of treatment encourages support of
  official structures,

21

• In the Benign organization, the subcultures of
  the inmates became coopted. The attitudes were
  more positive inmates were more likely to be
  brought into helping further the organizational
  goals, not in opposition informal leadership
  were similar to the prison less authoritarian in
  the benign organization, more authoritarian in
  the lock organization

22
Concept of Moral Career of the Mental Patient
pp. 127-169

• Definition of career A sociological career is
  not necessarily a rise, advance in rank. The
  term refers to the institutions in which we work.
  A person develops a self identity in an
  institution that is shaped by the structure. We
  fit our sense of who we are by reference to the
  structures of our lives.
• Moral career refers to ones sense of self, who
  we are, our identity.

23

• Example development of doctors career
• Example in Goffman Development of inmates
  career
• -Key stages preparatory
• In hospital INPATIENT)
• Exit Role
• Post hospital

24

• Developing different alignments to pressures
  present in total institutions.
• Summary Moral career of a person of given social
  category involves a standard sequence of changes
  in way of conceiving selves. Goffman studies his
  moral experiences, within the confines of an
  institutional system. Self can be seen as
  something that resides in the arrangements
  prevailing in a social system for its members.
  The self not seen as a property of the person to
  whom it is attributed but dwells in the pattern
  of social control exerted in connection with the
  person by himself and those around him.

25
Applying Emersons three features of defining a
normal situation to the total institution

• Details of the setting standardized, impersonal
• Persons appearance and demeanor
• Concepts of talk sideline /inconsequential