Goffman, Erving

Erving Goffman's (1922–82) understanding of the interaction order as a social accomplishment has contributed significantly to insights into social and organizational life. Goffman offers detailed observation of human activity, the minutiae of everyday life, and the norms that inform its conduct. He shows how the fragile accomplishment of social interaction is continually maintained through reciprocal exchange and an adherence to “traffic rules” that guide and monitor the actions and reactions of those involved. Goffman has contributed to understanding the interactional abilities of people, the social stage upon which such interaction is performed, and people as active social actors.

Goffman presents the ritual of everyday social interaction as something of a feat. It is a social process that relies upon participants monitoring and regulating their conduct and others' conduct in order to achieve the “socialized trance” of spontaneous involvement. There is human effort and sustained activity involved in achieving the order of interaction. Goffman shows how, as members of society, people learn to manage different situations [Page 338]with the use of the appropriate face work. Often, these learned social skills become habitual and standardized practices, and thus require very little effort on behalf of actors. Social actors are able to comply effortlessly with the rules of each situation or what Goffman would call the “minor traffic rules of interaction.” Goffman's analogy of social action as performance is a useful way of describing how people manage themselves in social encounters, and it brings to light the realization that these performances have become extremely polished. There are mutual responsibilities of communication, whereby those involved not only constantly monitor their conduct but also monitor the conduct of others, thus sustaining the predictability of much of day-to-day social life. Many routines are tactfully carried out as a means of saving one's face or that of another, and people reflexively adjust their performances accordingly. Without this social performance, actors would appear to exist in a cynical world of self-concerned agents when, for Goffman, the saving of face and the corresponding sense of self are sacred things. This continuous monitoring and treatment of fellow interactants with ritual care produces and reproduces a moral order: The aim may be to save face, but the effect is to save the situation and the “ritual structure of the self.”

Though Goffman's observances took place in a different era, his insights are just as relevant in today's more complex mass society, where there is no commitment to any particular rule book and the self must be fragmented in order to meet the challenge of diverse audiences. Conditions of late capitalism may have damaged the relations of trust upon which the continued existence of the interaction order depend; nevertheless, it is not destroyed, but re-ordered, and people are ever more sensitive to the process and outcome. Despite or because of shifting social boundaries, social interaction can be viewed as a social system with what Goffman described as its own “heroes and its own villains.” The heroes are those who consistently engage in face-saving activity; the villains are less mutually responsive. In all arenas of social life, there will be those who aggressively manipulate the rules of social exchange for personal gain, or may not invest in the required level of mutual face work. Interaction becomes strategic, and interactants do not fulfill the reciprocal obligations of the interaction order and can be viewed as performers who appear to present themselves in a false manner.

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