Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays on
face-to-face behavior. NY: Anchor
Books.
Introduction 1
A sociology of occasions is here advocated. Social organization is the central theme, but
what is organized is the co-mingling of persons and the temporary interactional enterprises that can arise therefrom. A
normatively stabilized structure is at issue, a “social gathering,” but this is
a shifting entity, necessarily evanescent, created by arrivals and killed by
departures. (2)
Not, then, men and their moments. Rather moments
and their men. (3)
On
Face-Work 5
Every person lives in a world of social
encounters, involving him either in face-to-face or mediated contact with other
participants. In each of these contacts,
he tends to act out what is sometimes called a line - that is, a pattern of verbal and nonverbal acts by which he
expresses his view of the situation and through this his evaluation of the
participants, especially himself. (5)
The term face
may be defined as the positive social value a person effectively claims for
himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular
contact. Face is an image of self
delineated in terms of approved social attributes - albeit an image that others may share, as when a person makes a good showing
for his profession or religion by making a good showing of himself. (5)
A person tends to experience an immediate
emotional response to the face which a contact with others allows him; he cathects his face; his “feelings” become attached to
it. (6)
A person may be said to have or be in, or maintain face when the line he
effectively takes presents an image of him that is internally consistent, that
is supported by judgments and evidence conveyed by other participants, and that
is confirmed by evidence conveyed through impersonal agencies in the situation.
(6-7)
A person may be said to be in wrong face when information is brought forth in some way
about his social worth which cannot be integrated, even with effort, into the
line that is being sustained for him. A
person may be said to be out of face
when he participates in a contact with others without having a line of the kind
participants in such situations are expected to take. (8)
The feeling, whether warranted or not, that he is
perceived in a flustered state by others, and that he is presenting no usable
line, may add further injuries to his feelings, just as his change from being
in wrong face or out of face to being shamefaced can
add further disorder to the expressive order of the situation. (8-9)
Following common usage, I shall employ the term poise to refer to the capacity to
suppress and conceal any tendency to become shamefaced during encounters with
others. (9)
In our Anglo-American society, as in some others,
the phrase “to lose face” seems to mean to be in wrong face, to be out of face,
or to be shamefaced. The phrase “to save
one’s face” appears to refer to the process by which the person sustains an
impression for others that he has not lost face. Following Chinese usage, one can say that “to
give face” is to arrange for another to take a better line than he might
otherwise have been able to take, the other thereby
gets face given him, this being one way in which he can gain face. (9)
By entering a situation in which he is given a
face to maintain, a person takes on the responsibility of standing guard over
the flow of events as they pass before him.
He must ensure that a particular expressive
order is sustained - an order that regulates the flow of events, large or
small, so that anything that appears to be expressed by them will be consistent
with his face. When a person manifests
these compunctions primarily from duty to himself, one speaks in our society of
pride; when he does so because of duty to wider social units, and receives
support from these units we speak of honor (9-10).
The person who can witness another’s humiliation
and unfeelingly retain a cool countenance of himself is said in our society to be
“heartless,” just as he who can unfeelingly participate in his own defacement
is thought to be “shameless.” (pp. 10-11)
By face-work
I mean to designate the actions taken by a person to make whatever he is doing
consistent with face. Facework serves to
counteract “incidents” - that is, events whose effective symbolic implications
threaten face. Thus, poise is one important type of face-work, for through
poise the person controls his embarrassment and hence the embarrassment that he
and others might have over his embarrassment. (12-13)
The members of every social circle may be
expected to have some knowledge of face-work and some experience in its
use. In our society, this kind of
capacity is sometimes called tact, savoir
faire, diplomacy, or social skill.
Variation in social skill pertains more to the efficacy of face-work
than to the frequency of its application, for almost all acts involving others
are modified, prescriptively or proscriptively, by considerations of face. (13)
In many societies there is a tendency to
distinguish three levels of responsibility that a person may have for a threat
to face that his actions have created.
First, he may appear to have acted innocently; his offense seems to be
unintended and unwitting, and those who perceive his act can feel that he would
have attempted to avoid it had he foreseen its offensive consequences. In our society one calls such threats to face
faux pas, gaffes, boners, or
bricks. Secondly, the offending person
may appear to have acted maliciously and spitefully, with the intention of causing
open insult. Thirdly, there are
incidental offenses; these arise as an unplanned but sometimes anticipated
by-product of action - action the offender performs in spite of its offensive
consequences, although not out of spite. (14)
The
Basic Kinds of Facework
The avoidance process. The surest way for a person to prevent threats to his face is to avoid
contact in which these threats are likely to occur. In all societies one can observe this in the avoidance
relationship and in the tendency for certain delicate transactions to be
conducted by go-betweens. (15)
The corrective process. When participants in an
undertaking or encounter fail to prevent the occurrence of an event that is
expressively incompatible with the judgments of social worth that are being
maintained, and when the event is of the kind that is difficult to overlook,
then the participants are likely to give it accredited status as an incident -
to ratify it as a threat that deserves direct official attention - and to proceed
to try to correct for its effects. (19)
I use the term ritual because I am dealing with acts through whose symbolic
component the actor shows how worthy he is of respect or how worthy he feels
others are of it. (19)
The sequence of acts set in motion by an
acknowledged threat to face, and terminating in the re-establishment of ritual
equilibrium, I shall call an interchange. Defining a message or move as everything
conveyed by an actor during a turn at taking action, one can say that an
interchange will involve two or more moves and two or more participants. (19-20)
It is plain that emotions play a part in these
cycles of response, as when anguish is expressed because of what one has done
to another’s face, or anger because of what has been done to one’s own. I want to stress that these emotions function
as moves, and fit so precisely into the logic of the ritual game that it would
seem difficult to understand them without it.
In fact, spontaneously expressed feelings are likely to fit into the
formal pattern of the ritual interchange more elegantly than consciously
designed ones. (23)
Making Points - The Aggressive Use of Face-work. (24)
The purpose of the game is to preserve everyone’s
line from an inexcusable contradiction, while scoring as many points as
possible against one’s adversaries and making as many gains as possible for oneself. An audience
to the struggle is almost a necessity.
The general method is for the person to introduce favorable facts about
himself and unfavorable facts about the others in such a way that the only
reply the others will be able to think up will be one that terminates the
interchange in a grumble, a meager excuse, a face-saving I-can-take-a-joke
laugh, or an empty stereotyped comeback of the “Oh yeah?” or “That’s what you
think” variety. (24-25)
In aggressive interchanges the winner not only
succeeds in introducing information favorable to himself
and unfavorable to the others, but also demonstrates that as an interactant he
can handle himself better than his adversaries. (25)
The Choice
of Appropriate Face-Work (26)
When an incident occurs, the person whose face is
threatened may attempt to reinstate the ritual order by means of one kind of
strategy, while the other participants may desire or expect a practice of a
different type to be employed. (26)
Thus when a person makes a slight gaffe, he and the others may become
embarrassed not because of inability to handle such difficulties, but because
for a moment no one knows whether the offender is going to act blind to the
incident, or give it joking recognition, or employ some other face-saving
practice. (27)
Cooperation
in Face-work (27)
When a face has been threatened, face-work must
be done, but whether this is initiated and primarily carried through by the
person whose face is threatened, or by the offender, or by a mere witness, is
often of secondary importance. (27)
A person’s performance of face-work, extended by
his tacit agreement to help others perform theirs, represents his willingness
to abide by the ground rules of social interaction. Here is the hallmark of his socialization as
an interactant. If he and the others were
not socialized in this way, interaction in most societies and most situations
would be a much more hazardous thing for feelings and faces. The person would find it impractical to be
oriented to symbolically conveyed appraisals of social worth,
or to be possessed of feelings - that is, it would be impractical for him to be
a ritually delicate object, occasions of talk could not be organized in the way
they usually are. It is no wonder that
trouble is caused by a person who cannot be relied upon to play the face-saving
game. (31)
The
Ritual Roles of the Self (31)
In short, the rights and obligations of an
interactant are designed to prevent him from abusing his role as an object of
sacred value. (33)
Spoken
Interaction (33)
In any society, whenever the physical possibility
of spoken interaction arises, it seems that a system of practices, conventions,
and procedural rules comes into play which functions as a means of guiding and organizing the flow of messages. An understanding will prevail as to when and
where it will be permissible to initiate talk, among whom, and by means of what
topics of conversation. (34)
In general, then, a person determines how he
ought to conduct himself during an occasion of talk by testing the potentially symbolic
meaning of his acts against the self-images that are being sustained. (38-39)
In spite of these inherent “pathologies” in the
organization of talk, the functional fitness between the socialized person and
spoken interaction is a viable and practical one. The person’s orientation to face, especially
his own, is the point of leverage that the ritual order has in regard to him;
yet a promise to take ritual care of his face is built into the very structure
of talk. (40)
Face and
Social Relationships (41)
When a person begins a mediated or immediate
encounter, he already stands in some kind of social relationship to the others
concerned, and expects to stand in a given relationship to them after the
particular encounter ends. (41)
A social relationship, then, can be seen as a way
in which the person is more than ordinarily forced to trust his self-image and
face to the tact and good conduct of others. (42)
The
Nature of the Ritual Order (42)
The ritual order seems to be organized basically
on accommodative lines, so that the imagery used in thinking about other types
of social order is not quite suitable for it.
(42)
Perhaps the main principle of the social order is
not justice but face, and what any offender receives is not what he deserves
but what will sustain for the moment the line to which he has committed himself, and through this the line to which he has committed
the interaction. (44)
Universal human nature is not a very human thing.
By acquiring it, the person becomes a kind of construct, built up not from
inner psychic propensities but from moral rules that are impressed upon him
from without...Similarly, the human nature of a particular set of persons may
be specially designed for the special kind of undertakings in which they
participate, but still each of these persons must have within him something of
the balance characteristics required of a usable participant in any ritually
organized system of social activity. (45)
The
Nature of Deference and Demeanor (47)
Introduction (48)
A rule of conduct may be defined as a guide for
action, recommended not because it is pleasant, cheap, or effective, but
because it is suitable or just. (48)
Rules of conduct impinge upon the individual in
two general ways: directly, as obligations,
establishing how he is morally constrained to conduct himself; indirectly, as expectations, establishing how others
are morally bound to act in regard to him. (49)
In dealing with rules of conduct it is convenient
to distinguish two classes, symmetrical and asymmetrical. A symmetrical rule is one which leads an
individual to have obligations or expectations regarding others that these
others have in regard to him (52) ... An asymmetrical rule is one that leads
others to treat and be treated by an individual differently from the way he
treats and is treated by them (53).
Students of society have distinguished several
ways among types of rules, as for example, between formal and informal rules;
for this paper, however, the important distinction is that between substance and ceremony. A
substantive rule is one which guides conduct in regard to matters felt to have
significance in their own right, apart from what the infraction or maintenance
of the rule expresses about the selves of the persons involved. (53)
A ceremonial rule is one which guides conduct in
matters felt to have secondary or even no significance in their own right,
having their primary importance - officially anyway - as a conventionalized
means of communication by which the individual
expresses his character or conveys his appreciation of the other participants
in the situation. (54)
Ceremonial activity seems to contain certain
basic components. As suggested, a main
object of this paper will be to delineate two of these components, deference
and demeanor, and to clarify the distinction between them. (56)
Deference (56)
By deference I shall refer to that component of
activity which functions as a symbolic means by which appreciation is regularly
conveyed to a recipient of this recipient, or of something of
which this recipient is taken as a symbol, extension,
or agent. These marks of devotion
represent ways in which an actor celebrates and confirms his relation to a
recipient. (56)
In addition to a sentiment of regard, acts of
deference typically contain a kind of promise, expressing in truncated form the
actor’s avowal and pledge to treat the recipient in a particular way in the
on-coming activity. (60)
Avoidance rituals, as a term, may be employed to
refer to those forms of deference which lead the actor to keep at a distance
from the recipient and not violate what Simmel has
called the “ideal sphere” that lies around the
recipient. (62)
Where an actor need show no concern about
penetrating the recipient’s usual personal reserve, and need have no fear of
contaminating him by any penetration into his privacy, we say that the actor is
on terms of familiarity with the recipient.
(63)
Avoidance rituals have been suggested as one main
type of deference. A second type, termed presentational
rituals, encompasses acts through which the individual makes specific
attestations to recipients concerning how he regards them and how he will treat
them in the on-coming interaction. Rules
regarding these ritual practices involve specific prescriptions, not specific
proscriptions; while avoidance rituals specify what is not to be done, presentational rituals specify what is to be done (70-71).
As an implication of this dilemma, we must see
that social intercourse involves a constant dialectic between
presentational rituals and avoidance rituals.
A peculiar tension must be maintained for these opposing requirements of
conduct must somehow be held apart from one another and yet realized together
in the same interaction: the gestures which carry an actor to a recipient must
also signify that things will not be carried too far. (76)
Demeanor (77)
By demeanor I shall refer to that element of the
individual’s ceremonial behavior typically conveyed through deportment, dress,
and bearing, which serves to express to those in his
immediate presence that he is a person of certain desirable or undesirable
qualities. (77)
Whatever his motives for making a well demeaned
appearance before others, it is assumed that the individual will exert his own
will to do so, or that he will pliantly co-operate
should it fall to someone else’s lot to help in this
matter. In our society, a man combs his
own hair until it gets too long, then he goes to a barber and follows
instructions while it is being cut. This
voluntary submission is crucial, for personal services of such a kind are done
close to the very center of the individual’s inviolability and can easily
result in transgressions; server and served must co-operate closely if these
are not to occur. (80)
Deference
and Demeanor (81)
Deference and demeanor are analytical terms;
empirically there is much overlapping of the activities to which they refer. An act through which the individual gives or
withholds deference to others typically provides means by which he expresses
the fact that he is a well or badly demeaned individual. (81)
While it may be true that the individual has a
unique self all his own, evidence of this possession is thoroughly a product of
joint ceremonial labor, the part expressed through the individual’s demeanor
being no more significant than the part conveyed by others through their
deferential behavior toward him. (85)
Ceremonial
Profanations (85)
Of the many kinds of ceremonial transgressions
there is one which a preliminary paper on ceremony is obliged to consider: it
is the kind that appears to have been perpetrated on purpose and to employ
consciously the very language of ceremony to say what is forbidden. The idiom through which modes of proper
ceremonial conduct are established necessarily creates ideally effective forms
of desecration, for it is only in reference to specified proprieties that one
can learn to appreciate what will be the worst possible form of behavior. Profanations are to be expected, for every
religious ceremony creates the possibility for a black mass. (85-86).
Some playful profanation seems to be directed not
so much at outsiders as at the recipient himself, by way of lightly teasing him
or testing ritual limits in regard to him.
(87)
A less playful kind of ritual profanation is
found in the practice of defiling the recipient but in such a way and from such
an angle that he retains the right to act as if he has not received the
profaning message. (87)
In addition to profanation of others, individuals
for varieties of reasons and in varieties of situations give the appearance of
profaning themselves, acting in a way that seems purposely designed to destroy
the image others have of them as persons worthy of deference. Ceremonial mortification of the flesh has
been a theme in many social movements.
What seems to be involved is not merely bad demeanor but rather the
concerted efforts of an individual sensitive to high standards of demeanor to
act against his own interests and exploit ceremonial
arrangements by presenting himself in the worst possible light. (89)
Conclusions (90)
The rules of conduct which bind the actor and the
recipient together are the bindings of society.
But many of the acts which are guided by these rules occur infrequently
or take a long time for their consummation.
Opportunities to affirm the moral order and the society could therefore
be rare. It is here that ceremonial
rules play their social function, for many of the acts which are guided by
these rules last but a brief moment, involve no substantive outlay, and can be
performed in every social interaction. (90-91)
In summary, then, modern society brings
transgressors of the ceremonial order to a single place, along with some
ordinary members of society who make their living there. These dwell in a place of unholy acts and
unholy understandings, yet some of them retain allegiance to the ceremonial order
outside the hospital setting. Somehow
ceremonial people must work out mechanisms and techniques for living without certain
kinds of ceremony. (94-95)
Perhaps the individual is so viable a god because
he can actually understand the ceremonial significance of the way he is treated, and quite on his own can respond dramatically to
what is proffered him. In contact
between such deities there is no need for middlemen; each of these gods is able
to serve as his own priest. (95)
Embarrassment
and Social Organization (97)
Whatever else, embarrassment has to do with the
figure the individual cuts before others felt to be there at the time. The crucial concern is the impression one
makes on others in the present - whatever the long-range or unconscious basis
of this concern may be. This fluctuating
configuration of those present is a most important reference group (98)
Vocabulary
of Embarrassment (99)
A social encounter is an occasion of face-to-face
interaction, beginning when individuals recognize that they have moved into one
another’s immediate presence and ending by an appreciated withdrawal from
mutual participation. (99)
The words “embarrassment,” “discomfiture,” and “uneasiness”
are used here in a continuum of meanings. Some occasions of embarrassment seem
to have an abrupt or orgasmic character; a sudden introduction of the
disturbing event is followed by an immediate peak in the experience of embarrassment
and then by a slow return to the preceding ease, all phases being encompassed
in the same encounter. A bad moment thus
mars an otherwise euphoric situation. (100)
There seems to be a critical point at which the
flustered individual gives up trying to conceal or play down his uneasiness: he
collapses into tears or paroxysms of laughter, has a temper tantrum, flies into
a blind rage, faints, dashes to the nearest exit, or becomes rigidly immobile
as when in a panic. After that it is
very difficult for him to recover composure. (103)
The terms “poise,” “sang-froid,” and “aplomb,” referring to the capacity to maintain
one’s own composure, are to be distinguished from what is called “graciousness,”
“tact,” or “social skill,” namely, namely, the capacity to avoid causing
oneself or others embarrassment. (103)
Causes
of Embarrassment (105)
Embarrassment has to do with unfulfilled
expectations (but not with those of a statistical kind). Given their social identities and the
setting, the participants will sense what sort of conduct ought to be maintained as the appropriate thing, however much they
may despair of its actually occurring . (105)
In all these settings the same fundamental thing
occurs: the expressive facts at hand threaten or discredit the assumptions a
participant finds he has projected about his identity. Thereafter those present find they can
neither do without the assumptions nor base their own responses upon them. The inhabitable reality shrinks until
everyone feels “small” or out of place. (108)
In every social system, however, there are times
and places where audience segregation regularly breaks down and where
individuals confront one another with selves incompatible with the ones they
extend to each other on other occasions.
At such times, embarrassment, especially the mild kind, clearly shows
itself to be located not in the individual but in the social system wherein he
has his several selves. (108)
Domain
of Embarrassment
Because of possessing multiple selves the
individual may find he is required both to be present and to not be present on
certain occasions. Embarrassment ensues:
the individual finds himself being torn apart, however gently. Corresponding to the oscillation of his
conduct is the oscillation of his self. (110)
Social
Function of Embarrassment
Behind a conflict in identity lies a more
fundamental conflict, one of organizational principle, since the self, for many
purposes, consists merely of the application of legitimate organizational principles
to one’s self. One builds one’s identity
out of claims which, if denied, give one the right to feel righteously
indignant. (111)
The principles of organization of any social
system are likely to come in conflict at certain points. Instead of permitting the conflict to be
expressed in an encounter, the individual places himself between the opposing
principles. He sacrifices his identity
for a moment, and sometimes the encounter, but the principles are
preserved. He may be ground between
opposing assumptions, thereby preventing direct friction between them, or he
may be almost pulled apart, so that principles with little relation to one
another may operate together. Social
structure gains elasticity; the individual merely loses composure. (112)
Alienation
from Interaction (113)
I. Introduction
Taking joint spontaneous involvement as a point
of reference, I want to discuss how this involvement
can fail to occur and the consequence of this failure. I want to consider the ways in which the
individual can become alienated from a conversational encounter, the uneasiness
that arises with this, and the consequence of this alienation and uneasiness
upon the interaction. Since alienation
can occur in regard to any imaginable talk, we may be able to learn from it
something about the generic properties of spoken interaction. (114)
Through the ceremonial order that is maintained
by a system of etiquette, the capacity of the individual to
be carried away by talk become socialized, taking on a burden of ritual
value and social function. Choice of main focus of attention, choice of side-involvements and
of intensity of involvement, become hedged in with social constraints,
so that some allocations of attention become socially proper and other
allocations improper. (115)
The task of becoming spontaneously involved in
something, when it is a duty to oneself or others to do so, is a ticklish
thing, as we all know from experience with dull chores or threatening
ones. The individual’s actions must
happen to satisfy his involvement obligations, but in a certain sense he cannot
act in order to satisfy these
obligations, for such an effort would require him to shift his attention from
the topic of conversation to the problem of being spontaneously involved in
it. (115)
III. The
Forms of Alienation (117)
If we take conjoint spontaneous involvement in a
topic of conversation as a point of reference, we shall find that alienation
from it is common indeed. Joint
involvement appears to be a fragile thing, with standard points of weakness and
decay, a precarious unsteady state that is likely at any time to lead the
individual into some form of alienation.
Since we are dealing with obligatory involvement, forms of alienation
will constitute misbehavior of a kind that can be called “misinvolvement.”
Some of the standard forms of alienative misinvolvement may be considered. (117)
1. External
Preoccupation. The individual may
neglect the prescribed focus of attention and give his main concern to
something that is unconnected with what is being talked about at the time and
even unconnected with the other persons present, at least in their capacity as
fellow participants. (117)
Individuals who could excusably withdraw
involvement from a conversation often remain loyal and decline to do so. Through this they show a nice respect for
fellow participants and affirm the moral rules that transform socially
responsible people into people who are interactively responsible as well. (118)
2. Self-consciousness. At the cost of his involvement in the
prescribed focus of attention, the individual may focus his attention more than
he ought upon himself - himself as someone who is faring well or badly, as
someone calling forth a desirable or undesirable response from others. (118)
Self-consciousness can be thought of as a kind of
preoccupation with matters internal to the interactive social system, and as
such has received more common-sense consideration than other kinds
of internal preoccupation. (119)
3. Interaction-consciousness.
A participant in talk may become
consciously concerned to an improper degree with the way in which the interaction,
qua interaction, is proceeding, instead
of becoming involved in the official topic of conversation. (119)
4. Other-consciousness. During interaction, the individual may become
distracted by another participant as an object of attention - exactly as in the
case of self-consciousness he can become distracted by concern over
himself. (120)
By the terms “affection” and “insincerity” the
individual tends to identify those who seem to feign through gestures what they
would expect him to accept as an uncontrived expressive overflow of their behavior. (121)
When the individual senses that others are
unsuitably involved, it will always be relative to the standards of his group
that he will sense the others have behaved improperly. (124)
IV. On the Repercussive Character of Involvement Offenses (125)
When the individual senses that he or other
participants are failing to allocate their involvement according to standards
that he approves, and in consequence that they are conveying an improper
attitude toward the interaction and the participants, then his sentiments are likely
to be roused by the impropriety - much as they would be were any other obligations
of the ceremonial order broken. (125)
The witnessing of an offense against involvement
obligation causes the witness to turn his attention from the conversation at
hand to the offense that has occurred during it. If the individual feels responsible for the
offense that has occurred, he is likely to be led to feel shamefully
self-conscious. If others seem
responsible for the offense, then he is likely to be led to feel indignantly
other-conscious in regard to them. (125)
V. The
Affectation of Involvement
When a conversation fails to capture the
spontaneous involvement of an individual who is obliged to participate in it,
he is likely to contrive an appearance of being really involved. This he must do to save the feelings of the
other participants and their good opinion of him, regardless of his motives for
wanting to effect this saving. (126)
VI.
Generalizing the Framework
1. The
Context of Involement Obligations. Involvement obligations are in fact defined
in terms of the total context in which the individual finds himself. Thus there will be some situations where the
main involvement of those present is supposed to be invested in a physical
task; conversation, if carried on at all, will have to be treated as a
side-involvement to be picked up or dropped, depending on the current demands
of the task at hand. There will be other
situations where the role and status of a particular participant will be nicely
expressed by his right to treat a conversation in a cavalier fashion,
participating in it or not, depending on his inclination at the moment. A father sometimes has this right regarding the
mealtime conversation maintained by lesser members of the family, while they do
not. (130)
2. Pseudo-conversations. We can extend our view and consider
conversation-like interactions in which the token exchanged is not speeches but
stylized gestures, as in the interchange of non-verbal greetings, or moves of
some kind, as in card games. These
unspoken yet conversation-like interactions seem to be similar structurally to
spoken interaction, except that the capacities that must be mobilized in order
to carry on such interaction seem to have more to do with muscular control of
limbs than in the case of spoken interaction. (132)
3. Unfocused
Interaction. With this focused kind of interaction we must contrast the
unfocused kind, where individuals in one another’s visual and aural range go on
about their respective business unconnected by a shared focus of
attention. Street behavior and conduct
at a large social party are instances. (133)
VII. Conclusions
Many social encounters of the conversational type
seem to share a fundamental requirement: the spontaneous involvement of the
participants in an official focus of attention must be called forth and
sustained. When this requirement exists
and is fulfilled, the interaction “comes off” or is euphoric as an
interaction. When the encounter fails to
capture the attention of the participants but does not release them from the
obligation of involving themselves in it, then persons are likely to feel
uneasy; for them the interaction fails to come off. A person who chronically makes himself or
others uneasy in conversation and perpetually kills encounters is a faulty
interactant; he is likely to have such a baleful effect upon the social life
around him that he may just as well be called a faulty person. (135)
The sense of reality that has been discussed in
this paper takes its form in opposition to modes of alienation, to states like
preoccupation, self-consciousness, and boredom.
In turn, these modes of disengagement are to be understood by reference
to the central issue of spontaneous involvement. When we have seen the way in which a spoken
encounter can succeed or fail in bringing its participants to it, and have seen
that unfocused interaction can be looked at in the same way, we have a lead to
follow in the understanding of other kinds of commitments - the individual’s
occupational career, his political involvements, his family membership - for
there will be a sense in which these wider matters consist in recurrent
occasions of focused and unfocused interaction.
By looking at the ways in which the individual can be thrown out of step
with the sociable moment, perhaps we can learn something the way in which he
can become alienated from things that take much more of his time. (136)
Mental
Symptoms and Public Order (137)
Persons who come to the attention of a
psychiatrist typically come to the attention of their lay associates
first. What psychiatrists see as mental
illness, the lay public usually first sees as offensive behavior - behavior
worthy of scorn, hostility and other negative social sanctions. The objective of psychiatry all along has
been to interpose a technical perspective: understanding and treatment is to
replace retribution; a concern for the interests of the offender is to replace
a concern for the social circle he has offended. I refrain from enlarging here on how
unfortunate it has been for many offenders to have been granted this medical
good fortune (137)
One effect of this enlightened approach that the sociobiologist might bewail has been that interest in the improprieties
themselves, paradoxically, has been blunted. (138)
A second effect of the enlightened psychiatric
approach which the sociologist might bewail is that a very special and limited
version of communication has resulted from it. (138)
In any case, there has been a general blindness
to the following fact: very often the misconduct of the patient is a public
fact, in that anyone in the same room with him would feel he was behaving
improperly, and, if not quite anyone, then at least anyone in the same
conversation. (139)
As a means of beginning the analysis of
face-to-face behavior, three basic interaction units may be recommended. The first is social occasion: an event, such as a dinner party, that is looked
forward to and back upon as a unit, has a time and place of occurrence and sets
the tone for what happens during and within it. (144)
Second, I use the term gathering to refer to any set of two or more individuals whose
members include all and only those who are at the moment in one another’s
immediate presence. By the term social situation I shall refer to the
full spatial environment anywhere within which an entering person becomes a
member of the gathering that is (or does then become) present. Situations begin when mutual monitoring
occurs and lapse when the next to last person has left. (144)
Let me try to summarize the argument. When persons come into one another’s
immediate physical presence, they become accessible to each other in unique
ways. There arise possibilities of physical
sexual assault, of accosting and being dragged into unwanted states of talk, of
transgressing certain territories of the self of the other, of showing disregard
and disrespect for the gathering present and the social occasion under whose
auspices the gathering is held. The
rules of face-to-face conduct obtaining in a given community establish the form
that face-to-face co-mingling is to take, and there results a kind of King’s
Peace, guaranteeing that persons will respect one another through the available
idiom of respect, keep their social place and their interpersonal commitments,
allow and not exploit a traffic flow of words and bodies and show regard for
the social occasion. Offenses against
these rulings constitute situational improprieties; many of these derelictions
are injurious to the rights of any and every one present and constitute
publicly broadcast offenses, regardless of the fact that many appear to be
motivated by the offender’s particular relationship to particular persons
present or even to absent parties. (147-148)
Where the
Action is (149)
This paper, then, deals with a term that points
to something lively but is itself now almost dead. Action will be defined analytically. An effort will be made to uncover where it is
to be found and what it implies about these places. (149)
Wheresoever action is found, chance-taking is sure to
be. Begin with a simple illustration of
chance, and work outward from there. (149)
[Coin-tossing]
With this particular machine it is plain that a
fully set of possible outcomes is
faced: heads or tails, obverse or reverse.
Similarly with a die: in ordinary manufacture and use, it presents six
different faces as possible outcomes. (150)
Given the two outcomes possible when a coin is
tossed, the probability or chance can
be assessed for each of them. Chances
vary from “sure” to “impossible” or, in the language of probability, from 1 to
0. (150)
What a player has in hand and undergoes a chance
of losing is his stake or bet. What the play gives him a chance of winning
that he doesn’t already have can be called his prize. The payoff for him is the prize that he wins
or the bet that he loses. Bet and prize
together may be called the pot. (150)
In gaming, theoretical
offs refers to the chances of a favorable outcome compared to those of an
unfavorable one, the decision machine here seen as an ideal one; true odds are a theoretical version of
theoretical ones, involving a correction for the physical biases found in any
actual machine - biases never to be fully eliminated or fully known. Given
odds or pay, on the other hand,
refers to the size of the prize compared to that of the bet. (150-151)
Weighting the pot by the chance on the average of
winning it, gives what students of chance call the expected value of the play.
Subtracting the expected value from the amount bet gives a measure of
the price or the profit on the average for engaging in the play. Expressing this measure as a proportion of
the bet gives the advantage or percentage
of the play. When there is neither
advantage nor disadvantage, the play is said to be fair. Then the theoretical
odds are the reciprocal of the given odds, gambling a large sum in the hope of
winning a small one, is exactly compensated by the smallness of his chance of
losing to the individual who takes
the odds. (151)
In the degree to which a play is a means of
acquiring a prize, it is an opportunity;
in the degree to which it is a threat to one’s bet, it is a risk. (151)
In brief, an essential feature of the coin
tossing situation is that an outcome undetermined up to a certain point - the
point of tossing the coin in the air - is clearly and fully determined during a
toss. A problematic situation is resolved. (152)
A crucial feature of coin-tossing is its temporal
phases. The boys must decide to settle
the matter by tossing; they must align themselves physically; they must decide
how much of the nickel will be gambled on the toss and who will take which
outcome; through stance and gesture they must commit themselves to the gamble
and thereby pass the point of no return.
This is the bet-making or squaring
off phase. Next there is the in-play
or determination phase, during which
relevant causal forces actively and determinatively produce the outcome. Then comes the revelatory
or disclosive phase, the time between determination
and informing of the participants.
This period is likely to be very brief, to differ among sets of
participants differently placed relative to the decision machinery, and to
possess a special suspensefulness of its own. Finally there is the settlement phase, beginning when the outcome has been disclosed and
lasting until losses have been paid up and gains collected. (154)
The period required by participants in a given
play to move through the four phases of the play - squaring off, determination,
disclosure, and settlement - may be called the span of the play. The
periods between plays may be called pauses. The period of a play must be distinguished from the period of playing, namely,
the session, which is the time
between making the first bet and settling up the last one on any one occasion
perceived as continuously devoted to play.
The number of completed plays during any unit of time is the rate of play for that time. Average duration of the plays of a game sets
an upper limit to rate of play, as does average length
of pauses; a coin can be tossed 5 times in half a minute; the same number of
decisions at the track requires more than an hour. (154-155)
The distinctive property of games and contests is
that once the bet has been made, outcome
is determined and payoff awarded all in the same breath of experience. A single sharp focus of awareness is
sustained at high pitch during the full span of the play. (156)
II. Consequentiality
(156)
When attention must be given to variations in
meaning that different persons give to the same bet (or the same prize), or
that the same individual gives over time or over varying conditions, one speaks of
subjective value or utility. And just as expected value
can be calculated as the average worth remaining to a nickel pot, so expected utility can be assessed as the
utility an individual accords a nickel pot weighted by the probability of his
winning it. (156)
In most life situations, we deal with subjective probability and hence at best
a very loose overall measure, subjectively
expected utility. (158-159)
There is an important issue in the notion of
value itself - the notion that bets and prizes can be measured in amounts. A nickel has both a socially ratified value
and a subjective value, in part because of what its winning allows, or losing
disallows, the tosser later on to do. This is the
gamble’s consequentiality, namely,
the capacity of a payoff to flow beyond
the bounds of the occasion in which it is delivered and to influence
objectively the later life of the bettor. (159-160)
“Objective value” and “utility” are both means of
establishing instantaneous equivalents for consequences that are to be actually
felt over time. This is achieved by
following either the community or the individual himself to place an appraisal
on this future, and to accept or to give a price for it now. (160)
III.
Fatefulness
However, an activity can be problematic and
consequential. Such activity I call fateful, although the term eventful
would do as well, and it is this kind of chanciness that will concern us
here. (164)
It must be admitted that although free time and
well-managed work time tend to be unfateful, the
human condition is such that some
degree of fatefulness will always be found.
Primordial bases of fatefulness must be reckoned with. (164)
First, there is adventitious or literary kind of
fatefulness. An event that is ordinarily
well managed and unnoteworthy can sometimes cast fatefulness
backwards in time, giving to certain previous moments an uncharacteristic
capacity to be the first event in a fateful conjunction of two events. (164)
Second, no matter how inconsequential and
insulated an individual’s moment is and how safe and well managed his place of
consequential duties, he must be there in the flesh if the moment is to be his
at all, and this is the selfsame flesh he must leave with and take wherever he
goes, along with all the damage that has ever occurred to it. (166).
A third pertinent aspect of the human condition
concerns co-presence. A social situation may be defined (in the
first instance), as any environment of mutual monitoring possibilities that lasts
during the time two or more individuals find themselves in one another’s
immediate physical presence, and extends over the entire territory within which
this mutual monitoring is possible. (167)
In social situations, then, ordinary risks and
opportunities are confounded by expressions of make-up. Gleanings become available, often all too
much so. Social situations thus become
opportunities for introducing favorable information about oneself, just as they
become risky occasions when unfavorable facts may be established. (168)
IV.
Practical Gambles
The human condition ensures that eventfulness
will always be a possibility, especially in social situations. Yet the individual ordinarily manages his
time and time off so as to avoid fatefulness.
Further, much of the eventfulness that does occur is handled in ways
that do not concern us. There are many occasions
of unavoided fatefulness that are resolved in such a
way as to allow the participants to remain unaware of the chances they had in
fact been taking. And much of the
fatefulness that occurs in consequence of freakish, improbable events is
handled retrospectively; only after the fact does the individual redefine his
situation as having been fateful all along, and only then does he appreciate in
what connection the fatefulness was to occur.
Retrospective fatefulness and unappreciated fatefulness abound...Fateful
situations become chancy undertakings, and exposure to uncertainty is construed
as willfully taking a practical gamble.
(170-171)
V.
Adaptations (174)
It is understandable then that the individual may
make realistic efforts to minimize the eventfulness - the fatefulness - of his
moments, and that he will be encouraged to do so. He engages in copings. (174-175)
The individual handles himself so as to minimize
the remote danger of accidental injury to his body...Some care must always be exerted.
Taking care is a constant condition of being. (175)
Another means of controlling eventfulness, and
one almost as much employed as physical care, is sometimes called providence:
an incremental orientation to long-range goals expressed through acts that have
a very small additive long-term consequence.
(175)
Another standard means of protecting oneself
against fatefulness is insurance in whatever form, as when householders invest
in candles and spare fuses, motorists in spare tires, and adults in medical
plans. (176)
Systems of courtesy and etiquette can also be
viewed as forms of insurance against undesired fatefulness, this time in
connection with the personal offense that one individual can inadvertently give
to another. The safe management of face
to face interaction is especially dependent on this means of control. (176)
Any practice that manages the affective response
associated with fatefulness - affects such as anxiety, remorse, and
disappointment - may be called a defense. (pp. 176-177)
The most obvious type of defense, perhaps, is the
kind that has no objective affect on fate at all, as in the case of ritualistic
superstition (178).
Clearly any realistic practice aimed at avoiding
or reducing risk - any coping - is likely to have the side effect of reducing
anxiety and remorse, is likely, in short, to have defensive functions. (179)
Obviously, then, a traditional statement of
coping and defense can be applied in connection with fatefulness. But this neglects a wider fact about
adaptation to chance-taking. When we
look closely at the adaptation to life made by persons whose situation is
constantly fateful, say that of professional gamblers or front-line soldiers,
we find that aliveness to the consequences involved comes to be blunted in a
special way. The world that is gambled
is, after all, only a world, and the chance-taker can learn to let go of
it. He can adjust himself to the ups and
downs in his welfare by discounting his prior relation to the world and
accepting a chancy relation to what others feel assured of having. Perspectives seem to be inherently normalizing:
once conditions are fully faced, a life can be built out of them, and by
reading from the bottom up, it will be the rises not the falls that are seen as
temporary. (181)
VI.
Action (181)
By the term action,
I mean activities that are consequential, problematic, and undertaken for what
is felt to be their own sake. The degree
of action - its seriousness or realness - depends on how fully these properties
are accentuated and is subject to the same ambiguities regarding measurement as
those already described in the case of chanciness. Action seems most pronounced when the four
phases of the play - squaring off, determination, disclosure, and settlement -
occur over a period of time brief enough to be contained within a continuous
stretch of attention and experience. It
is here that the individual releases himself to the passing moment, wagering
his future estate on what transpires precariously in the seconds to come. At
such moments a special affective state is likely to be aroused, emerging
transformed into excitement. (185)
VII.
Where the Action is
I have argued that action is to found wherever
the individual knowingly takes consequential chances perceived as
avoidable. Ordinarily, action will not
be found during the week-day work routine at home or on the job. For here chance-takings tend to be organized
out, and such as remain are not obviously voluntary. (194-195)
First, contenders find action in commercialized
competitive sport. (195)
The next place of action to consider is
non-spectator risky sport. (195-196)
Next to consider are the more commercialized
places of action - places, conveniently located, where equipment and the field
for its use can be rented and a slight degree of action laid on. (196)
There is a final type of commercialized action
involving direct participation, which I will call “fancy milling.” Adults in
our society can obtain a taste of social mobility by consuming valued products,
by enjoying costly and modish entertainment, by spending time in luxurious
settings, and by mingling with prestigeful persons -
all the more if these occur at the same time in the presence of many witness. (197)
While one person is providing a field of action
for another, that other can in turn use the first individual as his field of
action. When this reciprocity of use is
found and the object is to exercise a skill or ability of some kind, we speak
of a contest or a duel. What occurs at
these scenes might be called interpersonal
action. (207)
VIII.
Character (214)
These capacities (or lack of them) for standing
correct and steady in the face of sudden pressures are crucial; they do not
specify the activity of the individual, but how he will manage himself in this activity. I will
refer to these maintenance properties as an aspect of an individual’s character. Evidence of incapacity to behave effectively
and correctly under the stress of fatefulness is a sign of weak character. He who
manifests average, expected ability does not seem to be judged sharply in terms
of character. Evidence of marked
capacity to maintain full self control when the chips are down - whether
exerted in regard to moral temptation or task performance - is a sign of strong character. (217)
Consider some of the major forms of character
that bear on the management of fateful events. First, there are various forms
of courage, namely, the capacity to
envisage immediate danger and yet proceed with the course of action that brings
the danger on. (218)
There is gameness,
the capacity to stick to a line of activity and to continue to pour all effort
into it regardless of set-backs, pain, fatigue, and
this not because of some brute insensitivity but because of inner will and
determination. (218-219)
A fundamental trait of personal character from
the point of view of social organization is integrity,
meaning here the propensity to resist temptation in situations where there
would be much profit and some impunity in departing momentarily from moral
standards. (219)
Of all the qualities of character associated with
the management of fatefulness, the one of most interest for this essay is composure, that is, self-control,
self-possession, or poise. (222)
Along with the value of smooth movements and
unruffled emotions, we can consider that of mental calmness and alertness, that
is, presence of mind. (224-225)
Composure also has a bodily side, sometimes called dignit