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Defining the self
Question about self concept
Question about self concept
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Berger and Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality and Irving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life analyze human interaction in the context of actions we perform and the meanings that such actions take in social environments. I will analyze Goffman’s account of modification of the “self” through performance within the context of Berger and Luckmann’s hypothesis. The theatrical performance metaphor looks at how socialization and experience affect the use of fronts, expressions, and expressions given off.
Berger and Luckmann explain that everyday life presents itself to audiences as a reality interpreted through typifications that constitutes the fabric of social meaning. Goffman focuses on social interactions as dramaturgical performances that exhibit both “expressions given” and “expressions given off” within social sites made up of “front-stage” and “back-stage” environments. In both perspectives, to act solely for the sake of acting is not possible. All actions are social performances that give off impressions of “self” to other actors in society based upon past experiences and typifications.
Berger and Luckmann offer a treatise to the social construction of reality that outlines how we formulate the idea of the “self” in social society and how reality itself is socially constructed. “Knowledge must always be knowledge from a certain position.” It is our social position that guides our perceptions of reality and allows us to embrace our idea of “self” within reality. Everyday life presents itself as a reality that is interpreted by others and is subjectively meaningful because of such interpretations.
Goffman offers the same argument on a micro-sociological level. He claims, “information about the in...
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... we will act as such to keep up the expectation.
Through providing a micro-level analysis of the “self” through theatrical dramaturgy, Goffman supplies an adequate account of how modification of the “self” happens via performance. Taking parallel theories and ideas, each author builds upon the arguments of the other and Goffman provides enough detailed examples of social development through performance to satisfy the treatises of Berger and Luckmann’s account. Therefore, the arguments of Goffman and Berger and Luckmann work best when combined, giving us the most insight into the “self.”
Works Cited
Berger, Peter, and Thomas Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. 1st ed. Garden City: Anchor Books, 1966. Print.
Goffman, Erving. The Presentation Of Self In Everyday Life. New York, NY, USA: Anchor, 1959. Print.
W.E.B Du Bois and Erving Goffman were two of the most important and well known theorists in sociology. W.E.B Du Bois was an African American sociologist and an activist who studied at Harvard University. He studied sociology customs of the individual. His theoretical work dealt with racism and the color line. He influenced the foundation and direction of Black education. Du Bois’ theoretical work relates to a conflict perspective because of the tension that was overlooked due to all human rights, blacks in particular. Erving Goffman was a professor at the University of California. He was chair at the Ivy League’s University of Pennsylvania, and the president of the American Sociological Association. Goffman’s theoretical concept relates to
Erving Goffman (1922-1982) held the position of Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. He served as President of the American Sociological Association in the year leading up to his death in 1982. Goffman is considered as the pioneer of the study of face-to-face interaction and has made a substantial contribution to micro-sociology. He is recognised as a major figure in the symbolic interaction perspective. In 2007 he was listed as the sixth most cited author in the humanities and social sciences (The Times Higher Education Guide, 2007).
When meeting someone for the first time you are trying to do two things and so is the person you are meeting. The first thing each of you are doing is trying to size up and understand what type of person the other is. The second thing is that you both are trying to get the other person to see you in a certain way by the words said and unsaid and the actions done and not done. You both are acting in one way or another or putting on a performance so that the person you are meeting gets to see you as you are (gets to see you act as you do everyday) or as you want them to see you (act the in a way that makes them believe that this is the way you act in your day-to-day life).
Erving Goffman said the dramaturgical analysis “would lead us to describe the techniques of impression management employed in a given establishment, the principal problems of impression management in the establishment, and the identity and interrelationship of the several performance teams which operate in the establishment” (240). Goffman compares social interactions with an act, there is the actors, the audience, and the stage. For different plays the actors take on a new role just as with varying groups someone might portray themselves
Erving Goffman (11 June 1922 – 19 November 1982) is a Canadian-born sociologist and writer. He where considered one of the most influential American sociologists of the twentieth century. Goffman’s first major work was The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.
The sociological perspective of dramaturgy is associated with Irving Goffman (1922 – 1982) who developed the concept in his book The Presentation Of The Self In Everyday Life (1959). Using theatre as an extended metaphor, dramaturgy explains how everyday interactions uphold social reality. Life is like a play and like actors in a play, people perform roles. Consequently, the social world is made up of teams working together to create the functional institutions of society. For example employment, school, home and hospitals. Social ‘performances’ are reliant on team-members understanding their role in the group and shared understanding of the scenario. Someone who undermines or disrupts a performance, by revealing hidden details, usually for their own benefit or opposing agenda, is considered a ‘discrepant identity’ (Goffman 1959:145). Two components of dramaturgy which explain the concept in more detail, are ‘impression management’ and ‘front and back’.
Goffman’s legacy: For instance, on the one hand, for Goffman, the individual’s very identity is controlled, even determined, by such overwhelming societal forces as institutions, roles and social frames. In the most extreme case, the individual may undergo a mortification of self, the destruction of an individual’s personhood, as a result of the total control that a social situation exerts on him or her. On the other hand, Goffman shows how the individual, through a variety of small strategies of resistance (such as secondary adjustments” and “role distance”) even if not exactly able to achieve self-determination, can at least affirm and preserve authonomy of his or her personhood agains such powerful structural forces.
Goffman argues that our sense of identity (who we believe ourselves to be) is also constructed socially through how we present ourselves to others.
I look at myself and I list attributes: I am a Latina, American, Guatemalan, a college student, a learner, a daughter, a sister, a niece, a cousin, a lover, a girlfriend, loud, quiet, smart, naive, a fighter, submissive and yet dominant. The list goes on. I differ depending on where I am and who I am with. Goffman writes about people’s performances, “At one extreme, one finds that the performer can be fully taken in by his own act; he can be sincerely convinced that the impression of reality which he stages is the real reality...At the other extreme. we find that the performer may not be taken in at all by his own routine” (17). He breaks down our character, acknowledging it changes depending on where said person is, who they are with, if they
Using the imagery of the theater to portray the social actions and interactions of human beings was the idea of Ervine Goffman. He thought that social situations were like theater, people of society were like actors on a stage, and that each person plays a variety of roles. The audience refers to the people that are in our surroundings that observe our actions on a daily basis. He said that like in theater performance there is a front region of the stage and a back region. The main concepts in Goffman’s theory, in which he refers to as the dramaturgical model of social life, are performance, setting, appearance, manner, front, front stage, back stage, and off stage. The term performance refers to the way a person acts in front observers or
The dramaturgical perspective of Erving Goffman, Ph.D., has been examined in this report through a survey of his book’s assertions. The lineage of sociology prior to his publishing his social science conceptual study was detailed and connected to his stated views of micro-sociology. The sociological discussion within the discipline based upon his book concluded this critical review. This entire survey has caused me to appreciate Goffman’s work as a student of sociology because he has shown me intellectual tools to make abstractions concrete so that I may operate with on a cognitive level to comprehend group dynamics in a scientific way.
Goffman, E. 1959. The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, NY: Double Day
This theory can essentially be summed up by the Shakespeare quote “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” Goffman theorized that people are constantly putting on a performance to appear in an ideal light to the group they are with in that moment. He proposed that social life is all just a complex theatrical and constructive performance. Goffman was not implying that people are being fake when socializing, but rather implying that everyone is constantly acting on a subconscious need to fit into a situation. Most people feel as though they are their ‘true self’ when they’re with a close friend or by themselves, however Goffman would argue that even these interactions are a performance in some ways. There is no ‘true sense of self’ that you show to your close friends, because even that image has been molded over years of interactions and development as a
Erving Goffman uses a dramaturgical perspective in his discussion of impression management. Goffman’s analysis of the social world primarily centres around studies of the self and relationship to one’s identity created within a society. Through dramaturgy, Goffman uses the metaphor of performance theatre to convey the nature of human social interaction, drawing from the renowned quote “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players” from Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It.’ Much of our exploration of Goffman’s theories lies within the premise that individuals engage in impression management, and achieve a successful or unsuccessful performance. Impression management refers to the ways in which individuals attempt to control the impression that others have of them stemming from a basic human desire to be viewed by others in a favourable light. Goffman argues that our impressions are managed through a dramaturgical process whereby social life is played out like actors performing on a stage and our actions are dictated by the roles that we are playing in particular situations. In a social situation, the stage is where the encounter takes place, the actors are the people involved in the interaction, and the script is the set of social norms in which the actors must abide by. Just as plays have a front stage and back stage, this also applies in day-to-day interactions. Goffman’s theory of the front and back stage builds on Mead’s argument of the phases of the self. The front stage consists of all the public and social encounters with other people. It is similar to the ‘me’ which Mead talks about, as it involves public encounters as well as how others perceive you. Meanwhile the back stage, like the ‘I’, is the time spent with oneself reflecting on the interactions. Therefore, according to Goffman’s dramaturgical
Parsons, Talcott. (1938). The Role of Theory in Social Research. American Sociological Review. 3(1), 13-20.