Outline, Week 12: Micro-Sociology (Continued)

III. Herbert Blumer (1900-1987)

A. Background and role in promoting symbolic interactionism

B. His summary of the basic premises of SI

1. Human beings act toward things on the basis of the meaning things have for them.

"In any of his countless acts--whether minor, like dressing himself, or major, like organizing himself for a professional career--the individual is designating different objects to himself, giving them meaning, judging their suitability to his action, and making decisions on the basis of that judgment. This is what is meant by interpretation or acting on the basis of symbols."

2. The meaning of things arises out of the social interaction one has with one's fellows.

"Social interaction is obviously an interaction between people and not between roles; the needs of the participants are to interpret what confronts them--such as a topic of conversation or a problem--and not give expression to their roles."

We can't just deduce interpretations from social roles... people may know what's expected but choose to modify or even defy expectations.

3. The meanings of things are handled in and modified through an interpretive process used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters.

Not only our plans and intentions but our understanding of the plans and intentions of others...

Example: the meaning of homelessness--for the homeless person, for the rest of us--and the way that may change via our interaction with a homeless person.

"These people aren't really homeless," as a student on my Chicago field trip noted.

IV. Research methods and SI: How do we investigate such a socially constructed reality?

A. A great distrust of mere facts and numbers... e.g. income under the poverty line

B. Participant-observation, in-depth interviews, life histories and autobiographies, letters

C. Clifford Geertz: how do you know when you are really understanding a different culture?

V. Garfinkel, Ethnomethodology

A. 1945 Analysis of Jury tapes... how do people decide what the rules are where formal guidelines are minimal, where they have to rely on "common sense"...

B. But isn't much of our ordinary life like that?

"In accounting for the persistence and continuity of the features of concerted actions, sociologists commonly select some set of stable features of an organization of activities and ask for variables that contribute to their stability. An alternative procedure would appear to be more economical: to start with a system with stable features and ask what can be done to make for trouble."

C. Breaching experiments... violate common expectations and see how people react...e.g. act like a guest in your own home... e.g. today's reading assignment...

D. McGraw: The UnTV and the 10 MPH Car--experiments in what he calls de-socialization (Zen sociology)...

1. Beginner's mind: "Beginner's mind is the opposite of expert's mind. The expert is so full of knowledge, facts, judgments and theories that she can't see anything new or fresh... Beginner's mind, in contrast, doesn't know in advance what it's going to see and experience... In beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in expert's mind, there are few."

2. "The experiments or ventures in desocialization... transform you, so to speak, into your own laboratory, so that you can do sociology on your own. These experiments require a certain amount of courage, societal courage, as it were, especially regarding public behavior and ordinary social norms and restraint."

3. Exercises

E. Controversial within sociology... not represented much in the mainstream journals... perhaps coming into our department through the new cultural studies minor. Here are some of the goals of that minor:

"Students will become proficient with the practice of rendering what is familiar into something strange in order to see more clearly the political, social, economic, and cultural workings of the familiar in people's everyday lives."

"Breaking the spell of the familiar "(the "natural" and the "normal") will enable students to consider strategies of mindfulness, resistance, and change. "

VI. Video: "Inside the Jury Room"... Do people simply try to fulfil their socially prescribed roles?

VII. Erving Goffman Background: anthropology/sociology and dramaturgy

Sociology-- ASYLUMS

A. TOTAL INSTITUTIONS: A Model

1. ALL ASPECTS OF LIFE IN THE SAME PLACE

2. EACH PHASE OF DAILY LIFE IN COMPANY OF LARGE # OF OTHERS

3. ALL PHASES TIGHTLY SCHEDULED

4. DRASTIC DICHOTOMY BETWEEN STAFF AND "INMATES"

5. NO FAMILY LIFE

"IN OUR SOCIETY, THEY ARE THE FORCING HOUSES FOR CHANGING PERSONS; EACH IS A NATURAL EXPERIMENT ON WHAT CAN BE DONE TO THE SELF."

B. CH. 6: "THE UNDERLIFE OF A PUBLIC INSTITUTION: A STUDY OF WAYS OF MAKING OUT IN A MENTAL HOSPITAL."

OVERALL RESEARCH PROBLEM: HOW DO PEOPLE DEFEND THEIR IDENTITIES IN A SETTING WHICH SYSTEMATICALLY "DEGRADES" THEM?

1. WARD SYSTEM

a. dfn: SYSTEM OF CONTROL IN WHICH MOST EVERYDAY RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES ARE TAKEN AWAY AND GRADUALLY RESTORED TO THOSE WHO COOPERATE WITH THE SYSTEM

b. THE MENTAL HOSPITAL OF GOFFMAN'S RESEARCH FAR MORE OF A WARD SYSTEM THAN A TREATMENT SYSTEM.

2. SECONDARY ADJUSTMENT: "Any habitual arrangement by which a member of an organization employs unauthorized means, or obtains unauthorized ends, or both, thus getting around the organization's assumptions about what he should do and get and hence what he should be"

a. DISRUPTIVE (direct challenge to the system of social order... e.g., prison riots) vs.CONTAINED (no threat to the system... more typical of mental hospitals)

b. WORK ASSIGNMENTS: APPEAR TO BE ACTIVELY EMBRACING OFFICIAL REALITY, WHILE PRIVATELY PROFITING FROM YOU WORK ASSIGNMENT. NOT JUST THE MATERIAL ADVANTAGE BUT THE IMPACT ON SELF

c. FREE PLACES = OUTSIDE STAFF SUPERVISION

d. FACILITIES: PRIVATE STORAGE PLACES, JACKET WITH BULGING POCKETS = "ONE OF THE MOST RELIABLE INDICATORS OF PATIENT STATUS"

e. ILLICIT COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

f. RITUAL SUPPLIES... E.G. NEWSPAPER, RAZOR

g. REMOVAL ACTIVITIES: THE MAN WITH THE BOOK OF BRIDGE PROBLEMS

h. ALTERNATIVE FRAMEWORK OF SOCIAL CONTROL, WITH INFORMAL REWARDS AND SANCTIONS... VERY TYPICAL OF PRISONS, MUCH LESS SO OF ASYLUMS

These secondary adjustment are particularly visible as we study an asylum or a prison, where the official reality is so stark, but Goffman also believes that by studying secondary adjustments in total institutions, we learn something important about how people resist the official reality in every institution and organization.

Conclusion: "Whenever we look at a social establishment, we find... that participants decline in some way to accept the official view of what they should be putting into and getting out of the organization and, behind this, of what sort of self and world they are to accept for themselves. Where enthusiasm is expected, there will be apathy; where loyalty, there will be disaffection; where attendance, absenteeism; where robustness, some kind of illness; where deeds are to be done, varieties of inactivity. We find a multitude of homely little histories, each in its way a movement of liberty. Whenever worlds are laid on, underworlds develop."

(One shortcoming of Goffman's choice to study a mental hospital: in many other settings, we might see more complex social cooperation in the creation of secondary adjustments.)