Goffman Self Analysis

For Goffman, the self is a sense of who one is, this realization (of who the self is) has a dramatic undertone which arises from the immediate scene which is being presented by the actor. This scene could be the front stage or back stage. As it is on the stage in a theatrical performance, where actors portray their personal characteristics through their choice of clothing, verbal and non-verbal actions among other things to give a particular impression to the audience, the other that is apart from the self. This is called “impression management”. The self is a creation by the actor that is a composition of the front stage and the back stage, it may or may not be influenced by other external uncontrolled factors. The front stage being when the actions of the actor is visible to the audience and is part of the performance. The back stage is the behaviour when the actor believes that no audience is present. When performers are in the back region, they are nonetheless in another performance: that of a loyal team member. Team

members are those individuals who are part of the act, they are co-conspirators and are not fooled by each other’s performances on the front stage.

There have been cases that a performer may be taken in by his own act, convinced that the impression of reality which he was suggested that a performer may be taken in by his own act, convinced at the moment that the impression of reality which he develops is the one and only reality. In such cases, the performer becomes his own audience.

2. LIBERTY V/S CONTROL [OF INFORMATION]

A clash that arises when we talk about privacy is the question of what should be given preference - our rights or our safety (which the State claims is taken into consideration and is usually the driving force for the creation of surveillance projects). Those who agree with the State assert that they’ve got nothing to hide and therefore have nothing to worry about . Trent Lott, a former Senate majority leader asked rhetorically whether the reason for

worry was that the people were doing something that was prohibited. However, there is a problem with this line of thought as mentioned by Solove, the “underlying assumption that privacy is about hiding bad things ”. Privacy involves a person’s “right to conceal discreditable facts about himself.” In his book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell has given a picture of how a totalitarian police state run by a government called Big Brother uses surveillance to monitor its citizens and how in the name of the good of the welfare of the society it demands and establishes absolute obedience by its citizens. This Orwellian metaphor, which highlights the dangers of surveillance (such as inhibition and social control), might be fitting to explain the government’s monitoring of citizens. The deeper problem with the “nothing-to-hide” argument is that it views privacy in a very narrow fashion -as something whose sole purpose is secrecy. Adam D. Moore, argued "it is the view that rights are resistant to cost/benefit or consequentialist sort of arguments. Here we are rejecting the view that privacy interests are the sorts of things that can be traded for security." He stated that surveillance can disproportionately affect certain groups in society based on appearance, ethnicity, and religion . According to him, the “nothing to hide” argument is irrelevant if people have the right to privacy. Privacy, when understood as a right to control access to and uses of spaces, locations, and personal information, means that it is the right holder who determines access. Bruce Schneier, a computer security expert and cryptographer argued "Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control."