If the individual life is an empty piece of paper, at its beginning, than no one, except the owner, has right of sketching it. While today the majority of humans agree on that by accepting democracy as a way of living in modern era, the people who have doing “different” than others are being pushed aside from the society. Goffman referred it as “stigma”; immediate discrediting and “absolute” re-identification with your “deviancies”. But why this happens in a way that it does? Freud puts it the argument that, civilization (Kultur) has discontents, which I agree. We are coming together in order to survive and benefit from each other, and many times those who wants to benefit more stigmatizes the “others” –no matter who they are, what they are, where they are.
In my opinion, there is nothing worse and inhuman than labeling individuals’ life only from a single dimension and obligating them to live according to the frames of their labels and seeing it as “natural”, if we speak about modern democratic way of living. I would have been chosen to be a homosexual, but that would be only one single thing in my whole life. I am still a leftist sociology student living in Turkey who likes to make trips around world, occasionally speaks about politics, and hates fruit cakes. It is my freedom to identify myself with any of these characteristics of mine because these are my choices; they are not dictated to me. It is these choices and their positioning and organizing in the social life what we call as “self” or identity. Then how do we become our choices?
In terms of sexuality, if it develops as we socialize, then there many of “choices” that is to say, it is not because I thought being straight would be fun, but my decision went through a process; therefore has its own dynamism as we internalize them. However, when these choices are vastly unaccepted and over-problematized, than the real essence of the action within our choices disappears and substitutes with the manifestations of “existence” and respect. Then our identification becomes the matter of politics. For Weeks, this is “strange”.
It is already so strange to carry weapons to “protect” your privacy in your neighborhood and keep people away from your property, while you meant to live in a society to benefit from civilization. Also, killing three women per day is strange, seeing homosexuals as “defected” is strange, ruling a country for generations arbitrarily is strange, making war overseas in the name of brining democracy is strange and making IQ test for the ones who wants citizenship from your country is strange in order to benefit from civilization. But the real strangeness lies here: these all are products and dictates of patriarchy which gives us bad faiths about many people.
micro sociology etiketine sahip kayıtlar gösteriliyor. Tüm kayıtları göster
micro sociology etiketine sahip kayıtlar gösteriliyor. Tüm kayıtları göster
21 Eylül 2011 Çarşamba
Self, Mind, Hitler, Society: Goffman's Stigma
The personality of the individuals and their unique selves are often constituted by the society, for many sociologists. Therefore, individuals, since they know the rules of the “game”, adjust their personality to the society in order to live together. Yet, this process of adjustment is a quest to create “ideal-types” in the society, then, the ones who do not success (willingly or unwillingly) in this process are stigmatized. Since, all of our actions, beliefs and roles are being judged according to the “perfectly, correctly construction” principle (the perfectness and correctness are defined according to the “dynamic” norms of the society), ones having mental, physical or ethno-religious differences are stigmatized. The reaction of others to these “deviations” destroys the normal identity of stigmatized person and because the reaction is received repeatedly it is considered as a process –just like the self–.
Michel Foucault’s bio-power seemed to me very connected to this idea of stigma. Industrial capitalism brought “efficiency” to our life as a main target to achieve. In this respect, standard, controllable, productive and consumer individuals have been “normalized” by the bio-power. For instance, for many nations “long-living, white, ‘protestant’, middle class man” is a model in their discourses. This legitimizes the disapproval or marginalization of any other persons who do not fit in these criteria.
In my opinion, the Holocaust was the ultimate form of stigma; millions of people killed because of being “different” than Aryan race, and millions more were killed being “not proper” Aryan. But, this article shows something beyond this unfortunate illustration, that is; all societies do actually have some “Hitler feelings” and will of stigmatizing. Two lessons we should learn from stigma, bio-power and Holocaust: first; we always have to look at what and who is behind the “normative, normal, and ideal”. Second; individuals have the same power as the ones who constituted “normal”, each individual can resist unless there is full and absolute control among them.
Michel Foucault’s bio-power seemed to me very connected to this idea of stigma. Industrial capitalism brought “efficiency” to our life as a main target to achieve. In this respect, standard, controllable, productive and consumer individuals have been “normalized” by the bio-power. For instance, for many nations “long-living, white, ‘protestant’, middle class man” is a model in their discourses. This legitimizes the disapproval or marginalization of any other persons who do not fit in these criteria.
In my opinion, the Holocaust was the ultimate form of stigma; millions of people killed because of being “different” than Aryan race, and millions more were killed being “not proper” Aryan. But, this article shows something beyond this unfortunate illustration, that is; all societies do actually have some “Hitler feelings” and will of stigmatizing. Two lessons we should learn from stigma, bio-power and Holocaust: first; we always have to look at what and who is behind the “normative, normal, and ideal”. Second; individuals have the same power as the ones who constituted “normal”, each individual can resist unless there is full and absolute control among them.
“Truman Show”: Goffman and Self
Everyday action is not substance; rather it is a process in which our performing comes to seen with many other components of “play”. We use backstage to prepare ourselves for the “play”, and we shore our actions up with the help of “settings”; refers to everything besides actors in the play. Then we have the front stage; the spheres where we perform, see many audiences watching us, and where we have to impress them, understand this impression from the immediate respond from them. But unlike many plays, the audience is not passively involved in these plays; they can also change their roles with the actors during the play. So, there is a certain agreement between them on how to act and re-act in the given conditions of play which requires them to have similar “kind”. Otherwise, the whole play will be failed in the ‘problematic’ conditions due to the damage of this agreement.
Every sentence of Goffman screams the artificiality of the social actions, from another consideration; what he means by this artificiality is, in my opinion, re-manifestation of the reason of living in a society. The limitless interest of humans can only be satisfied with co-operation and companies that they form. Here he might agree with Adam Smith’s ideas on how society is formed; the people perform great effort to maintain their self-satisfaction. In this process they watch –a.k.a. create mutual interests– often unintentionally other’s performs.
The metaphor that Goffman uses is a significant “structure” of our interactions, but there are problems with this significant structure as well. Tis, I believe, really idealist way of explaining the interaction because of three reasons: firstly, his metaphor refers to a theatre located in Manhattan, not a street theatre. The way how he portrays the stage and the settings are designed in super fashion. (I really felt the sound of air-conditioning while I was reading the text) Secondly, I think not all the social inter-actions can be explained exactly with this metaphor; think about the family inter-actions you don’t need to impress the other members, because of having primitive ties with them. Last but not least, if we always interact with our kind of people in everyday life; “then how do we see the ‘other ways’?”, there he missed to mention about “the stranger” as a person who can adopt himself to different “kinds”. Even though, there are these problems with Goffman, what he says is still valid for our contemporary society.
Every sentence of Goffman screams the artificiality of the social actions, from another consideration; what he means by this artificiality is, in my opinion, re-manifestation of the reason of living in a society. The limitless interest of humans can only be satisfied with co-operation and companies that they form. Here he might agree with Adam Smith’s ideas on how society is formed; the people perform great effort to maintain their self-satisfaction. In this process they watch –a.k.a. create mutual interests– often unintentionally other’s performs.
The metaphor that Goffman uses is a significant “structure” of our interactions, but there are problems with this significant structure as well. Tis, I believe, really idealist way of explaining the interaction because of three reasons: firstly, his metaphor refers to a theatre located in Manhattan, not a street theatre. The way how he portrays the stage and the settings are designed in super fashion. (I really felt the sound of air-conditioning while I was reading the text) Secondly, I think not all the social inter-actions can be explained exactly with this metaphor; think about the family inter-actions you don’t need to impress the other members, because of having primitive ties with them. Last but not least, if we always interact with our kind of people in everyday life; “then how do we see the ‘other ways’?”, there he missed to mention about “the stranger” as a person who can adopt himself to different “kinds”. Even though, there are these problems with Goffman, what he says is still valid for our contemporary society.
I Do, Me Done: Mead's Theory of Self
According to Mead, the self is established when an individual constitutes the unity of “I” and “me” through the interaction of both as an object and subject. “Me” is a set of attitudes that are organized in the society, whereas “I” is the organism that responds to it; so that, “me” is a product of society existed before, “I” was there i.e. “I” is the reorganization of this product, co-operatively in the mind and in the society. Further, Mead clarifies his point drawing on gestures, he says that, when we are gesturing; we do the action (as “I”) and we know what the respond to our action is going to be (as “me”) and when we receive the same action from the other (as “self”).
The structure of “me” and “I” internalizing it is not I something that we have not heard before, in Durkheim’s understanding, there are social facts in all societies –norms, social structures, values– completes the harmony in the society and individuals born into these social facts, then they start to internalize these facts (especially nonmaterial ones) to become social actors.
Besides being the science of social facts, sociology is, in micro level, the science of bodies. By bodies, I mean, not the physical one but, rather the one that as in the use of “somebody, anybody or nobody”, so that; even at the smallest level what these bodies are doing, as Mead illustrated by the example of gestures, is a matter of complex and meaningful set of stories, memories, practices and so on. Therefore, they are only open to be studied in terms of these elements, further these elements must, socially, be responded by the other actors in the community. However, the both theorists lead me to ask “then what does the self-interest and the actions driven by it is standing for, if ‘me’ is that much subject?” The answer that I have is clear; the self-interest is not conceptualized here not as, the feeling that leads to selfishness, but in a greater correspondence with the responsibilities and promises of the individual’s interaction, so that is the “me” concept in Mead’s thought. This article was good for me to analyze the bigger pictures in modern societies by looking at small parts.
The structure of “me” and “I” internalizing it is not I something that we have not heard before, in Durkheim’s understanding, there are social facts in all societies –norms, social structures, values– completes the harmony in the society and individuals born into these social facts, then they start to internalize these facts (especially nonmaterial ones) to become social actors.
Besides being the science of social facts, sociology is, in micro level, the science of bodies. By bodies, I mean, not the physical one but, rather the one that as in the use of “somebody, anybody or nobody”, so that; even at the smallest level what these bodies are doing, as Mead illustrated by the example of gestures, is a matter of complex and meaningful set of stories, memories, practices and so on. Therefore, they are only open to be studied in terms of these elements, further these elements must, socially, be responded by the other actors in the community. However, the both theorists lead me to ask “then what does the self-interest and the actions driven by it is standing for, if ‘me’ is that much subject?” The answer that I have is clear; the self-interest is not conceptualized here not as, the feeling that leads to selfishness, but in a greater correspondence with the responsibilities and promises of the individual’s interaction, so that is the “me” concept in Mead’s thought. This article was good for me to analyze the bigger pictures in modern societies by looking at small parts.
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