Goffman, Erving. Encounters:
Two studies in the sociology of interaction.
Preface 7
The study of every unit of social organization
must eventually lead to an analysis of the interaction of its elements. The analytical distinction between units of
organization and processes of interaction is, therefore, not destined to divide
up our work for us. (7)
Unfocused interaction consists of those
interpersonal communications that result solely by virtue of persons being in
one another’s presence, as when two strangers across the room from each other
check up on each other’s clothing, posture, and general manner, while each
modifies his own demeanor because he himself is under observation. Focused interaction occurs when people
effectively agree to sustain for a time a single focus of cognitive and visual
attention, as in a conversation, a board game, or a joint task sustained by a
close face-to-face circle of contributors. Those sustaining together a single focus of
attention will, of course, engage one another in unfocused interaction,
too. (7)
I call the natural unit of social organization in
which focused interaction occurs a focused
gathering, or an encounter, or a situated activity system. I assume that instances of this natural unit
have enough in common to make it worthwhile to study them as a type. Three different terms are used out of desperation
rather than by design; as will be suggested, each of the three in its own way
is unsatisfactory, and each is satisfactory in a way that the others are
not. (8)
Paradoxically, then, if a gathering, on its own,
is to generate a group and have group-formation mark the gathering as a
memorable event, then a stranger or two may have to be invited - and this is
sometimes carefully done on sociable occasions.
These persons anchor the group-formation that occurs, preventing it from
drifting back into the relationships and groups that existed previously among
the participants. (14)
Fun in Games 17
1. Play and
Seriousness. In daily life, games
are seen as part of recreation and “in principle devoid of important
repercussions upon the solidity and continuity of collective and institutional
life.” Games can be fun to play, and fun
alone is the approved reason for playing them.
The individual, in contrast to his treatment of “serious” activity,
claims a right to complain about a game that does not pay its own way in
immediate pleasure and, whether the game is pleasurable or not, to plead a
slight excuse, such as an indisposition of mood, for not participating. (17)
Because serious activity need not justify itself
in terms of the fun in provides, we have neglected to
develop an analytical view of fun and an appreciation of the light that fun
throws on interaction in general. This
paper attempts to see how far one can go by treating fun seriously. (17)
2. Encounters. I limit myself to one type of social
arrangement that occurs when persons are in one another’s immediate physical
presence, to be called here an encounter
or a focused gathering. For the participants, this involves: a single
visual and cognitive focus of attention; a mutual and preferential openness to
verbal communication; a heightened mutual relevance of acts; an eye-to-eye
ecological huddle that maximizes each participant’s opportunity to perceive the
other participants’ monitoring of him. (18)
Formalizations (19)
1. Rules of
Irrelevance. Encounters are
everywhere, but it is difficult to describe sociologically the stuff that they
are made of. I fall back on the
assumption that, like any other element in social life, an encounter exhibits
sanctioned orderliness arising from obligations fulfilled and expectations
realized, and that therein lies its structure. (19)
They [games] clearly illustrate how participants
are willing to forswear for the duration of the play any apparent interest in
the esthetic, sentimental, or monetary value of the equipment employed,
adhering to what might be called rules of
irrelevance. For example, it appears
that whether checkers are played with bottle tops on a piece of squared
linoleum, with gold figurines on inlaid marble, or with uniformed men standing
on colored flagstones in a specially arranged court square, the pairs of
players can start with the “same” positions, employ the same sequence of
strategic moves and countermoves, and generate the same contour of
excitement. (19-20)
I have suggested that the character of an
encounter is based in part upon rulings as to properties of the situation that
should be considered irrelevant, out of frame, or not happening. To adhere to these rules is to play
fair. Irrelevant visible events will be disattended; irrelevant private concerns will be kept out
of mind. An effortless unawareness will
be involved, and if this is not possible then an active turning-away or
suppression will occur. Heroic examples
of this quite fundamental process - the operation of rules of irrelevance in
social interaction - can be discovered in mental hospitals, where patients can
be found immersed in a game of bridge (or affecting this immersion) while one
or two of the players engage in occult manneristic
movement and the whole table is surrounded by the clamor of manic
patients. Here it can be clearly seen
that an engaging activity acts as a boundary around the participants, sealing
them off from many potential worlds of meaning and action. (25) Without this encircling barricade,
presumably, participants would be immobilized by an inundation of bases of
action. (25-26)
2. Realized
Resources. The social organization
exhibited in a focused gathering is, then, a consequence of the effective
operation of rules of irrelevance. But, although
this describes what is excluded from the reality of the encounter, it tells us
nothing about what is included, and it is of this that we must now try to get a
systematic view. (26)
The set of rules which tells us what should not
be given relevance tells us also what we are to treat as real. There can be an event only because a game is
in progress, generating the possibility of an array of game-meaningful
happenings. (26)
A matrix of possible events and a cast of roles
through whose enactment the events occur constitute together a field for fateful
dramatic action, a plane of being, an engine of meaning, a world
in itself, different from all other worlds except the ones generated when the
same game is played at other times. (26-27).
Games, then, are world-building activities. I want to suggest that serious activities
have this quality too. We are ready to
see that there is no world outside the various playings
of a game that quite corresponds to the game-generated reality, but we have
been less willing to see that the various instances of a serious encounter
generate a world of meanings that is exclusive to it. (27)
There is no combination of bids and hands that
any deck of cards might not bring to any table of bridge, providing the players
sit long enough; in the same way, a customer, a clerk, and a floor manager can among themselves play out the drama that is
possible in shops. I shall refer to
these locally realizable events and role as realized
sources. (28)
Just as every encounter will sustain events that
are part of a world that can be fully realized within the encounter, so many of
the matters that are given no concern or attention will have an organizational
base and a relevant world of meaning beyond the confines of the type of
encounter in question. (28)
3. Transformation
Rules. Given the presence of realized resources, it is apparent that in
each focused gathering the problem of how to allocate these resources among the
participants must be solved. Whatever
the various solutions, it is apparent that attributes of participants will have
to be employed as means for deciding on allocation. Some of these allocative
attributes can be fully generated by means of a special preliminary encounter,
as when bridge partners are selected according to a little game of highs and
lows in a draw of cards, or when numbered cards are given out in a bakery shop
to mark priority of appearance. In other
cases the allocative attributes may derive directly
from the realized world of the encounter, as when prizes are distributed
according to game score. (29)
We find, then, transformation rules, in the geometrical sense of that term, these
being rules, both inhibitory and facilitating, that tell us what modification
in shape will occur when an external pattern of properties is given expression
inside the encounter. (33)
The transformation rules of an encounter describe
the fate of any property as a constituent of internal order...A consideration
of these attributes in relation to the transformation rules of encounters
allows us to deal directly and analytically with face-to-face instances of what
are ordinarily called “deference patterns,” defining deference here as
interpersonal ritual. These patterns
establish the manner in which social attributes crucial in the wider society
are dealt with during concrete occasions of face-to-face interaction. (33-34).
Dynamics of Encounters
1, Games, Play, and Gaming. The game model has very serious
implications for the accepted language of social psychology, especially for
three concepts: the individual, communication and interaction. The concept of the “individual” is properly
split in two. We now have an “interest-identity,”
“team,” or “side,” this being something without flesh or blood that profits or
loses by the outcome of the game according to a known utility function; and we
have a “player,” an agent-of-play, not a principal, who thinks and acts but
does this for the side on which he is playing.
The concept of “communicative activity” is similarly altered: the basic
activity in a game is a move, and
moves are neither communicated like messages nor performed like tasks and
deeds; they are made or taken.
To make a move requires some social arrangement by which a principal,
acting through his agent, can commit himself to a position. To communicate that this position has been
taken up is another move, quite distinct from the first, as is demonstrated by
the fact that often in games our object is to make a move without informing the
opposing team that we have made it.
Finally, as regards interaction, we see that a game perspective reduces
the situation to teams, each acting rationally to
press a single type of interest or pay-off while accepting very special
conditions of action. Each move must be selected from a small number of
possibilities next open to the opponent.
Each team is aware of this mutual determination and oriented to the
control of it, the entire outcome for each team being dependent on how it fares
in this outmaneuvering. The concept of
interaction is thus transformed: instead of referring to mutual influence that
might be peripheral and trivial, it now refers to a highly structured form of
mutual fatefulness. (35)
In the literature on games, a distinction is made
between a game, defined as a body of
rules associated with a lore regarding good strategies, and a play, defined as any particular instance
of a given game being played from beginning to end. Playing
could then be defined as the process of move-taking through which a given play is
initiated and eventually completed; action is involved, but only the strictly
game-relevant aspects of action. (35)
The varieties of interaction that occur among
persons who are face to face for the avowed purpose of
carrying on a game, I shall call gaming,
including here, in addition to playing, activity that is not strictly relevant
to the outcome of the play and cannot be defined in terms of the game. I shall call a focused gathering that
ostensibly features plays of a game a gaming
encounter. A play of a game has
players; a gaming encounter has participants.
A play is a special abstraction from the more concrete unit, gaming
encounter, just as the concept of player is an abstraction from that of
participant. (36)
2. Spontaneous
Involvement. When an individual becomes engaged in an
activity, whether shared or not, it is possible for him to become caught up by
it, carried away by it, engrossed in it - to be, as we say, spontaneously
involved in it. (38)
Gaming encounters provide us with fine examples
of how a mutual activity can utterly engross its participants, transforming
them into worthy antagonists in spite of the triviality of the game, great
differences in social status, and the patent claims of other realities. (39)
A participant’s spontaneous involvement in the official
focus of attention of an encounter tells others what he is and what his
intentions are, adding to the security of the others in his presence. Further, shared spontaneous involvement in a
mutual activity often brings the sharers into some kind of exclusive solidarity
and permits them to express relatedness, psychic closeness, and mutual respect;
failure to participate with good heart can therefore express rejection of those
present or of the setting. (40)
3. Ease and
Tension. In such circumstances, what
the individual is obliged to attend to, and the way in which he is obliged to
perceive what is around him, will coincide with what can and what does become
real to him through the natural inclination of his spontaneous attention. Where this kind of agreement exists, I assume
- as an empirical hypothesis - that the participants will feel at ease or natural, in short, that the interaction
will be euphoric for them. (41-42)
But it is conceivable that the participant’s two
possible worlds - the one in which he is obliged to dwell and the one his
spontaneous involvement actually does or could bring alive to him - may not
coincide, so that he finds himself spontaneously engrossed in matters declared irrelevant
and unreal by the transformation rules. I make a second empirical assumption, that a
person who finds himself in this conflict will feel uneasy, bored, or unnatural
in the situation, experiencing to this degree that he feels committed to maintaining
the transformation rules. Under such
circumstances, we can say that a state of
tension or dysphoria exists for him in the
encounter; he feels uneasy. (42)
None the less, for any given encounter, it is of
analytical interest to imagine those circumstances which would maximize ease or
euphoria, bringing actual involvements and obligatory ones into perfect
congruence. These circumstances we may
refer to as the encounter’s euphoria
function. It will be apparent that a
maximum of euphoria can be achieved in theory in two different ways: one, by
granting the character of the activity and going on from there to obtain the
most suitable recruits (in terms of the maintenance of euphoria); and, the
other, by granting the recruits and, given their social attributes, determining
the most effective allocation of internally-generated resources. (44)
Interestingly enough, the issue of a dysphoria function is worth considering too, and
not only because of the fantasy persons sometimes have
of giving a party with a maximally unsuitable combination of guests. (45)
5 [sic] [4.]. Integrations. As suggested, in any focused gathering there
are likely to be officially irrelevant matters that actively draw the concern
and attention of the participants, giving rise to tension. In addition, there are likely to be matters
that are currently held back by selective inattention but would cause tension
were they introduced pointedly. By
contributing especially apt words and deeds, it is possible for a participant
to blend these embarrassing matters smoothly into the encounter in an
officially accepted way, even while giving support to the prevailing
order. Such acts are the structural
correlates of charm, tact, or presence of mind.
These acts provide a formula through which a troublesome event can be
redefined and its reconstituted meaning integrated into the prevailing
definition of the situation, or as a means of partially redefining the
prevailing encounter, or various combinations of both. (48)
5. Flooding
Out. It is apparent however that
under certain circumstances the individual may allow his manner to be inundated
by a flow of affect that he no longer makes a show of concealing. The matter in which he has been affecting disinvolvement suddenly becomes too much for him, and he
collapses, if only momentarily, into a person not mobilized to sustain an
appropriate expressive role in the current interaction; he floods out. (58)
I have suggested that when an individual floods
out, other participants may contagiously flood out, too, or treat the incident
(whether spontaneously or self-consciously) as if it had not occurred. There is also a third way in which
participants respond to an offender.
Seeking a tolerable level of tension, they can openly alter the rules,
redefining the situation around the plight of the offender, but treating him
now not as a participant but as a mere
focus of attention - in fact, as an involuntary performer. (58).
6. Structure
and Process. During any encounter it
is possible for a sub-set of participants to form a communicative byplay and,
without ratifying their new mutual activity except among themselves, withdraw
spontaneous involvement from the more inclusive encounter. (61)
Since the introduction of a tactful or hostile
joke is likely to lead all the participants into a temporary new engagement if
successful and into greater dysphoria if unsuccessful,
we can understand that the right to make such efforts will not be randomly
distributed among the participants of the encounter but that role differentiation
will occur which places this venturesome function in special hands. This is especially true when the participants
spend time together in a series of similar encounters. Thus, the right to “make a joke of something”
is often restricted to the ranking person present, or to a subordinate playing
the part of the fool - a part that allows him to take liberties during
interaction in exchange for his character.
In either case, this redirecting influence can be accomplished without
threatening to alter the sensed distribution of influence that permanently
alters the transformation rules, an even closer fit between manipulation and
rank may be expected. (65).
7. Interaction
Membrane. When the wider world
passes through the boundary of an encounter and is worked into the interaction
activity, more than a re-ordering or transformation of pattern occurs. Something of an organized psychobiological
nature takes place. Some of the
potentially determinative wider world is easefully disattended;
some is repressed; and some is suppressed self-consciously at the price of felt
distraction. Where easeful disattention occurs, there will be no tendency to modify
the transformation rules; where felt distraction
occurs there will be pressure on the rulings.
An incident endangers the transformation rules, not directly but by
altering the psychic work that is being done by those who must interact in
accordance with these rules. (65)
Bases of Fun (66)
In concluding this paper then, I would like to
take a speculative look at some of the conditions, once removed,
that seem to ensure easeful interaction.
Again, there seems to be no better starting point than what I labeled
gaming encounters. Not only are games
selected and discarded on the basis of their ensuring euphoric interaction,
but, to ensure engrossment, they are also sometimes modified in a manner
provided for within their rules, thus giving us a delicate tracer of what is needed
to ensure euphoria. (66-67)
There is a common-sense view that games are fun
to play when the outcome or pay-off has a good chance of remaining unsettled
until the end of play (even though it is also necessary that play come to a final settlement within a reasonable period of time)...
On similar grounds, should the final score come to be predictable, as often
happens near the end of the play, concession by the loser is likely,
terminating the action in the interests of both the play and the gaming
encounter. (67)
But if we combine our two principles - problematic
outcome and sanctioned display - we may have something more valid. A successful game would then be one which,
first, had a problematic outcome and then, within these limits, allowed for a
maximum possible display of externally relevant attributes. (68)
Whatever the interaction, then, there is this
dual theme: the wider world must be introduced, but in a controlled and
disguised manner. Individuals can deal
with one another face to face because they are ready to abide by rules of
irrelevance, but the rules seem to exist to let something difficult be quietly
expressed as much as to exclude it entirely from the scene. Given the dangers of expression, a disguise
may function not so much as a way of concealing something as a way of revealing
as much of it as can be tolerated in an encounter. We fence our encounters in with gates; the
very means by which we hold off a part of reality can be by which we can bear
introducing it. (77-78)
From this, it follows, of course, that what is a
successful and happy occasion for one participant may not be such for the
other. Further, it follows that if the
many are to be pleased, then the few may have to sacrifice themselves to the occasion,
allowing their bodies to be cast into the blend to make the bell sound
sweet. Perhaps they rely at such times
on other kinds of pleasures. (79)
Conclusions (79)
I have argued in this paper that any social
encounter, any focused gathering, is to be understood, in the first instance,
in terms of the functioning of the “membrane” that encloses it, cutting it off,
from a field of properties that could be given
weight. There is a set of transformation
rules that officially lays down what sorts of properties are to be given what
kind of influence in the allocation of locally realized resources. If a participant can become spontaneously
involved in the focus of attention prescribed by these transformation rules, he
will feel natural, at ease, sure about the reality in which he and the others
are sustained. An encounter provides a
world for its participants, but the character and stability of this world is
intimately related to its selective relationship to the wider one. The naturalistic study of encounters, then,
is more closely tied to studies of social structure on one hand, and more
separate from them, than one might at first imagine. (80)
To be at ease in a situation is to be properly
subject to these rules, entranced by the meanings they generate and stabilize;
to be ill at ease means that one is ungrasped by
immediate reality and that one loosens the grasp that others have of it. To be awkward or unkempt, to talk or move
wrongly, is to be a dangerous giant, a destroyer of worlds. As every psychotic and comic ought to know,
any accurately improper move can poke through the thin sleeve of immediate
reality. (81)
Role
Distance 85
The classic formulation of role concepts comes
from the social-anthropological tradition and has led to the development of a
conceptual framework sometimes called “role theory.” A status
is a position in some system or pattern of positions and is related to the
other positions in the unit through reciprocal ties, through rights and duties
binding on the incumbents. Role consists of the activity the
incumbent would engage in were he to act solely in terms of the normatve demands upon someone in his position. Role in the normative sense is to be
distinguished from role performance
or role enactment, which is the actual conduct of a particular individual while
on duty in his position. (85)
The individual’s role enactment occurs largely
through a cycle of face-to-face social situations with role others, that is, relevant audiences. These various kinds of role others for an
individual in role, when taken together, have recently been termed a role-set. (pp. 85-86).
The over-all role associated with a position
falls into role sectors or subroles, each having to do with a particular kind of role
other. (86)
For this paper, it is important to note that in
performing a role the individual must see to it that the impressions of him
that are conveyed in the situation are compatible with role-appropriate
personal qualities effectively imputed to him: a judge is supposed to be
deliberate and sober; a pilot, in a cockpit, to be cool; a bookkeeper to be
accurate and neat in doing his work.
These personal qualities, effectively imputed and effectively claimed,
combine with a person’s title, when there is one, to provide a basis of self-image for the incumbent and a basis
for the image that his role others will have of him. (87).
It can be useful to distinguish between the regular performance of a role and a regular performer of a role. If, for example, a funeral parlor is to stay
in business, then the role of the director, of the immediately bereaved, and of
the deceased must be performed regularly; but, of these regularly performed
roles, only the director will be a regular performer. (88)
The function
of a role is the part it plays in the maintenance or destruction of the system
or pattern as a whole, the terms eufunction and dysfunction sometimes
being employed to distinguish the supportive from the destructive effects. Where the functional effect of a role is openly
known and avowed, the term manifest
function is sometimes employed; where these effects are not regularly foreseen
and, especially, where this foresight might alter effects, the term latent is sometimes used. (88)
An individual becomes committed to something
when, because of the fixed and interdependent character of many institutional
arrangements, his doing or being this something irrevocably conditions
other important possibilities in his life, forcing him to take courses of
action, causing other persons to build up their activity on the basis of his
continuing in his current undertakings, and rendering him vulnerable to
unanticipated consequences of these undertakings. (88-89)
The self-image available for anyone entering a
particular position is one of which he may become affectively and cognitively
enamored, desiring and expecting to see himself in terms of the enactment of the role and the self-identification emerging
from this enactment. I will speak here of
the individual becoming attached to
his position and its role, adding only that in the case of larger social units
- groups, not positions - attachment is more likely to have a selfless
component. (89)
While manifestly participating in one system of
roles, the individual will have some capacity to hold in abeyance his
involvement in other patterns, thus sustaining one or more dormant roles that
are enacted roles on other occasions.
This capacity supports a life cycle, a calendar cycle, and a daily cycle
of role enactments; such scheduling implies some jurisdictional agreements as
to where and what the individual is to be when.
This role-segregation may be
facilitated by audience-segregation,
so that those who figure in one of the individual’s major role-sets do not
figure in another, thereby allowing the individual to possess contradictory
qualities. Nevertheless, a person such
as a surgeon, who keeps his surgical tools off his kitchen table and his wife
off his other table, may find himself with the role dilemma of treating an other both as a kinsman and as a body. The embarrassment and vacillation
characteristic of role-conflict
presumably result. (91).
Limitations
of the Role Framework (91)
The notion that position is part of a pattern or
system must now be reappraised. Some
formal organizations, especially ones wholly contained in the physically
bounded region of a walled-in social establishment, provide a concrete system
of activity that can be used as a contextual point of reference. Even here the system-like properties of the organization
cannot be taken for granted; but when we take a wider unit, such as a community
or a society, there is no obvious concrete system of activity to point to as
the pattern or system in which the position has its place. I suggest a more atomistic frame of reference
must be used - and is in fact used in actual studies. When we study role we study the situation of
someone of a particular analytical category, and we usually limit our interest
to the situation of this kind of person in a place and time: the home during
nonworking hours; the factory during working hours; the community during one’s
lifetime; the school during the academic term.
But any identification of these contexts as social systems is surely
hazardous, requiring for justification an extensively preliminary study seldom
undertaken. (pp. 94-95).
Situated
Activity Systems
Some of these activities will bring him into
face-to-face interaction with others for the performance of a single joint
activity, a somewhat closed, self-compensating, self-terminating circuit of interdependent actions - what might be called a situated activity system. (pp. 95-96).
When the runs of a situated system are repeated
with any frequency, fairly well-developed situated
roles seem to emerge: action comes to be divided into manageable bundles,
each a set of acts that can be compatibly performed by
a single participant. (96)
The point about looking at situated activity
systems, however, is not that some traditional role concepts
can be applied in this situational setting, but that the complexities of
concrete conduct can be examined instead of by-passed. Where the social content of a situated system
faithfully expresses in miniature the structure of the broader social
organization in which it is located, then little change in the traditional role
analysis is necessary, situated roles would merely be our means of sampling,
say, occupational or institutional roles.
But where a discrepancy is found, we would be in a position to show a
proper respect for it. (99).
The
Problem of Expression
One issue is that roles may not only be played but also played at, as when children, stage actors, and other kinds of
cutups mimic a role for the avowed purpose of make-believe; here surely, doing
is not being. (pp. 99-100)
Whether an individual plays a role or plays at
it, we can expect that the mechanics of putting it on will typically expose him
as being out of character at certain regular junctures. Thus, while a person may studiously stay in role while in the staging area of its
performance, he may nonetheless break
role or go out of role when he thinks that no one or no one important can
see him. (100-101).
Explanations, apologies, and joking are all ways
in which the individual makes a plea for disqualifying some of the expressive
features of the situation as sources of definitions of himself. Since these maneuvers are often accepted by
the others present, we must see that the individual’s responsibility for the
self-expressive implications of the events around has definite limits. (105)
Role
Distance
Just as “flustering” is a classic possibility in
all situated systems, so also is the earnest way these youngsters
of three or four ride their horses.
Three matters seem to be involved: an admitted or expressed attachment
to the role; a demonstration of qualifications and capacities for performing
it; an active engagement or
spontaneous involvement of attention and muscular effort. Where these three features are present, I
will use the term embracement. To embrace a role is to disappear completely
into the virtual self available in the situation, to be fully seen in terms of
the image, and to confirm expressively one’s acceptance of it. To embrace a role is to be embraced by
it. (106)
The “effectively” expressed pointed separateness
between the individual and his putative role I shall call role distance. A shorthand is involved here: the individual is actually
denying not the role but the virtual self that is implied in the role for all
accepting performers. (106)
A summary of concepts is now in order. I have tried to distinguish among three
easily confused ideas: commitment, attachment, and embracement. It is to be
noted that these sociological terms are of a different order from that of engagement, a psychobiological process
that a cat or a dog can display more beautifully than man. Finally, the term role distance was introduced to refer to actions which effectively
convey some disdainful detachment of the performer from a role he is
performing. (110)
Role
Distance and Serious Activity
(110)
The concept of role distance provides a sociological means of dealing with one
type of divergence between obligation and actual performance. First, we know that often distance is not introduced
on an individual basis but can be predicted on the grounds of the performers’
gross age-sex characteristics. Role
distance is a part (but, of course, not the only part) of typical role, and this routinized
sociological feature should not escape us merely because role distance is not
part of the normative framework of role.
Secondly, that which one is careful to point out one is not, or not
merely, necessarily has a directing and intimate influence on one’s conduct,
especially since the means for expressing this disaffection must be carved out
of the standard materials available in the situation. (115)
The more extensive the
trappings of role, the more opportunity to display role distance. Personal
front and social setting provide precisely the field an individual needs to cut
a figure in - a figure that romps, sulks, glides, or is indifferent. (115)
Surgery
as an Activity System (115)
The
Functions of Role Distance for Surgery (120)
Some final points may now be mentioned concerning
the function of role distance, now not merely in surgery but in situated
systems in general. (131)
First, by not demanding the full rights of his
position, the individual finds that he is not completely committed to a
particular standard of achievement; should an unanticipated discrediting of his
capacity occur, he will not have committed himself and the others to a
hopelessly compromised position. Second,
it appears that social situations as such retain some weight and reality in
their own right by drawing on role distance - on the margin of reservation the individual
has placed between himself and his situated role. (131-132)
More significant, there is the fact that in
prisons and mental hospital, where some inmates constantly sustain a heroic
edifice of withdrawal, uncooperativeness, insolence, and combativeness, the
same inmates may be quite ready to engage in theatricals in which they enact
excellent portraits of civil, sane, and compliant characters. But this very remarkable turnabout is
understandable too. Since the staged
circumstances of the portrayed character are not the inmate’s real ones, he has
no need (in the character’s name) to exhibit distance from them, unless, of
course, the script calls for it. (132)
A
simultaneous Multiplicity of Selves
Instead, then, of starting with the notion of a
definition of the situation we must start with the idea that a particular
definition is in charge of the situation,
and that as long as this control is not overtly threatened
or blatantly rejected, much counter-activity will be possible. The individual acts to say: “I do not dispute
the direction in which things are going and I will go along with them, but at
the same time I want you to know that you haven’t fully contained me in the
state of affairs.” Thus, the person who mutters, jokes, or responds with
sarcasm to what is happening in the situation is nevertheless going along with
the prevailing definition of the situation - with whatever bad spirit. The current system tells us what situated
roles will be in charge of the situation, but these roles at the same time
provide a framework in which role distance can be expressed. Again it should be noted that face-to-face
interaction provides an admirable context for executing a double stance - the
individual’s task actions unrebelliously adhere to
the official definition of the situation, while gestural
activity that can be sustained simultaneously and it noninterferingly
shows that he has not agreed to having all of himself defined by what is
officially in progress. (133)
In summary, then, it may be stated that, given a
situated system as a point of reference, role distance is a typical, not
normative, aspect of role. But the
lightness with which the individual handles a situated role is forced upon him
by the weight of his manifold attachments and commitments to multi-situated
social entities. Disdain for a situated
role is a result of respect for another basis of identification. (142)
When we shift our point of reference from the
situated system, then, to these wider entities, role distance can again be seen
as a response to a normative framework.
As far as merry-go-round riding is concerned, the role distance
exhibited by an eight-year-old boy is a typical, not obligatory, part of the
situation; for the boy’s manhood, however, these expressions are
obligatory. A statistical departure in
the first case would be a moral departure in the second. (143)
Conclusions (p, 143)
Much role analysis seems to assume that once one
has selected a category of person and the context or sphere of life in which
one wants to consider him, there will then be some main role that will fully dominate his activity.
Perhaps there are times when an individual does march up and down like a
wooden soldier, tightly rolled up in a particular role. It is true that here and there we can pounce
on a movement when an individual sits fully astride a single role, head erect,
eyes front, but the next moment the picture is shattered into many pieces and
the individual divides into different persons holding the ties of different
spheres of life by his hands, by his teeth, and by his grimaces. When seen up close, the individual, bringing
together in various ways all the connections that he has in life, becomes a
blur. (143)
A final comment is to be added. There is a vulgar tendency in social thought
to divide the conduct of the individual into a profane and sacred part, this
version of the distinction strangely running directly contrary to the one Durkheim gave us.
The profane part is attributed to the obligatory world of social roles;
it is formal, stiff, and dead; it is exacted by society. The sacred part has to do with “personal”
matters and “personal” relationships - with what an individual is “really” like
underneath it all when he relaxes and breaks through to those in his
presence. It is here, in this personal capacity, that an individual can be warm, spontaneous, and
touched by humor. It is here, regardless
of his social role, that an individual can show “what kind of guy he really is.” And so it is, that in showing that a given
piece of conduct is part of the obligations and trappings of a role, one shifts
it from the sacred category to the profane, from the fat and living to the thin
and dead. Sociologists qua sociologists are allowed to have the
profane part; sociologists qua
persons, along with other persons, retain the sacred for their friends, their
wives, and themselves. (152)
The concept of role distance helps to combat this
touching tendency to keep a part of the world safe from sociology. For if an individual is to show that he is a “nice
guy” or, by contrast, one much less nice than a human being need be, then it is
through his using or not using role distance that this is likely to be done. It is right here, in manifestations of role
distance, that the individual’s personal style is to be found. And it is argued in this paper that role
distance is almost as much subject to role analysis as are the core tasks of
roles themselves. (152)