"I think, therefore I am"

Once again sociology is doing my head in, kind of reminding me of that episode of South Park where Kyle reads a book about existence and then doesn’t exist because he doesn’t think he does, and then crazy stuff happens. Anyway, so this week we looked at the idea of Dramaturgy and what Goffman had to say about it. From the reading, Goffman suggests that we ‘act’ out our interactions as performances. Further, in every interaction that we have, we perform to the expectations which are governed by the social norms/ideals to that particular situation.

Essentially, Goffman suggests that if we look at our interactions as some sort of theatrical performance. Further, the ideas of the 'front stage' and 'back stage' emerge, and detail that we act who we want to be seen as in the 'front' and act like our 'normal' selves in the 'back'. Possibly the most helpful article ever to do with sociology comes from Adler et al, who liken this idea to that of all productions: that it is believable and the audience sees one as how they want to be seen.

An example given in the reading is how women studying at university tended to appear less intelligent than they actually were around men whom they were trying to attract. I can apply this to many aspects of my life, for example, in tutorials I try to perform as an intelligent student with something to say. Another, more comical, example comes from when I was out with my friends a few weeks ago and a girl approached me acting stupid and asked ‘do I know you?’ to which I replied, ‘No, I don’t think so’. She then said ‘we should change that’. At that point I walked away to my friends. In this situation, the girl was attempting (and horribly failing) at trying to talk to me and seem interested, however, she was just trying to get someone to buy her a drink.

So there we have it. I have rambled about my idea about dramaturgy and even understand it now!

References

Adler, P.A, Adler, P & Fontana, A, 1987 ‘Everyday Life Sociology’, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 13, pp. 217-235

Goffman, E, 1971, ‘Performances’, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Harmondsworth: Penguin, pp. 28-82