Goffman Unbound!: A New Paradigm for Social Science

246 Pages·2006·5.332 MB·English

by  Thomas J. Scheff

G U !
offman nboUnd
Advancing the Sociological Imagination
A Series from Paradigm Publishers
Edited by Bernard Phillips and Harold Kincaid
Goffman Unbound! A New Paradigm for Social Science
By Thomas J. Scheff (2006)
Ritual as a Missing Link within Sociology: Structural Ritualization
Theory and Research
By J. David Knottnerus (2007)
G U !
offman nboUnd
A N P S S
ew ArAdigm for ociAl cieNce
Thomas J. Scheff
First published 2006 by Paradigm Publishers
Published 2016 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Goffman unbound! A new paradigm for social science / Thomas J. Scheff.
p. cm.
(Advancing the sociological imagination)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-59451-195-0 (hc)
1. Goffman, Erving. 2. Emotions—Sociological aspects. 3. Interpersonal
relations. 4. Microsociology. I. Title. II. Series.
HM479.G64S34 2006
301.092—dc22
2005027188
ISBN 13 : 978-1-59451-195-0 (hbk)
ISBN 13 : 978-1-59451-196-7 (pbk)
Designed and Typeset by Straight Creek Bookmakers.
Contents
Preface vii
1 Introduction: The Life and Work of Genius 1
2 The Goffman Style: Deconstructing Society and Social Science 15
3 Looking-Glass Self: Goffman as Symbolic Interactionist 33
4 Goffman’s World of Emotions 51
5 The Structure of Context: Deciphering Frame Analysis 73
6 Building an Onion: Alternatives to Biopsychiatry 93
7 What Is This Thing Called Love? The Three A’s:
Attachment, Attunement, and Attraction 111
8 Hatred as Shame and Rage? 125
9 Human Bonds: Love, Pride, and Shame 141
10 Masculinity and Emotions: The Silence/Violence Pattern 161
11 A Theory of Runaway Nationalism 183
12 Conclusion 197
References 207
Index 219
About the Author 231

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Preface
Erving Goffman, Norbert Elias, and Harvey Sacks may have been the three
most gifted sociologists of the twentieth century. Goffman’s work, how-
ever, has been little used as a resource, unlike that of Sacks and Elias. There
has been substantial commentary, but no body of Goffmanian work has
resulted. Not ignored, to say the least, but at this writing its meaning and
usefulness have not been established.
This book has three main goals. First, to explicate Goffman’s achieve-
ments more clearly and directly than has been the case so far. Second, to
show how some of them might be extended or modified to be of greater use.
Finally, to discuss some of the gaps and shortcomings, and what might be done
about them. The three parts of this book undertake these three goals.
To carry out this plan, I have called upon my earlier sketch of a
part/whole approach (1997c), and the framework developed by Bernard
Phillips (2001; Phillips et al. 2002) that emphasizes the use of interrelated
concepts. Part/whole analysis focuses on the need to link what Spinoza
called “the least parts” to the “greatest wholes.” Spinoza’s point was that
human beings are so complex that we have no chance to understand them
unless we link the smallest parts and the largest wholes. For my purposes
I have identified the least parts of human conduct as the words, gestures,
thoughts, and feelings in particular social interactions, and the greatest
wholes with social institutions and abstract theories.
Phillips’s Web of Concepts approach overlaps to some extent with
the part/whole idea, but has a somewhat different emphasis. His approach,
like mine, puts human complexity in the forefront, and also emphasizes,
like mine, the need to shuttle up and down the concrete/abstract ladder.
Phillips also urges an aspect of research that has not been explicit in my
earlier work, the need for reflexiveness, for including the researcher her- or
himself in the overall picture. Phillips’s approach differs from mine in pro-
posing the use of many conventional concepts as the basis for scholarship,
such as stratification, personality, social structure, etc. My own approach has
been to develop new concepts for each study, and to attempt to integrate
disciplines, sub-disciplines and levels of analysis.
The feature that Goffman, Phillips, and I share is the attempt to get
outside the box, beyond the conventions of our society and of social
vii
viii PrefAce
science. Although Goffman cited other scholars, most of his work was
fully original. He eschewed conventional approaches, seeking rather to
reground social science in a new language with new concepts. How did
he embark on such an odyssey?
Goffman’s main focus was what might be called the microworld
of emotions and relationships (ERW). We all live in it every day of our
lives, yet we have been trained not to notice. Since Goffman noticed it,
he was the discoverer of a hidden world. His work, if properly construed,
provides a window into that otherwise invisible place. It is important for
many reasons. For brevity I will mention only two obvious ones: First, it
is important in its own right, since it constitutes the moment-by-moment
texture of our lives. Second, it is intimately connected to the larger world;
it both causes and is caused by that world. If we are to have more than a
passing understanding of ourselves and our society, we need to become
better acquainted with the emotional/relational world.
A New Yorker cartoon conveyed the idea that we avoid knowledge
of this world. A man lying on the analyst’s couch is basically saying: “Call
it denial if you will, but frankly I think that my personal life is none of
my own damn business.”
Although humor is often based on exaggeration, the idea that our
personal lives are “none of our own damn business” comes close to the
truth of the matter, or at least more truth than poetry. The patient in the
if
~Look. call it denial you like, but I think what goes on in
my personallfft is none ofm y own damn _business. "
Source: © The New Yorker Collection 2000 Robert Mankoff from cartoonbank.com. All Rights
Reserved. Used with permission.
PrefAce ix
cartoon being a man, rather than a woman, is also significant. Men, more
than women, are trained to ignore the details that reveal the nature of
emotions and relationships. Their attention is diverted elsewhere. But both
women and men know much less about this world (for short, the ERW)
than the larger one.
Our obliviousness could be a creation of the modern urban/industrial
society. In traditional societies, the ERW was virtually the only world there
was. In modern societies there are so many duties, distractions, and diver-
sions that most of us learn to ignore the ERW, except when in crisis.
Conventional social science mostly ignores emotions and relationships
in favor of behavior and cognition. Goffman’s recognition of the existence of
an ERW is the foundation of his whole approach. He realized, at some level,
that conventional social and behavioral science was blind to the ERW, and
might as well be blind in many other arenas as well.
Following Goffman’s lead, if we are going to advance in our under-
standing of the human condition, we need to build a new approach. This
approach would not only include the ERW, but other hitherto unrecognized
structures and processes as well, such as the filigree of emotions and re-
lationships that underlies large-scale behavior, as in the case of collective
cooperation and conflict.
Limitations of Goffman’s Work
Goffman’s work is a wholesale attack on this problem: how can we make
the invisible, the backstage he sometimes called it, visible? Not that he had
all the answers. His work provides pathways for approach to only some
of the facets of the problem.1 His treatment of emotions, for example, is
crucial on embarrassment and shame, and to a much smaller extent, disgust,
but he has almost nothing to say about other important emotions, such as
fear, pride, and love. Similarly, his approach to relationships is inspired on
loneliness, disconnectedness, and alienation, but omits the opposite pole:
solidarity, secure bonds, and moments of profound unity.
Another significant problem with Goffman’s approach is his writing.
It is brilliant, suggestive, and entertaining, but also playful and teasing,
revealing and concealing. Furthermore, he never steps back to summa-
rize the implications of what he had to say, let alone to get very far in
systematizing any of it. His style violates what might be considered the
first rule of scientific and scholarly writing: the thesis should be stated
clearly, and more than once, so that there can be no mistake about the
main goal. It is customary to invoke the basic thesis at various levels of
specificity five times: in the title, abstract, first paragraph, text, and conclu-
sion. Much of Goffman’s writing provides either no thesis at all or one
that is so elliptic as to be virtually useless, if not misleading.