Erving Goffman’s View of “Deviance”: “Self” and “Society” as the Sources of Deviancy and Conformity

ABSTRACT

Not much has been written about Erving Goffman’s conception of “deviance”. The little that exists often mistakenly reduces it either to what I refer to in this paper as “Stigma and Mental Illness”, or diminishes its novelty by rendering it a variant of “interactionist” view of deviance. The argument of this paper is that he had a broader and novel conception of deviance. In fact, he distinguished between six interrelated types of deviance: (1) Deviance related to presentation of “self” in social interactions; (2) Deviance as lack of self-control and violation of interactional scripts; (3) Deviation from assigned social roles in the system of social stratification; (4) Social deviance, i.e., willful and unabashed violation of social order; (5) Deviation from “identity values”; (6) Deviation due to a search for excitement

Notes

¹ An account of it will be provided shortly.

² See Thomas Abrams. 2014. Re-reading Erving Goffman as an Emancipatory Disability Researcher. Disability Studies Quarterly, 34(1), http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/3434/3525 .

³ For example see Stiles and Kaplan (1996) and Skopalova (2010). See Barmaki (2017) for the meaning and origin of “labeling” theory.

⁴ For one thing, the Chicago School held an evolutionary conception of deviance; Goffman did not. See Barmaki (2017) for more details on the evolutionary meaning of deviance in the work of Chicago School members.

⁵ Those provided in present tense are my own. Those in past tense are Goffman’s.

⁶ ‘Unfocused interaction’ was an engagement in which some people did not participate in the interaction (Goffman 1967: 145).

⁷ He believed that the nature of the social structures and their practical successes were the direct results of the effectiveness of the activities of its interactional cells. These provided for such thing as the exchange of information, discussions, rationalizations, persuasions, planning, reaching agreements, and so on. These were the bases of kind and quality of social structures. However, he also believed that social organizations had broader sociopolitical impacts that could only be determined through structural analyses (e.g., functionalism or Marxism). Various types of deviance certainly could be understood from such points of views. An example was Robert K. Merton’s “Social Structure and Anomie” (1938).

⁸ This was a reason for social research that he believed would have been disgraceful to his main mentors Louis Wirth and Everett C. Hughes. As members of The Chicago School of Sociology, which emphasized pragmatic interests of social research, both were averse to Goffman’s reason for doing sociology. Hughes was Goffman’s doctoral dissertation supervisor at the University of Chicago, which he completed in 1953 (for more details see Trevino 2003). Goffman borrowed his three foundational concepts from three other School members: George H. Mead’s face-to-face interaction and symbolic communication, William I. Thomas’ “the definition of the situation”, and Charles H. Cooley’s “looking-glass self” (Scheff 2006). Goffman disavowed political aims and concerns (Cavan 2014; Zola 1983).

⁹ For example, viewing oneself as honest or courageous while in reality one is neither.

¹⁰ Such interactions were often ritualized. Examples ranged from the daily exchanges between a bank personnel, to formal exchanges between military personnel or members of a religious community (e.g., Vatican).

¹¹ This was why Goffman (1959: xi) called his method of studying social interactions ‘dramaturgical’ analysis; it treated social life as a ‘theatrical performance’. This was in line with a previous conceptual borrowing from the world of theater by sociologists: ‘social role’ (Fallers 1962: 190). Other terms that Goffman (1971: 11) used for the dramatic performances of individuals in everyday encounters were ‘“externalization”’, ‘“body gloss”’, ‘“intention display”’.

¹² An example was rejection of medication and therapy by psychiatric patients who viewed themselves as “normal”. Such acts were usually interpreted by the staff and doctors as the very sign of their sickness (abnormality, disorderliness). It seems that Goffman borrowed the term ‘discredited’ from method of participant-observation in fieldwork where it meant the discovery of the true identity of the observer (as a researcher) by the people whom s/he was observing (see Goffman 1989: 126).

¹³ There were two types of “identity”: virtual and actual. The former was the one that people attributed to somebody that they just met; it was the result of first impressions, biases, stereotypes, etc. The latter was the individual’s truer (more real) identity based on her actual social position.

¹⁴ Rejected, disapproved, and destroyed were other terms used by Goffman.

¹⁵ For example, an individual asking a coworker to lend her money (i.e., projecting herself as a “trustworthy friend of equal standing”) feels embarrassed and resentful if she is denied the loan (i.e., her projection as either a “friend”, or “trustworthy”, or of “equal standing”, or all, is discredited). The coworker’s tactful rejection (e.g., “letting the person down easy” by saying “I don’t have the money right now”) may ease the individual’s feelings of shame and resentment. Goffman (1952: 451) referred to this as ‘cooling the mark out’. The term was taken from the vernacular of professional fraudsters who through a collaborative and elaborate scheme defrauded someone (the “mark”). The key part of the scheme was to deceive the “mark” into believing that he was working with them to defraud someone else (or an organization). However, in reality the “mark” himself was the actual target. After the scam was completed fraudsters left one of their own with the “mark” to gradually allay his humiliation and anger (“cool the mark out”). The aim was to prevent him from going to the police.

¹⁶ This last one might include mandatory segregation of those who were deemed inferior. Examples were Jim Crow laws in the US during segregation, or Jewish ghettos in Nazi Germany.

¹⁷ The importance of this point for Goffman will be explained shortly.

¹⁸ For example, Hippies rejection of materialism and financial success. This particular theme, as Goffman noted, had been explored initially by Robert K. Merton in “Social Structure and Anomie” (1938).

¹⁹ Examples included the ethnic person who refused to assimilate, or the political radical that showed her objection to the system by refusing to vote.

²⁰ Those that relinquished any civil attachment and chose hobbies and other pastimes to fill their times. It indicated alienation from society.

²¹ One method of preventing stigmatization was the use of ‘disidentifiers’, i.e., use of symbols, objects, or ways of behaving, which deflected a stigma (Goffman 1963a: 93). An example was wearing of reading glasses by an illiterate person so as to deflect the stigma of illiteracy.

²² Goffman quoted in Freedman and Doob (1968: 49).

²³ Such as membership criteria of exclusive clubs. These criteria might include gender, type of profession, or amount of wealth.

²⁴ For example, an inattentive child playing in the park is considered to be a normal child. However, the same inattentive child at school is said to suffer from “Attention Deficit Disorder” characterized by hyperactivity, inattentiveness, and impulsivity.

²⁵ Goffman quoted in Burns (1992: 158).

²⁶ “Underlife” referred to the variety of unsanctioned, informal activities by the patients to skirt, thwart, or modify formal demands of the institution. Such activities were rampant in all institutions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Reza Barmaki

Dr. REZA BARMAKI teaches criminology at Center for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada).

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