Alfred Goffman's Legacy

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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.

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