Goffman, Erving. Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order. New York: Bantam Books, 1971 (second printing).

III.

Social groups of animals - bands, flocks, herds, prides, troops, packs - have the special feature that the members of any particular group usually remain in perceptual range of one another. Thus, almost all activity is socially situated; social life and public life are coterminous. Therefore, ethologists perforce end up being students of face-to-face interaction. So they are a source. More important, they have developed a field discipline that leads them to study animal conduct in very close detail and with a measure of control on preconception. In consequence, they have developed the ability to cut into the flow of apparently haphazard animal activity at its articulations and to isolate natural patterns. Once these behavioral sequences are provided to the observer, his seeing is changed. So ethologists provide an inspiration. It must be said that many ethologists are quick to apply a Darwinian frame, accounting for any behavioral routine in terms of its current (and even vestigial) survival value, and that earlier work was rather quick in making species-wide imputations. When these biases are brought to the study of human behavior, some very unsophisticated statements result. But if we politely disattend this feature of ethology, its value for us as a model stands clear. (xvii)

[1] The individual as a unit (3)

In discussions of face-to-face interaction, the term “individual” (or an equivalent such as “person”) is inevitably used, as I shall also. However, this easy and necessary use covers multiple sins of imprecision. (3)

There are rules for taking and terminating a turn at talking; there are norms synchronizing the process of eyeing the speaker and being eyed by him; there is an etiquette for initiating an encounter and bringing it to an end. Here, too, we can speak of an individual conducting himself properly or improperly, but this time relative to encounters, not settings. The “system of reference” has changed and so, I believe, do the constitutive units to which the system applies. It is too easy to say merely that the individual plays different roles. The somethings that participate in different systems of activity are in some degree different things. (5)

With the idea in mind, then, that in interaction studies the individual can be different things, I want in this paper to briefly consider two things an individual can be; a vehicular unit and a participation unit. (5)

II. Vehicular Units (5)

Of the various sets of ground rules that provide the normative bases of public order, one class will concern us here: traffic codes. (5)

A vehicular unit is a shell of some kind controlled (usually from within) by a human pilot or navigator. A traffic code is a set of rules whose maintenance allows vehicular units independent use of a set of thoroughfares for the purpose of moving from one point to another. The arrangement is that collision and mutual obstruction are systematically avoided by means of certain self-accepted restrictions on movement. When adhered to, a traffic code provides a safe passage pattern. (6)

Road traffic has interesting features: relative uniformity of rules across regional and national boundaries, and this in spite of the limited span of particular police jurisdictions; relative explicitness and exhaustiveness of rules accompanied by strict, formal social control; a widespread sense that it is all right to break a rule if you can get away with it. In addition, road-traffic rules serve as something of an ideal case in arguments regarding the nature and value of ground rules. (7)

By the term “externalization,” or “body gloss,” I refer to the process whereby an individual pointedly uses over-all body gesture to make otherwise unavailable facts about his situation gleanable. Thus, in driving and walking the individual conducts himself- or rather his vehicular shell - so that the direction, rate, and resoluteness of his proposed course will be readable. In ethological terms, he provides an “intention display.” By providing this gestural prefigurement and committing himself to what it foretells, the individual makes himself into something that others can read and predict from; by employing this device at proper strategic junctures - ones where his indicated course will be perceived as a promise or warning or threat but not as a challenge - he becomes something to which they can adapt without loss of self-respect. (11)

Finally, a brief face engagement may be initiated in which one party signals what he proposes they do and the other party signals agreement. (A strategic device here is to signal a collaborative routing in which the other has a slight advantage, this usually assuring agreement.) In all of this maneuvering, two special moments can be found. First, there is the “critical sign”: the act on the part of the other that finally allows the individual to discover what it is the other proposes to do. Second, there is the “establishment point”: the moment both parties can feel that critical signs have been exchanged regarding compatible directions and timing, and that both appreciate that they both appreciate that this has occurred. It is then that movements can be executed with full security and confidence; it is then that those involved can feel fully at ease and fully turn their attention elsewhere. (13)

There are, then, pedestrian routing practices. Somewhat the same devices are employed in car traffic and in car-pedestrian traffic. (Checked-body-checks, for example, are especially noticeable in the conduct of pedestrians as they begin to traverse a crosswalk in the immediate face of cars ready to move with a change in light.) (14)

The basic prerequisites for rule by convention are assumed in Median social psychology, but are never made quite explicit. Among trusting individuals, these assumptions can be fulfilled in various circumstances: open discussion at one extreme and blindly effected coordination - in the manner considered by Thomas Schelling - at the other. In pedestrian (and apparently automobile) traffic, trust can be treated as problematic and coordination seen to depend neither on discussion nor tacit communication. As the two parties approach each other, each provides progressive evidence to the other, a small step at a time, that each is adhering to a proper course and to the one he has been indicating. And since ordinarily the gain to be achieved here by inducing confusion or by outright trickery is not great, trust can be - and is - sustained. Of course, the conditions that allow one to develop trust anew at each contact expose one at all times to sudden cause for doubt. (18)

III. Participation Units. (19)

Individuals navigate streets and shops and attend social occasions either unaccompanied or in the social company of others, that is, they appear in public either in a “single” or in a “with.” These are interactional units, not social-structural ones. They pertain entirely to the management of co-presence. I take them to be fundamental units of public life. (19)

A single is a party of one, a person who has come alone, a person “by himself,” even though there may be other individuals near him and he has cause for talking to them. A single, then, is an individual, but not all individuals are singles, those who are being active in a special capacity. (19)

A with is a party of more than one whose members are perceived to be “together.” They maintain some kind of ecological proximity, ensuring the closeness that ordinarily permits easy conversation and the exclusion of nonmembers who otherwise might intercept talk. (19)

A single is relatively vulnerable to contact, this being the grounds presumably why the ladies who inhabited traditional etiquette manuals did not appear in public unaccompanied; members of a with, after all, can count on some mutual protection. Withs, especially all male ones, have considerable choice in where they sit; singles have less, since they must be alive to the invitation or to the overture their positioning might seem to be making. (21-22)

IV. Conclusions (27)

In this brief statement I have touched on the individual as a vehicular unit and as a participation unit, and by way of contrast have incidentally introduced two other capacities in which the individual may be active: co-participant in an encounter and someone reckoned simply as present in a setting or a social occasion. As suggested, in rough observation and analysis, it is probably enough to conceive of these distinctions - when indeed they are conceived of - as pertaining merely to different roles in which the individual is active. In fine-grain analysis, however, it may be that the notion of the individual as such will prove too imprecise, and instead a need will appear to use a variety of technically defined terms. Thus, if we look closely at the concept of territoriality, especially the “egocentric” forms, the notion of the individual ceases to have an analytically coherent, single meaning, and several different terms have to be employed in its stead. (27)

[2] The Territories of the Self

Territories vary in terms of their organization. Some are “fixed”; they are staked out geographically and attached to one claimant, his claim being supported often by the law and its courts. Fields, yards, and houses are examples. Some are “situational”; they are part of the fixed equipment in the setting (whether publicly or privately owned), but are made available to the populace in the form of claimed goods while-in-use. Temporary tenancy is perceived to be involved, measured in seconds, minutes, or hours, informally exerted, raising constant questions as to when the claim begins and when it terminates. Park benches and restaurant tables are examples. Finally, there are “egocentric” preserves which move around with the claimant, he being in the center. They are typically (but not necessarily) claimed long term. Purses are an example. This threefold division is, of course, only valid in degree. A hotel room is a situational claim, yet it can function much like a house, a fixed territory. And, of course, houses in the form of trailers can move around. (29)

1. Personal Space: The space surrounding an individual, anywhere within which an entering other causes the individual to feel encroached upon, leading him to show displeasure and sometimes withdraw. A contour, not a sphere, is involved, the spatial demands directly in front of the face being larger than at back. The fixed layout of seats and other interior equipment may restrictively structure available space around the individual in one dimension, as occurs in line or column organization. When two individuals are alone in a setting, then concern about personal space takes the form of concern over straight-line distance. (29-30)

2. The Stall: The well-bounded space to which individuals can lay temporary claim, possession being on an all-or-none basis. A scarce good will often be involved, such as a comfortable chair, a table with a view, an empty cot, a telephone booth. In the main, stalls are fixed in the setting, although, for example, at beaches devices such as towels and mats can be carried along with the claimant and unrolled when convenient, thus providing a portable stall. When seats are built in rows and divided by common armrests (as in theatres), then personal space and stall have the same boundaries. When there is space between seats, then personal space is likely to extend beyond the stall. And, of course, there are stalls such as boxes at the opera which allocate several seats to the exclusive use (on any one occasion) of a single “party.” The availability of stalls in a setting articulates and stabilizes claims to space, sometimes providing more than would have been claimed as personal space, sometimes less - as can be seen, for example, in regard to seats when a class of six-year-olds attends an adult theater or when parents have a meeting in an elementary school room. (32-33)

3. Use Space: The territory immediately around or in front of an individual, his claim to which is respected because of apparent instrumental needs...Note that circumstances can allow the individual to offer instrumental grounds for demanding limits on the level of noise and sound, especially when the source is physically close by. (34-35)

4. The Turn: The order in which a claimant receives a good of some kind relative to other claimants in the situation. A decision-rule is involved, ordering participants categorically (“women and children first,” or “whites before blacks”), or individually (“smallest first, then next smallest”), or some mixture of both. Typically claimants are required to have been present in order to establish their claim on a turn, but once this has been done and marked in some way, they may be allowed to absent themselves until their turn comes up. In our Western society, perhaps the most important principle in turn organization is “first come, first served,” establishing the claim of an individual to come right after the person “ahead” and right before the person “behind.” This decision rule creates a dominance ranking but a paradoxical one, since all other forms of preference are thereby excluded. (35-36)

5. The Sheath: The skin that covers the body and, at a little remove, the clothes that cover the skin. Certainly the body’s sheath can function as the least of all possible personal spaces, the minimal configuration in that regard; but it can also function as a preserve in its own right, the purest kind of egocentric territoriality. Of course, different parts of the body are accorded different concern - indeed this differential concern tells us in part how the body will be divided up into segments conceptually. Among the American middle classes, for example, little effort is made to keep the elbow inviolate, whereas orifice areas are of concern. And, of course, across different cultures, the body will be differently segmented ritually. (38)

6. Possessional Territory: Any set of objects that can be identified with the self and arrayed around the body wherever it is. The central examples are spoken of as “personal effects” - easily detachable possessions such as jackets, hats, gloves, cigarette packs, matches, handbags and what they contain, and parcels. We must also include a claimant’s co-present dependents because, territorially, they function somewhat like his personal possessions. Finally, there are objects that remain tethered to a particular setting but can be temporarily claimed by persons present, much as can stalls: ashtrays, magazines, cushions, and eating utensils are examples. One might also include here regulative command over mechanical creature-comfort devices: control over radio, television sets, temperature, windows, light, and so forth. (38)

7. Information Preserve: The set of facts about himself to which an individual expects to control access while in the presence of others...Of course, since the individual is also a vehicular unit and since pilots of other such units have a need and a right to track him, he will come to be able to make an exquisite perceptual distinction between being looked at and being stared at, and, God help us, learn to suspect, if not detect, that the latter is being masked by the former; and he will learn to conduct himself so that others come to respond to him in the same way. (39-40)

8. Conversational Preserve. The right of an individual to exert some control over who can summon him into talk and when he can be summoned; and the right of a set of individuals once engaged in talk to have their circle protected from entrance and overhearing by others. (40)

One general feature of the several forms of territoriality should be noted: their socially determined variability. Given a particular setting and what is available in it, the extensitivity of preserves obviously can vary greatly according to power and rank. Patients in a charity hospital may have to wait until dying before given a privacy screen around their bed; in middle-class private hospitals, the patient may enjoy this privilege at other times, too, for example, when breast feeding a child. (40)

II Markers. (41)

The claim to a preserve by a putative poessessor is made visible by a sign of some kind, which, following ethological practice, may be called a “marker.” (41)

Markers are of various kinds. There are “central markers,” being objects that announce a territorial claim, the territory radiating outward from it, as when sunglasses and lotion claim a beach chair, or a purse a seat in an airliner, or a drink on the bar the stool in front of it, or chips on a 21 table the closest “slot” and the attendant exclusive right to make bets from it. (41-42)

There are “boundary markers,” objects that mark the line between two adjacent territories. The bar used in supermarket checkout counters to separate one customer’s batch of articles from the next is an example; the common armrest between theater seats is another. Note, when boundary markers are employed either on both sides of an individual or in front and back, they function as “spacers,” ensuring the user personal space in a row or column, if not a temporary stall. (42)

There are (if I may use the phrase) “ear markers,” that is, signatures embedded in an object to claim it as part of the possessional territory of the signee, as when names are burned into sports equipment, livestock, and slaves, or when numbers are embossed on engine blocks, and so forth. (42)

It is here that the “system of reference” problem becomes acute. Since territory implies a field of contiguous items - especially in the case of possessional preserves - it comes to pass that one means of marking possession of an object is to have clearly possessed things next to it. (42)

III. Modalities of Violation (44)

If territory-like preserves are the central claim in the study of comingling, then the central offense is an incursion, intrusion, encroachment, presumption, transgression, defilement, besmearing, contamination - in short, a violation. Now it seems the case that the chief agencies and authors of this kind of boundary offense are individuals themselves and what can be intimately identified with them. (44)

Turn now to consider human agencies of violation and examine first the different modalities. (44)

1. There is ecological placement of the body relative to a claimed territory. The model here is classical Indian caste relations, with its conception of measurable distances which mark a safe approach between persons of different castes, the ranking person serving as the center of a personal space and the other as a source of contamination, the potency of which depends on the social distance between the castes. (44)

2. The body, including the hands, as something that can touch and through this defile the sheath or possessions of another. The extreme here in our society is no doubt sexual molestation. (44)

3. The glance, look, penetration of the eyes. Although in our society the offense that can be committed by intrusive looks tends to be slighter than other kinds of offensive incursions, the distance over which the intrusion can occur is considerable, the directions multiple, the occasions of possible intrusion very numerous, and the adjustments required in eye discipline constant and delicate. (44)

4. Sound interference, being those noises made by an individual that are felt to intrude disruptively on bystanders, demanding, as it were, too much sound space for him. Also there is the practice of sustaining an encounter over a distance that is longer than proper according to the prevailing norms. (46)

5. The addressing of words, as when subordinates in an encounter speak up, or remarks are addressed by way of cross-talk from an individual to those with whom he is not in a stratified state of talk, or when street hustlers of various sorts initiate importuning encounters with passers-by, this latter, incidentally, being the source of the unpleasantness Western tourists face in begging cultures. (46)

6. Bodily excreta, to be considered in terms of four distinct agencies of defilement. First, corporeal excreta (or their stains) that contaminate by direct touch: spittle, snot, perspiration, food particles, blood, semen, vomit, urine, and fecal matter. (A germ-theory rationale supports our attitudes to this element, the classical extreme in contamination being the suppurative sores of lepers.) Second, there is odor, including flatus, tainted breath, and body smells. Like looking, odor operates over a distance and in all directions; unlike looking, it cannot be cut off once it violates and may linger in a confined place after the agency is gone. Third, a minor factor, body heat - to be found, for example, on sheets in “bird-cage” hotels, on toilet seats in powder rooms, in jackets and sweaters recently removed by their users and lent to, or mistakenly appropriated by, others. Finally, most ethereal of all, markings left by the body in which some bodily excreta can be imagined to remain; plate leavings are an example. Note that in this matter of markings, knives function in an interesting way (as do other implements), since they provide the means of taking without contaminating, as middle-class children learn the first time their mother finds a teeth-marled crater in a cake, a loaf of bread, or a piece of fruit. (46-47)

The intrusive effect of bodily associated matters, whether proximity, touch, or excreta, varies greatly depending on what is it that intrudes. In Western society the elbows and upper back seem to have little capacity to contaminate, the sexual organs a great deal. Interestingly something of a parallel is found in regard to preserves; as suggested, the elbow is part of the body that is little vulnerable to contamination, the “private parts” more so. It is thus that elbows can be used in our society for spacers, ensuring the actor some measure of personal space, elbows being a part of the body which can hardly intrude or be intruded on. In spite of this parallel, however, it should be clear that the character of the individual as a territory (or as the center of territories) is not simply an opposing counterpart to his being a source of violations. In the first role he holds others off, in the second, he penetrates; the shapes taken in the two roles are different. (49)

IV. Territorial Offenses (49)

Discriminating types of territory and types of violation does not provide us with all the framework we need to bring order into varieties of territorial offense. The complication is that the claimant to a territory and the impediment to the claim are not necessarily seated in different persons, nor are the agency of offense and the author of offense necessarily located in the same individual. (49-50)

1. The prototypical territorial offense occurs when one individual encroaches on the preserve claimed by and for another individual, the first thereby functioning as an impediment to the second’s claim. (50)

It should be noted that encroachment involves two different kinds of sin. One is suggested by the term “intrusion”: this is the obvious case of an individual entering a territory to which he has no right of access, or otherwise contaminating a preserve. (50)

To intrude, then, is one way to encroach; a second is to obtrude. I refer here to the capacity of a claimant to press territorial demands into a wider sphere than others feel is his due, causing them to feel that they themselves could be seen as functioning intrusively, even though they feel that this is not the case. The standard example occurs when an individual makes what are taken as overextensive claims to personal space, incidentally encroaching on the personal space of those adjacent to him or on areas felt to be public in the sense of being non-claimable. (51)

2. There are, then, encroachments, these including intrusions and obtrusions. Consider now the territorial offense that results when an individual violates himself - a possibility implied in what has already been said about the separable roles of the individual. (52)

Self-violations vary in organization. First, there are self-befoulments: the individual as a source of contamination defiles himself as a preserve. The extreme here, at least in our society, is smearing oneself with and eating one’s own fecal matter - a type of heroic perversity now becoming rare in our mental hospitals. The cleanliness practices that protect the individual from self-befoulment can everywhere be seen, very nicely, for example, at drugstore counters during lunch time when immaculate typists are to be observed eating messy triple-decker sandwiches while minimizing all contact with what might smear them, affecting this with a finger and mouth dexterity that is awesome, and all the while keeping their elbows and eyes out of the territories of those on either side of them. (52-53)

All this leads us to see that in addition to encroachments and self-violations there is a third variety of territorial offense: a preclusiveness, namely, the effort of an individual to keep persons at a distance he has no right (in their eyes) to maintain. Refusal to be drawn into talk by kinsmen, or to divulge relevant private information to a legitimate authority, or to disrobe before a physician are cases in point. (58)

V Conclusions (58)

I would like to raise three general points in connection with territoriality and face-to-face interaction. First, although there is much here that can be described in traditional Durkheimian terms having to do with ritual delicacy and the maintenance and infraction of normative rulings, it is also the case that similarities to animal activity are very marked; indeed, it is from ethology that the basic concepts come. (58-59)

Second, the traditional way of thinking about threats to rules focuses on a claimant and a potential offender, and although this certainly has its value, especially when we examine closely all the means available for introducing remedies and correction, still the role of the situation is usually thereby neglected. (59)

A final general point about territoriality. In considering the minor situational and egocentric preserves of the self - the respect shown for them and the defenses employed of them - we are led to deal with what is somehow central to the subjective sense that the individual has concerning his selfhood, his ego, the part of himself with which he identifies his positive feelings. (60)

Supportive Interchanges (62)

Ritual is a perfunctory, conventionalized act through which an individual portrays his respect and regard for some object of ultimate value to that object of ultimate value or to its stand-in. (62)

In his famous analysis of religion, Durkheim divided ritual into two classes: positive and negative. The negative kind involves interdictions, avoidance, staying away. It is what we consider when we look at the preserves of the self and the right to be let alone. Positive ritual consists of the ways in which homage can be paid through offerings of various kinds, these involving the doer coming close in some way to the recipient. The standard argument is that these positive rites affirm and support the social relationship between doer and recipient. Improper performance of positive rites is a slight; of negative rites, a violation. (63)

Interpersonal ritual in our secular society has a special bearing on Durkheim’s distinction between positive and negative rites. (63)

First, as Durkheim could not have expected, current work on territoriality and personal preserves allows us to describe negative rites in very close detail, and not as an occasional restriction, but as a central organizational device of public order. (63)

Second, interpersonal rituals have a dialogistic character, and this differently impinges on positive and negative rites. When a ritual offering occurs, when, that is, one individual provides a sign of involvement in and connectedness to another, it behooves the recipient to show that the message has been received, that its import has been appreciated, that the affirmed relationship actually exists as the performer implies, that the performer himself has worth as a person, and finally, that the recipient has an appreciative, grateful nature. (63)

This essay will be concerned with this positive interpersonal ritual, that is, with supportive acts, not avoidant ones. These positive rites are apparently more important for relations between persons who know each other (“personal” relationships, broadly defined) than for anonymous ones. As suggested, these acts have been surprisingly little studied - certainly hardly at all in our Western society, in spite of the fact that it would be hard to imagine a more obvious contemporary application of the analysis recommended by Durkheim and Radcliffe-Brown. (65)

II (65)

One approach to the study of supportive ritual is to bring together phenomenally different acts that seem to have some sort of formal feature in common, some sort of shared interpersonal theme. One example might be cited: the ritualizations of identificatory sympathy. The needs, desires, conditions, experiences, in short, the situation of one individual, when seen from his own point of view, provides a second individual with directions for formulating ritual gestures of concern. (65-66)

A second approach to the study of supportive ritual is to try to isolate specialized functions, the assumption being that although all of these rites serve to support social relationships, this can be done at different junctures and in different ways, and these differences provide a means of distinguishing classes of these rituals. (67)

Ratificatory rituals also present another side. The individual can take many steps that represent self-determined claims to altered and desired status, and when he does, ratificatory rituals may be provided him, not so much to establish a link between the new and the old as to confirm that the new presentation of self is accepted and approved; and this support is the more owed the more the claim is doubtful. (67-68)

An examination of the conduct of individuals who have experienced a sharp change in their social personage throws light on the relativity of “contactability.” The greater the change in the self of a person, the further he can be physically from those whom he yet defines as close enough for the telling. And often a careful order of telling will be required, with those “closest” being told first, and so on, so that the flow of information and ratification rituals nicely reflects the relational structure of the individual’s social world. Note that in case of deep change, all an individual’s close others may have to be allowed to reconfirm their relationship to him before he is able to reestablish some degree of ritual ease. He will have to check his network out, often by engineering contact that can be given a less delicate apparent purpose. (69)

III (69)

To further consider the themes and functions of supportive rituals, some attention must be given to a concept that is widely used in the study of interaction but rarely defined: “social contact.” In the fullest sense, contact can be said to occur when individuals simultaneously address themselves to one another, and this is simultaneously known and known to be known. Face-to-face orientation is typically involved. Typically, too, the contact forms part of something more complex, namely, a social encounter involving an exchange of words or other recognition rituals and the ratification of mutual participation in an open state of talk. (69-70)

There are three general circumstances in which contact occurs and thereby supportive ritual becomes possible. First, there are sober or non-ceremonial reasons for making contact, namely, business at hand that requires the participants of a relationship to get in touch. At these moments, supportive rituals can (although they need not) be performed in passing, as it were, with so very little additional convenience that participants may find that it is hard to find reason for not doing so. Second, contact can occur fortuitously when the parties to the relationship make independent but simultaneous use of the same streets, service establishment, public transportation, and the like, or when they find themselves participating in the same social occasion. As is said, the individuals may happen upon, bump into, or come across each other. (Of course, with care, social contact can often be avoided during these various comings together, but not always tactfully.) Finally, contact can occur because the avowed and controlling purpose of one or both of the individuals is to perform a supportive ritual to the other. (71-72)

These three bases of contact - business, accident, and ceremony - provide not only reasons for being in touch but also rationales, that is, conventionally recognized understandings, each with its own range of appropriate applications. Each basis of contact, then, can provide the given or apparent reason for contact when indeed one of the other two bases actually exists. And, of course, an individual giving one reason may correctly or incorrectly suspect he is suspected of really having another. (72)

IV (73)

Given these considerations of relationships and contact, a special focus is possible in examining positive interpersonal rites. We can look at the functionally defined class of supportive rituals of which instances appear to be found in every human society and not a few animal ones: what English speakers call a greeting. Indeed, our own term (along with its Western language equivalents) seems so widely and closely applicable that a technical literature concerning both man and animals is coming to be built upon it. (73)

The initial description of greeting practices is, then, fairly easy. However, closer analysis exposes a multitude of complicating issues, requiring us to shift from an everyday term to a technical one. Middle-class American practice can serve as a starting point. (75)

1. When two acquaintances pass close by each other on their separate daily rounds in consequence of what is seen as the routing intersecting of their activities, they are likely to exchange “passing greetings,” often without otherwise pausing. (75)

2. When two individuals who are favorably disposed to each other by virtue of acquaintanceship and/ or mutually desired dealings come together in talk, they often mark its beginning with an exchange of salutations; in short, they greet each other. (76)

3. Let us retrace our steps for a moment. Once we have seen that conversational encounters often begin with a greeting, it should not be hard to see that when they come to be terminated, a supportive ritual will again occur, namely, some form of farewell display performed during leave-taking. (79)

4. Taken together, greetings and farewells provide ritual brackets around a spate of joint activity - punctuation marks as it were - and ought therefore to be considered together. More generally, greetings mark a transition to a condition of increased access and farewells to a state of decreased access. It is possible, then to employ a single definition to cover both greetings and farewells: they are ritual displays that mark a change in degree of access. (79)

V. (80)

Having proposed the lay term “greeting” to the concept “access ritual,” let us examine some of the things that can be said about this behavior. (80)

1. As is true of other arrangements within the domain of public order, the expectation that an access ritual will be performed by a certain person at a certain moment establishes a time-person slot such that anything issuing from him at that moment can be very closely and imaginatively read for a functional equivalent of an access ritual. (80)

2. Although I have classed various greeting together, it is obvious that a significant difference exists among them. The “Hi” one laconically employs when passing a neighbor each day would not be appropriate, indeed would be a sign of trouble in a relationship, if extended to someone known to have been away a long time or known to have been a great distance away and cut off from contact. Instead of “Hi’s,” “Hello’s” would probably be exchanged, followed by a spate of grooming talk. The restoration of one self to another self would have to be celebrated. (82)

In any case, it must be admitted that rituals of greeting and farewell are responsive not merely to the issue of access but also to the kind of ritual license binding the performers; thus, presumably “Hi” would not be appropriate coming from a subordinate to a very sacred official, even though the two parties enjoyed an environment in which contact between them was, and was known to be, frequent. (83)

3. As suggested earlier, the implication is that in many cases an appreciation of the probability and costs of contact is built into a relationship, and, in consequence, any return to a wonted ease of contact upon termination of distancing circumstances warrants special celebration. (83-84)

4. Another issue. When accessibility is about to shift markedly in either direction - typically involving geography - parties to a relationship may make special arrangements to come together for a sociable period just to mark the transition. Thus whenever close friends newly find themselves in the same country, region, city, or neighborhood, they will often make a point of getting in touch, directly or by phone or mail, in order to mark the fact. (85)

5. Access ceremonies of the extended kind exhibit a marked way what is often found in brief salutations also, namely, a division in ceremonial labor: the division between guest and host. Leave-takers typically leave someone who remains to represent the prior social world, and those newly arriving are typically in a guest or visitor relation to those amongst whom they newly come...In any case, we are to see that an opening greeting may take the asymmetrical form of a welcome, just as a closing salutation can take the asymmetrical form of a “well-go,” involving a nice-to-have-had-you on one side and a thanks-for-everything on the other. (86)

6. Access ceremonies held in private homes have a relatively troublesome feature. To greet someone in one’s house who has recently come from far away is not to have availed oneself of prior opportunities that necessarily occurred when he came within practical reach. (86)

7. Saying that greetings come at the beginning of increased access and farewell at the end, does not cover all the structural differences between these two rituals. Another is suggested here. Since a greeting marks the initiation of a period of easier contact, the participants may be concerned to constrain their enthusiasm so that a misleading indication of what is to be expected will not occur. Closing salutations figure differently. Since the participants can assume that they soon will be less available to each other, at least for a time, the way is opened for supportive accesses which otherwise might create burdensome anticipations - a concern which often inhibits individuals from treating their associates too well. (87)

8. In the context of this difference between greetings and farewells, we can properly see another. In the main, greetings are oriented to the lapsed time of no contact that is now terminated, and once these rituals are performed, their significance cannot be undercut. A second and third recontacting following close on the first can carry a little reflected warmth as a means of preventing embarrassment to the initial greeting. And should anticipated contact fail to occur for extraneous reasons, disappointment can be felt, and there the matter can rest. (88)

9. There is yet another difference between greetings and farewells that is worth considering. The display owed a close friend at his departure upon a long and perilous voyage is nicely balanced in its way by what is owed him upon his safe return; the same balance is found between the muted greeting of two neighbors when stopping for a back-fence chat and the muted farewells they exchange upon termination of the small talk. Indeed, it might be thought that for every type of greeting there is a corresponding type of farewell. But this is not the case, and the reason is supplied by a very obvious feature of relationships. For relationships must begin and end. They can begin with a social introduction, and when they do, this greeting-like ritual must necessarily be light because there is yet hardly any relationship to warrant something deeper - at least ordinarily. Relationships can end through a process of very gradual attenuation, but they can also end violently, either because of bad feelings or because circumstances such as death or geography are about to make the participants totally inaccessible to each other. In these latter cases, a farewell can occur that marks the simultaneous termination of a moment or two of being in touch and the relationship that made being in touch in that way possible. The poignancy of such a ritual hardly has a parallel or opposite expression in what can occur in greetings. (90)

10. A last difference. Preparation for a greeting can be done at one’s ease, since the person to be greeted is not then present to examine the preparatory effort and the feelings generated by having to engage in it. Preparation for a farewell can be a much more delicate operation, since one party may be less inclined than the other to get on with the inevitable, thereby obliging the other party to instigate the process in advance by cues that are effective but not blatant. (91)

VI (91)

I would like to add two concluding points about supportive rituals. The first concerns the category in general. Although it was suggested that positive ritual tends to be restricted to individuals in a personal relationship, there are significant exceptions; the possibility of giving and receiving free gods does bind those who are anonymously related. But here we must always expect to find a potential conflict between the provision of minor services to unacquainted others and the obligation to keep one’s distance. (91)

The second point, the final one. From the fact that greetings are found among many of the higher primates, as well as in any number of preliterate societies and all civilized ones, it would be easy to conclude that something like access rituals are universally found in societies. But, of course, universals are exactly what good ethnography brings into doubt. (93)

[4] Remedial Interchanges (95)

I. Norms.

A social norm is that kind of guide for action which is supported by social sanctions, negative ones providing penalties for infraction, positive ones providing rewards for exemplary compliance. The significance of these rewards and penalties is not meant to lie in their intrinsic, substantive worth but in what they proclaim about the moral status of the actor. Social sanctions themselves are norms about norms - techniques for ensuring conformance that are themselves approved. It is to be added that sanctions can be organized or diffuse, to use Radcliffe-Brown’s terminology, or formal or informal, to use current terms: formal when a specialized agency that has been officially delegated the sanctioning task acts in due response to a schedule of sanctions; informal when the work is done locally, largely by the very person whose concerns have been jeopardized or by those who personally sympathize with him, the sanction itself taking a rough, ready, and changing form. (95-96)

Norms presumably can be classified according to the sort of sanction attaching to them. Formal sanctions sustain regulations, informal sanctions what are sometimes thought of as social pressures. Regulations themselves have been divided into two parts: law, the regulation of behavior that draws upon the power and authority of the state, and rules, namely, norms enforced by an authorized agent, but one whose authority comes from some organization less inclusive than the state - an interesting distinction except that “rules” is too useful a term to define as anything other than synonymously with norms. (96)

Social norms are almost always couched in general terms, as if applying to a particular event because the event is one instance of a class to which the rule applies. Any deviation, then, on any one occasion when the rule is supposed to apply can give the impression that the actor may be delinquent with respect to the whole class of events. And any compliance can carry assurance regarding the actor’s handling of all other events that come under the rule. (97)

Underlying these bases of efficacy is the fundamental notion of responsibility - in law raising the issue of what is called the mental element. (98)

There are several senses in which the term “responsibility” is employed, and hence there can be several elements that enter any particular use of the term. There is the responsibility of immediate causation, in the sense that Mrs. O’Leary’s cow can be said to have caused the Chicago fire. There is responsibility for compensation, in the sense that she whose cow starts a fire might be sued to recover costs even when it appears that an average person could not be expected to manage a cow so as to totally avoid such possibilities - the conception in law of strict liability or “absolute responsibility without fault.” There is the responsibility consequent on acting “knowingly,” here meant to involve the notion that the actor was aware of the side effects of his act, reasonably able to desist from performing the act, but yet nevertheless went ahead and exercised self-volition or will to complete his act. (The implication is that although the individual’s main purpose was other than to bring about the event in question, he was ready to see it occur as a by-product of his actual intent.) Finally, there is the responsibility of controlling intention, in which the consequences in question are the ones the actor predominately had in mind to bring about. When the effects are evil, the term “willful” is sometimes used to describe the intent, and malice is imputed. (98)

The kind of responsibility we will be concerned with might be called moral. Involved are the notions that he who fails to guide himself by a particular rule has done so at best because of momentary lapse, as worst because of faulty character, and that although he has not conformed, he is capable of doing so, should have desired to conform, and, in any case, ought now to conform. Note that this sense of the term responsibility is intrinsically diffuse since it combines into one concept the notion of why the individual acted as he did, how he could have acted, how he should have acted, and how in the future he ought to act. It is as though the concept itself somehow were designed to bind users to a belief that a single issue is at stake, when, in fact, essentially disparate elements are involved. (99)

II Social Control (105)

The traditional view of social control seems to derive from classrooms, courtrooms, and other places where those in charge can foster a parental impression: that the individual has the option of adhering to the rules or concealing violation and that if he does neither, he will be plucked out of his situation and made to pay the consequence, the two perversions of justice envisaged being his escaping apprehension of paying for a crime he did not commit. (105)

We start, then, with norms and the process of social control whereby infractions are discouraged. We end by seeing that in the realm of public order it is not obedience and disobedience that are central, but occasions that give rise to remedial work of various kinds, especially the provision to corrective readings calculated to show that a possible offender actually had a right relationship to the rules, or if he seemed not to a moment ago, he can be counted on to have such a relationship henceforth. Obviously, of course, this arrangement introduces flexibility; did it not exist, public life would become hopelessly clogged with the commission of minor territorial offenses and their adjudication - indeed, our present articulation of the territories of the self would become quite unworkable. (107)

III Remedial Work (108)

In order to understand remedial work, I think it is useful to assume that the actor and those who witness him can imagine (and have some agreement regarding) one or more “worst possible readings,” that is, interpretations of the act that maximize either its offensiveness to others or its defaming implications for the actor himself. This ugliest imaginable significance I shall call the “virtual offense.” This name is selected because the remedial activity that follows a possible offensive act very often can be understood best by assuming that the actor has these worst possible readings in mind as that which he must respond to and manage. Note that the virtual offense has largely a cautionary effect, detailing what everyone concerned must be careful to avoid confirming. It should be added that to speak of a virtual offense requires speaking of a “virtual offender,” the individual most likely to be perceived as the party at fault, and a “virtual claimant,” the individual who is the most obvious choice for he whose claims have been infringed. (108-109)

The function of remedial work is to change the meaning that otherwise might be given to an act, transforming what could be seen as offensive into what can be seen as acceptable. This change seems to be accomplished, in our Western society at least, by striking in some way at the moral responsibility otherwise imputed to the offender; and this in turn seems to be accomplished by three main devices: accounts, apologies, and requests. (109)

1. Accounts: The nature of accounts has been considered somewhat by students of law in connection with the issue of defenses, pleas, the mitigation of offenses, and the defeasibility of claims. Law, then, provides the beginning of an analysis; its weakness for us is its concern with arguments of an extended verbal kind made considerably after the event and in regard to relatively major offenses. (109)

First, the offender can introduce a “traverse” or “joinder,” arguing that the act he is accused of committing did not in fact occur. Or he can grant the occurrence of the offensive act but argue that he himself had nothing to do with its happening, that, indeed, the wrong person has been accused. (109)

Second, there are acts that the individual admits to doing, admits to foreseeing the adverse consequences of (or agrees that although he didn’t foresee the consequences he would have proceeded even if he had), but claims that the circumstances were such as to make the act radically different from what it appears to have been, and that, in fact, he is not really at fault at all. (109-110)

Third, the putative offender can agree that the act occurred and that he did it but present the mitigation that he was ignorant and unforeseeing, excusably so, and could not reasonably be asked to have acted so as to forestall it. (110)

Fourth, there are pleas that claim reduced responsibility by virtue of reduced competence, the understanding often being that although the actor is guilty of something, it is guilt for being incompetent and not guilt for the specific deed resulting therefrom. (111)

Finally, at the weakest of pleas, he can admit that he was fully competent at the time to appreciate the consequence of his act, that he was easily able to desist from performing it, that he would have desisted had he known what was to occur, but that he was indefensibly unmindful for his act, the more fully it will define him for others. (112)

2. Apologies. Although accounts have been treated at considerable length in the literature, especially, as suggested, in the legal literature, apologies have not; yet they are quite central. An apology is a gesture through which an individual splits himself into two parts, the part that is guilty of an offense and the part that dissociates itself from the delict and affirms a belief in the offended rule. (113)

In its fullest form, the apology has several elements: expression of embarrassment and chagrin; clarification that one knows what conduct had been expected and sympathizes with the application of negative sanction; verbal rejection, repudiation, and disavowal of the wrong way of behaving along with vilification of the self that so behaved; espousal of the right way and an avowal henceforth to pursue that course; performance of penance and the volunteering of restitution. (113)

As suggested, apologies represent a splitting of the self into a blameworthy part and a part that stands back and sympathizes with the blame giving, and, by implication, is worthy of being brought back into the fold. This splitting is but one instance, and often a fairly crude one, of a much more general phenomenon - the tendency for individuals when in the immediate presence of others to project somehow a self that then is cast off or withdrawn from. In the case of apologies, there is usually an admission that the offense was a serious or real act. This provides a contrast to another type of splitting, one that supports an account, not an apology, in which the actor projects the offensive act as something not to be taken literally, that is, seriously, or after the act claims that he was not acting seriously. (113-114)

3. Two principal forms of remedial work have been considered: accounts and apologies. Although both may occur, as we shall see, before the virtual offense has taken place, they characteristically are seen as occurring of requests; these typically occur before the questionable event or, at the latest, during its initial phases. (114)

A request consists of asking license of a potentially offended person to engage in what could be considered a violation of his rights. The actor shows that he is fully alive to the possible offensiveness of his proposed act and begs sufferance. At the same time he exposes himself to denial and rejection. The recipient of the request thus clearly is presented with the possibility of making an offer, one that would allow the suppliant’s needs. An offer, in short, is stimulated. The value to the potential offender of doing this is based, of course, upon the character of offers. (114)

An offer is not a remedial ritual but a supportive one, albeit a special kind. Although most supportive acts entail some penetration of the recipient’s preserves (and can be thought presumptuous for this reason), offers very often involve penetration of the maker’s preserves, the recipient’s territoriality being less at issue. The fact that offers are possible reflects a basic organizational principle in social life. The assumption is that when a violation is invited by he who ordinarily would be its victim, it ceases to be a violation and becomes instead a gesture of regard performed by this person. (114)

Just as a right relation to the rules must be established in matters so monumental that this seems hopeless, so, too, a right relationship must be established no matter how minute the issue is. This is but another way of saying that regardless of the substantive character of the offense, much the same sort of ritual work must be done. As suggested, a single ritual idiom of remedial moves must be called on whether a toe has been accidentally stepped on or a destroyer accidentally sunk. It therefore follows that in occasions of face-to-face interaction in which many minor, potential delicts arise, ritual performances will be very frequent; and frequent they are, no matter how perfunctory. (118)

Dialogue (118)

When an individual makes a request, it is plain that he will need a reply of some kind from those to whom his plea is addressed so that he may learn whether or not it has been received, and if so, whether or not it has been granted. Similarly, when the individual provides an account or makes an apology, he becomes needful of the addressee’s providing a comment of some kind in return; for only in this way can he be sure that his corrective message has been received and that it has been deemed sufficient to reestablish him as a proper person. (As suggested, in the division of ritual labor, the offender himself would hardly seem to be the person to vest with this power, else the ritual work be foregone entirely or continued too long; in any case, the sender of a message cannot be the one to say that it has been received. In fact, indicating that enough ritual work has been done is vested in the one party safe to invest in - the offended. If the offended has been satisfied, then surely things have been set to rights.) In brief, a reply allows a request to be granted, an account to be credited, an apology to be proven sufficient, and in all these cases, an acknowledgement to be made that the remedial message has been clearly received. (119)

Activity of this sort has interesting properties. First, although it is convenient to speak of statements and replies (as I shall), and although verbal utterances are often employed, it is not communication in the narrow sense of that term that is at the heart of what is occurring. Stands are being taken, moves are being made, displays are being provided, alignments are being established. Where utterances are involved, they are “performative.” Mutually relevant figures are being cut. A ceremony occurs, something closer to a minuet than to a conversation. (119-120)

Second, if we take as the controlling criterion that close relevance to a particular offense must be involved, then a single exchange is not necessarily all that can figure. The reply to the first move may require or allow the first mover to provide a counter-reply, which itself then becomes the final action that is specifically oriented to the initial virtual offense. (120)

Third, in many cases - although by no means all - it can be expected that the termination of the dialogue will mark a state of moral pacification of the parties involved, allowing the troublesome matter at hand to be dropped and other business to be attended to. Or if misgivings remain, at least some sort of show can be sustained that matters have been put to right. (120)

Fourth, the dialogue is complicated structurally by the fact that each participant must address himself not only to the virtual offense, but also to his own role and the role of the other as participants in a system of control through which corrective work can be handled reasonably. (120)

The final point. Although offenses and their dialogic remedies can occur whenever individuals have dealings with each other, they are very likely to occur when these dealings are face-to-face. Furthermore, these concerns are apt to occur in connection with situational and egocentric preserves, although fixed territories can cause trouble, too. (120-121)

Body Gloss (122)

What we have considered thus far about remedial work assumes by and large, that the offender’s remedial effort is directed to a particular other, typically the party virtually offended. Something like a dialogue is involved whether the speakers are in each other’s immediate presence or negotiating by telephone or mail. (122)

Body gloss, then is a means by which the individual can try to free himself from what otherwise would be undesirable characterological implications of what it is he finds himself doing. We must expect every variety of example. A boy taking his girl into an amusement part picture booth, alive to the fact that the booth is seen as a place where couples go to neck, elaborately goes to the change booth for change and holds the necessary quarter up high by means of two fingers, so anyone present will see that his intended use of the booth is innocent. (129-130)

Underlying the variety of bodyglosses, some distinctive themes can be detected, each corresponding to a basic norm of conduct which the individual must sustain lest he be thought wanting in some fundamental way. Three of these themes will be considered here. (130)

1. Orientation Gloss: When an individual is present with others, he often feels obliged to be engaged in some recognizable activity patently occasioned by objectives defined as the official ones for that time and place. (129-130)

2. Circumspection Gloss: When an individual finds that his action may be construed as an encroachment or threat of some kind, he often provides gestural evidence that his intentions are honorable - illustrated in the use of scanning to cover staring, which has already been mentioned. (132)

3. Overplay Gloss: When in the presence of others, the individual constucts himself so as to appear to be acting under no severe constraint, and consequently, to be more or less in charge of himself...Given the direction his bodily expression would take if the constraint were overpowering, the individual throws himself into what would thus become of him, but he does so in an unserious manner, thereby covering any signs of real constraint by much larger unserious ones of the same kind. (134-135)

The Structure of the Remedial Interchange (138)

1. It appears that three different elements are involved in the incident. First, as already suggested, are the virtual considerations: offense, offender, and victim...Second, is the ritual work that is performed in the situation...Third is the “deed,” the act - real, not virtual work that is performed in association with it, this work functioning to modify the worst possible implications of what in fact has occurred. A deed, then, is an act whose meaning is addressed by ritual work that is designed to establish what this meaning will be, the work itself being oriented to a worst possible reading of the deed; it is an act claimed as something not to be seen in any light other than the one provided by the remedial activity. In the incident under question, the deed is the striking of one foot by another, and the reading that is pressed is that it was an unintentional act expressing minor clumsiness, for which the actor is sorry. (139)

2. The ritual work described allows the participants to go on their way, if not with satisfaction that matters are closed, then at least with the right to act is if they feel that matters are closed and that ritual equilibrium has been restored. If any discontent remains within either part, presumably it will have to be expressed or exhibited at some other time. In other words, after the ritual work, the incident can be treated as though it were closed. So the “round” that has occurred is also a complete interchange. (140)

3. It would seem that instead of providing an apology, the virtual offender could play through the sequence by providing an account (“Have to catch that train”), or a request (“May I get through?)”, or a combination of two or three (“sorry, may I get through, I have to catch a train.”, and that at some level on analysis, these function in exactly the same way as does an apology. Instead, then, of speaking of an apology (or an account or a request), we might speak of a “remedy,” designating by this term what is common to the way in which the three ritual moves function in the remedial dialogue. (140)

4. It is apparent that when the victim provides a sign that the remedy offered by the offender is sufficient, then this places the offender under some obligation to show gratitude, or thankfulness, this counting as a third basic move in the remedial sequence. (141)

5. Between the first round in the remedial cycle (remedy and relief), and the second (appreciation and minimization) is a shift in concern from the issue of the norm that was violated to the way the participants handle their management infractions. Note, too, that between the first and second round there is in effect a rule of attenuation, a rapid diminution of ritual activity associated with the ritually relevant event. Relief creates the need for appreciation; the latter creates the need for minimization. (143)

6. Until now, the discussion has tacitly assumed that a turn at talking (what in linguistics is sometimes called, with unclear warrant, an “utterance”) and a ritual move are much the same, all of what an individual does and says during his turn at bat constituting one ritual move. But when we examine actual turns at talking, this often proves not to be the case...What we appear to have here are turns at talk, each of which involves more than one ritual move of an interchange in progress. (144)

7. The remedial interchanges thus f