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Introduction to Social Analysis
Week 4, Symbolic Interactions
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What do people do when they
interact?
• What do we do when we interact with one
another? How do we know how to behave? How
de we know how to make sense of other peoples
behaviour towards us?
• Symbolic interaction is a theory which enables
us to look at the rituals of daily life. A way of
looking at the world which enables us to
examine the minutia interpersonal behaviour
required for meaningful communication.
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• Studies:
• Goffman, Erving. 1971 The presentation of
self in everyday life Harmondsworth :
Penguin. 301.11 GOF
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Social life as drama
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Likening social life to acting, to `performances' and to drama has been a
common strategy among sociologists.
“The issues dealt with by stage-craft and stage management are sometimes
trivial but they are quite general; they seem to occur everywhere in social
life, providing a clear-cut dimension for formal sociological analysis.”
Feature of reflexivity that people can distance themselves from their
behaviour and modify it - play a role. Some argue that this is the key
characteristic of humans which distinguishes them from social animals and
proto-humans
Each individual can be seen as putting on a performance in an ongoing
process of managing the impressions that other have of him or her.
Such impression management is an important part of social life and of the
successful realisation of one's projects and with avoiding the worst
consequences of other people's projects.
No- one has contributed more to the development of the dramaturgical
perspective in sociology and to exploring its use in impression management
than Erving Goffman.
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Frame analysis
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defining the situation
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“Information about the individual helps to define the situation, enabling
others to know in advance what he will expect of them and what they may
expect of him. Informed in these ways, the other's will know how best to act
in order to call forth a desired response from him,”
“If unacquainted with the individual, observers can glean clues from his
conduct and appearance which allow them to apply their previous
experience with individuals roughly similar to the one before them or, more
important, to apply untested stereotypes to him. They can also assume from
past experience that only individuals of a particular kind are likely to be
found in a given social setting. They can rely on what the individual says
about himself or on documentary evidence he provides as to who and what
he is.
The expressiveness of the individual (and therefore his capacity to give
impressions) appears to involve two radically different kinds of sign activity:
the expression that he gives, and the expression that he gives off. The first
involves verbal symbols or their substitutes which he uses admittedly and
solely to convey the information that he and the others are known to attach
to these symbols. This is communication in the traditional and narrow
sense. The second involves a wide range of action that others can treat as
symptomatic of the actor, the expectation being that the action was
performed for reasons other than the information conveyed in this way
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strategies for interaction. impression management
• control is achieved largely by influencing the definition of the
situation which the others come to formulate, and he can influence
this definition by expressing himself in such a way as to give them
the kind of impression that will lead them to act voluntarily in
accordance with his own plan
• A specific illustration may be cited from Shetland Isle. When a
neighbour dropped in to have a cup of tea, he would ordinarily wear
at least a hint of an expectant warm smile as he passed through the
door into the cottage. Since lack of physical obstructions outside the
cottage and lack of light within it usually made it possible to observe
the visitor unobserved as he approached the house, islanders
sometimes took pleasure in watching the visitor drop whatever
expression he was manifesting and replace it with a sociable one
just before reaching the door. However, some visitors, in
appreciating that this examination was occurring, would blindly
adopt a social face a long distance from the house, thus ensuring
the projection of a constant image.
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Interaction requires collusion
between the parties engaged
• we can appreciate the crucial importance of the information that the
individual initially possesses or acquires concerning his fellow
participants, for it is on the basis of this initial information that the
individual starts to define the situation and starts to build up lines of
responsive action.
• When the individual employs these strategies and tactics to protect
his own projections, we may refer to them as 'defensive practices';
when a participant employs them to save the definition of the
situation projected by another, we speak of 'protective practices' or
'tact'. Together, defensive and protective practices comprise the
techniques employed to safeguard the impression fostered by an
individual during his presence before others. Few impressions could
survive if those who received the impression did not exert tact in
their reception of it.
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Tools for successful impression
management: front and back regions.
• Much of social life, Goffman suggested, can be divided up into front
regions and back regions.
• Front regions are social occasions or encounters in which
individuals act out formal or stylised roles - the are ‘on stage
performances’. The back regions are where they assemble the
props and prepare themselves for interaction in the more formal
settings.
• Back regions resemble the ‘backstage’ of a theatre, or the ‘offcamera’ activities of filming. When they are safely behind the
scenes’, people can relax, and give vent to feelings and styles of
behaviour they keep in check when on ‘front stage’.
• Team-work is often involved in creating and preserving front-region
performances.
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what are the key theoretical
concepts in this approach?
• Goffman’s research method is participant observation.
Theory is developed by trying systematise results of
observation.
• Depends on theories of communication as exchange,
and on the rational actor developing a strategy for
interaction in context.
• Roles are not simply scripts they have to be mutually
negotiated between the characters.
• The idea of ‘everyday life’ – the bits in between. Not a
study of institutions per se but in principle any
interaction.
• What is symbolic in symbolic interaction?
• Sign – one thing which stands for another
• Symbol – conveys complex meanings
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• Reading:
• Giddens, A. Sociology. 5ed. Chapter 5 Social
Interaction and Everyday Life. This gives an
introduction to the symbolic interactionist
perspective.
• Pip Jones 2003 Introducing Social Theory. Polity
Press, Chap. 6 “Interpretive Sociology; Action
theories”. This gives a basic introduction to the
place of symbolic interaction approaches within
sociology.
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.
• Pei-Chia Lan 2006 Global Cinderellas:
Migrant Domestics and Newly Rich
Employers in Taiwan Duke University
Press.
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Work context: globalised domestic
labour
• The book is based on interviews with and ethnographic
observation of Taiwanese middle class employers and
their live-in maids hired from the Philippines and
Indonesia.
• Study of work but work carried in the ‘home’.
• Study of class but where status difference is confounded
by gender, race and nationality.
• The maids are caring for the children of one family while
having their own children cared for ‘back home’.
• They are frequently better educated and speak better
English [the language of communication] that their
masters and mistresses.
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Relative positions of front and back
regions
• “The metaphors of front and back stage illustrate the distinct social
perceptions regard various spatial realms; such conceptualisation of
space mirrors and materializes the social order that excludes or
marginalizes migrant workers. In employer’s households, the living
room is at the front, reserved for the family and guests, while the
kitchen and balcony are categorised as “maid space” or backstage
area.”
• “The concept of front and back stage also describe how migrant
workers negotiate multiple identity performances across spatial
settings. In front of the employers migrant women “act like a maid”.
Only on Sunday are they able to take off the deferential apron and
put on the self-proclaimed image.
• In front of their families and relatives, migrant workers perform the
role of “national heroes” by showcasing their material gains and
overseas adventures. Their suffering and alienation are well kept
secrets to be circulated only among migrant friends in the host
country.” (Lan 2006: 197)
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Even nations have front and back
regions
• The hierarchically organized urban landscape
also contain a differentiated capacity for the
accommodation of migrant workers. Taiwanese
object to the congregation of migrant workers at
Taipei Railway Station for fear of tainting the
fontal image of the global city. And yet less
public complaints are directed at the distribution
of migrant businesses behind Taoyuan Railway
Station, the backstage part of a backstage
region of Taiwan. (Lan 2006: 197)
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Co-operation necessary to sustain
interaction
• “Luisa obscures her previous social
postions from her employers. And, to
perfect the “maid” performance, she has to
carefully manage the transition from the
front to the backstage. Every Sunday,
Luisa brings her jewelry, miniskirt and
make up kit to the church and changes in
the bathroom before attending mass.” (Lan
2006: 228)
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The global is personal
• Pei-Chia Lan is herself from Tawain but did her
education and the Ph.D on which the book is written in
USA – University of Chicago.
• Having returned to Chicago to write up her fieldwork, she
took a break to do the laundry. “My neighborhood was a
racially mixed area where Mexican vendors sold snacks
on the street but newly renovated condominiums near
the lake shore were attracting growing numbers of
yuppie residents. While I was walking to the laundromat
at the street corner, a middle-aged white man passing by
tossed me a question: “Do you know anybody who can
take care of my mom?” Hit by this out-of-the-blue inquiry,
I stood there, confused, speechless, and then humiliated
and angry.” (Lan 2006:xi)
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The global is personal
• Towards the end of her time as a doctoral student she sub-lets a
posh apartment from two of her professors. Prior to the end of their
sabbatical the landlords arrange for a firm to send a cleaning lady to
clean the flat. She puts out some food and waits for the cleaner
(although she doesn’t have to). “The bell rang and at the door was a
woman in her early forties who was possibly Polish. I nervously
introduced myself and asked her name. She looked confused and
shook her head, saying only “No speak English”. Throwing me a
brief smile, smile she quickly went into the kitchen and started her
work. Obviously she had cleaned this apartment many times before
– she knew where everything was much better than I did. I felt like a
defeated soldier in a battle for class equality, albeit without the
presence of an enemy. I retreated to my room, closed the door, and
tried to do some writing. But my stage-managed air of calm could
not endure after I heard her cleaning the toilet that I had sat on only
ten minutes before. I immediately folded up my laptop and ran to a
coffee shop nearby. I dared no return until hours later, when I was
sure the had left my “home”.” (Lan 2006:237-8)
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