Goffman Unbound!

A New Paradigm for Social Science

Thomas J. Scheff, Bernard S Phillips, Harold Kincaid

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317258773
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Sociologie

"Thomas Scheff demonstrates why Goffman remains such a key figure for social scientists. Goffman may have been cautious about recognizing the role of emotions in social life, but Scheff boldly and creatively shows why the sociological and the psychological are necessarily intertwined. This is certainly a book for all serious analysts of social behaviour." Michael Billig, Nottingham University "Scheff's critical eye is equal to his subject, shrewdly appreciating Goffman's many virtues while also showing where and how Goffman's thinking needs revision and development. This original and provocative book offers a fresh interpretation of Goffman and will become a benchmark for all subsequent commentary." Greg Smith, University of Salford One of the seminal sociologists of the twentieth century, Erving Goffman revolutionized our understanding of the microworld of emotions and relationships. We all live in this world every day of our lives, yet it is virtually invisible to us. Goffman's genius was to recognize and describe this world as no one had before. The book synthesizes prior scholarly commentary on Goffman's work, and includes biographical material from his life, untangling some of the many puzzles in Goffman's work and life. Scheff also proposes ways of filling gaps and false starts. One chapter explores the meaning of the emotion of love, another of hatred. These and other new directions could facilitate the creation of a microsocial science that unveils the emotional/relational world.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The Life and Work of Genius

On First Looking into a Manuscript by Goffman

… You sloughed

Methodologies, set out to tell what oft

Is done, but ne’er well expressed. And until

Well expressed, well christened, ill seen. Gentle

GOFFMAN, so much of such seeing we owe, we know,

To thy quick quirky quizzing of our status quo.

Dell Hymes (1984)

THIS CHAPTER BEGINS WITH A REVIEW of the scholarly response to Goffman’s work, and also considers his personal reputation. I include his life for two reasons. First, because I think one part of that reputation, as an obnoxious character, casts a shadow on his work. Second, because I believe that a dispassionate consideration of links between an author’s life and work can be valuable in themselves. In earlier studies, I have tried to show that the work of a brilliant author, Goethe, for example, can be used to understand his or her own life, and that knowledge of the author’s life can help us better understand the work.¹ It can also help us understand an author’s reputation among his colleagues.

Goffman’s work has a large and appreciative following among scholars. Many of them seem to believe, as I do, that his work bears the stamp of genius, and that it contains a legacy that could lead to revolutionary changes in social science. However, there is also a mass of critical opinion, some of which finds its way into the commentary of even his most loyal admirers.

As with his work, there are also two distinct representations of Goffman’s life. In addition to published reviews, mostly favorable, there is also a shadow life that might be called the Goffman legend: stories and gossip about oddness. Although he died over twenty years ago, his behavior is still much referred to in private; there exists, at least among sociologists, what might be called an urban legend, Goffman the Character. Here I will attempt to make sense of the two versions of his life, and to relate them to his work.

Responses to Goffman’s Work

The last line of the witty poem (1984) by Hymes, above, miraculously implies much of what is to be said, at, alas, great length in these chapters. However, for the sake of argument, I will quibble with one of Hymes’s three q’s: that Goffman’s work is “quirky.” The idea that his approach is at least odd or weird is shared by a virtual army of commentators. At its most extreme, as in the case of Scheibe (2000), the widespread critique says that Goffman’s approach is “cold-eyed and sour” and other similar epithets. I will argue that Goffman’s work is extremely unusual because of its originality, but not ever “quirky,” once we understand the direction that it takes. That is, if one were to set out to reach what I think might be the main goals and consequences of Goffman’s work, one would be advised to follow an approach quite similar to his.

Erving Goffman is probably the most widely read sociologist in the history of the discipline. I say that not to take away from Durkheim, but to call attention to the diversity of his audience, which includes vast numbers of laypersons. Perhaps almost as widely cited, his work has been noted throughout the social sciences and humanities.

But the meaning of his work and therefore his legacy is by no means clear. In the 23 years since his tragically youthful death at 60, eight valuable monographs and edited volumes interpreting his work have been published in English.² Many further mentions, some of them chapter length, can be found in other volumes. But even a quick reading suggests that there is no consensus. As a review of one of the volumes (Smith 1999) suggests (Toiskallio 2000), the contributors view Goffman’s writings with “simultaneous irritation and fascination.”

One can go further if one compares the offerings in these books. There is agreement between the authors about Goffman’s felicitous style and stimulus value. But there are also grave doubts about the nature of his legacy. Most of those reviewing Goffman’s work, even the most appreciative, are at best ambivalent. Although they find much to praise, there are also many irritations, and considerable confusion.

Goffman’s critics are not ambivalent. Even though they find positive features, critics like Gouldner (1970), Psathas (1980), and Schegloff (1988) are largely dismissive. Gouldner was repelled by Goffman’s miniature scale, and by what Gouldner thought was his disinterest in power and hierarchy. Psathas and Schegloff, like many of the commentators, critics and admirers alike, found Goffman unsystematic to the point of chaos. Goffman’s approach to the main elements in social science is, to say the least, not clear.

An extended exchange on this issue can be found in the first of the four Fine and Smith (2000) volumes. Posner (Ch. 9), like many others, finds Goffman’s work enigmatic. To back up this claim, she cites several of his critics, and considers several readings of his work that she finds to be outright misunderstandings. She concludes that although often cited, Goffman’s work has little status, and even less application in the academic community.

But Oromaner (Ch. 10) challenges Posner. He argues that not only is Goffman’s work massively cited, but that he also received many honors from the academic community, and that even his critics offer praise. Posner’s response (Ch. 11) is blunt. The crucial point that Oromaner missed, she insists, is that even the praise Goffman received consisted of “left handed compliments.” Even more to the point is Posner’s argument that most of the commentary shows that his work is either not understood or misunderstood. Many reviews of Goffman’s work agree: they see his work as virtually impossible to understand or apply.

There seem to be several reasons for the problem. For one, Goffman’s prose style is incredibly involuted and complex. It is dense with meaning, innuendo, impromptu classifications, qualifications, and expansion. It is also humorous, ironic, and witty in ways that both entertain and irritate, reveal and conceal. Winkins’s (2000, 206) comment on his epistolary style is also applicable to most of his writing: “sharp, full of humour, and yet circumvoluted, ever precieux.”

As with most readers, I want to agree that Goffman’s style is “ever precious.” Yet I have a reservation that can be expressed by a passage from Auden’s poem “The Truest Poetry Is the Most Feigning”:

What but tall tales, the luck of verbal playing,

Can trick his [human beings’] lying nature into saying

That love or truth in any serious sense,

Like orthodoxy, is a reticence.

Goffman’s style was reticent. He seemed to sense how far he could go with an idea without completely losing the reader. Perhaps instead of blurting out everything he knew, he went only as far as he thought the reader would be ready for. In my view, this might be a valuable aid to communicating new ideas.

But there is also a difficulty more fundamental than mere style. Goffman seemed to revel in complexity. Not only ordinary people, but also most social science assumes that human conduct is simple enough that it can be understood in commonsense terms. For that reason, key concepts are often expressed in ordinary language, using vernacular words rather than concepts.

For example, there have been a large number of studies of alienation, and many more mentions, that have not provided a clear definition of the concept itself. Although there are standardized alienation scales, there have been few attempts to decide, conceptually, what it is that these scales are supposed to be measuring.

In 1975, Seeman reviewed studies of alienation based on standardized scales. His analysis revealed that the scales involve six different dimensions.

1. Powerlessness

2. Meaninglessness

3. Normlessness

4. Cultural estrangement

5. Self-estrangement

6. Social isolation: exclusion or rejection

Each of these categories, in turn, is also somewhat ambiguous. Powerlessness, for example, can mean a relational element, lack of actual power relative to other people, and a dispositional element, the feeling of powerlessness, whether grounded in comparison to others or not. Five of the six dimensions can refer to relational elements, but one, self-estrangement, cannot, since it is solely intrapersonal.

Furthermore, at least two of the six meanings imply emotional components: the exclusion or rejection of social isolation is a correlate of shame, as is the feeling of inadequacy that may accompany powerlessness. Seeman’s study demonstrates both kinds of confounds: dispositional vs. relational, and cognitive vs. emotional.³

It may be significant that although Seeman’s study was published over thirty years ago, no real inroads seem to have been made on clearly defining alienation, or creating specialized scales that measure only one of the six dimensions. Nor did his study slow down the creation of new, general alienation scales, or studies using standardized scales. For all practical purposes, his study has had no impact at all. The idea of alienation is quite central in sociology, yet when we use this word, we still don’t know what it is we are talking about.

Many key concepts in social science are ambiguous in a similar way. Self-esteem—easily the most studied topic in all of social science, with at least fifteen thousand studies—seems to have a similar problem. A well-known study by Leary and Baumeister (2000) implies that self-esteem scales confound dispositional and relational dimensions. And I have shown, with David Fearon (2004), that these scales also confound cognitive and emotional dimensions. There are now well over 200 standardized scales for measuring self-esteem reliably. Yet there is still no agreed-upon definition of the concept. What that means is that although all the scales are reliable, there is no way of checking their validity, since we haven’t agreed upon the meaning of what it is that is being measured. The tail is wagging the dog.

Some key concepts, such as alienation and self-esteem, involve potentially orthogonal meanings (such as individual, relational, cognitive, and emotional dimensions) confounded in what is usually thought of as a single idea. Emotion words, especially in English, are notoriously confusing. As indicated in Chapter 3, below, Goffman offered a carefully thought through and precise definition of embarrassment. Other important ideas, such as irrationality, and, as indicated in Chapter 5, context, are mere residual categories, conceptually empty boxes, because they encompass an enormously wide variety of different kinds of things. Goffman’s favorite target was the idea of an individual self, standing alone, as if there were no social context. Assumptions of simplicity hide these confusions. Goffman seemed to be trying to at least expose these basic problems, and in some cases, begin the search for remedies, as will be further discussed in the next chapter.

But introducing complexity into modern social science leads to trouble with reviewers, at least in Goffman’s case. Even his most loyal fans have complained. Two of the most detailed and appreciative commentators are Lofland (1980), reviewing the work up to and including Stigma (1963), and Manning (1980), the whole oeuvre, with special attention to a later work, Frame Analysis (1974). The overall tone of both Lofland and Manning is strongly appreciative. Yet their systematic reviews unearth features that give them pause. One that is also noted by most of the essayists is that Goffman started afresh in each book, not only not relating his new ideas to his old ones, but not even taking note of them. This practice gives rise to some confusion as to Goffman’s intent.

In his highly appreciative essay, Lofland (1980, 29) has also pointed out that the first three pages of Goffman’s article on face work contain:

3 types of face

4 consequences of being out of or in the wrong face

2 basic kinds of face work

5 kinds of avoidance processes

3 phases of the corrective process

5 ways an offering can be accepted (1955, pp. 213–15).

Manning (1980, 270) notes that later, in Frame Analysis, the following concepts “at least” are found in a nineteen-page span:

4 kinds of playful deceit

6 types of benign fabrications

3 kinds of exploitative fabrications

5 sorts of self-deception (1974, 87–116).

Perhaps Lofland and Manning are implying that so many partridges and pear trees suggest a Christmas carol more than a sociological theory.

Manning (1980, 270) goes on to complain explicitly:

Such lists of items do not always fall out so neatly in a text, they may accrue in an almost shadowy fashion. The purpose of these lists is unstated and often elusive. He does not infer or deduce from them, does not claim that these types are exhaustive, explicate the degree of kinds of possible logical interconnections between them, nor does he always relate his current efforts to previous ideas of himself or others.

It is clear from such observations that Goffman’s work does not make much, if any, contribution to theory. Other commentators have unanimously agreed that Goffman has not contributed to method or empirical evidence as these categories have come to be understood in social science. If not to theory, method, or data, where could his contribution lie? Chapter 2 proposes three vitally important contributions, all necessary before conventional science and scholarship can be applied.

Personal Reputation

Because I have been speaking for many years about Goffman’s work, formally and informally, I have heard many opinions expressed about both his work and his behavior. It often turns out that those who tell me about his behavior usually don’t have firsthand information; they are merely repeating what they heard. I won’t repeat these stories because I can’t establish the extent that they are true or false. My version of his behavior will be based on publications by Lofland and Winkin, my own encounters with Goffman, and three interviews I conducted with persons who knew him well.

In including Goffman’s life within my purview, I am following Phillips’s idea that self-reference or reflexiveness is an important part of all scholarship. Since Goffman himself did not self-reference at all, to the point of secrecy, perhaps I can remedy in part that omission.

Another inclination to include Goffman’s life comes from the tradition of the most skillful of all biographers, James Boswell. He apologized for including Samuel Johnson’s tics and odd behaviors, pleading, “Let me not be censured for mentioning such minute particulars. Everything relative to so great a man is worth observing” (1961, p. 4 of the dedication). I am happy to follow in Boswell’s footsteps.

The information about Goffman’s personal life that I have found most helpful, all things considered, has been provided by John Lofland (1984), John Irwin (personal correspondence), and Yves Winkins (2000). Lofland, like me, studied with Goffman in graduate school at Berkeley, but knew him longer and better than I did. Lofland’s article, written after Goffman’s death in 1982, provides a very favorable summary of his legacy and his life. However, it repeats some of the stories that suggest that much of Goffman’s behavior was at the very least odd or challenging, and at times cruel and wounding. Irwin’s account of the long and close relationship that he and his wife, Marsha Rosenbaum, had with Goffman makes a very similar point. Winkins published a biography in French in 1988, and is preparing an English translation and extension.

After noting that Goffman’s remarks were often quite humorous, including humor directed against himself, Lofland interprets stories of Goffman’s oddness or hostility as follows:

A theme of his behavior that was broader and more encompassing than his humor was his desire for candor and the use of penetrating remarks to cut through the banal and false surfaces in order to touch truth … Moreover...