Sociology
Copyright © The Author(s) 2010, Reprints and permissions:
http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
BSA Publications Ltd®
Volume 44(2): 213–231
DOI: 10.1177/0038038509357198
Revisiting the Total Institution: Performative
Regulation in the Reinventive Institution
■
Susie Scott
University of Sussex
A B S T RACT
This article revisits the concept of the total institution (TI), critically assessing the
extent to which it has changed from being repressively coercive to relatively voluntaristic. I propose two new concepts, the ‘Reinventive Institution’ (RI) and ‘performative regulation’, to take the debate forward.The model of the TI outlined in Goffman’s
Asylums has been (mis-)interpreted as rendering its inmates powerless, but they also
demonstrated agency through gestures of resistance. Conversely, RIs, which members
elect to join for purposes of self-improvement, appear to celebrate the subject’s
autonomy but suggest a unique form of social control based on mutual surveillance.
This performative regulation is enacted through the interaction order, as members
actively produce, negotiate and legitimate the exercise of power.
K E Y WO RD S
Goffman / interaction / performative regulation / power / self-identity / total institution
Introduction
ebates about the (late) modern self point to ontological crises of uncertainty (Marris, 1996), minimalism (Lasch, 1984) and homelessness (Berger
et al., 1973), to which we allegedly respond with reflexive projects of selfimprovement (Giddens, 1991), shaped by therapeutic discourses (Furedi, 2004;
Rose, 1998). However, scant attention has been paid to the settings in which
identities are reconstructed, the places of retreat to which we flee, and the ‘fateful’
(Goffman, 1967) power relations engendered by their organizational frameworks. Authorship of the reinvented self is not the unique privilege of the subject,
nor simply directed by the experts to whom they turn, but rather emerges from
the interaction between the two.
D
213
Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
214
Sociology Volume 44
■
Number 2
■
April 2010
Here, I revisit Goffman’s (1961) concept of the total institution (TI) as one
situated context in which this process can occur, and critically assess the extent
to which it has changed from being repressively coercive to relatively voluntaristic. I suggest that there was a latent agency in Goffman’s model that has
been overlooked, and thus the original TI was not entirely repressive. Equally,
however, the Reinventive Institutions (RIs) that have emerged are not as voluntaristic as they appear: beneath their discursive veneer, a subtler, negotiated form
of Foucauldian disciplinary power operates through the process of performative
regulation. In both TIs and RIs, therefore, we find a tension between passive
and active (re-)constructions of the self, with change occurring only in the relative balance of the two.
Agentic Inmates
The concept of the total institution (TI), inspired by Everett Hughes, was
expounded in Goffman’s (1961) influential text Asylums. This documented the
routines and practices of St Elizabeth’s psychiatric hospital in Washington, DC,
where Goffman spent a year conducting covert observation, posing undercover
as an ‘assistant to the athletics director’. The book is acclaimed as a critique
of the forms of social control found in such institutions, with their custodial
and therapeutic functions: patients were incarcerated as ‘inmates’, often against
their will, and subjected to daily rituals of degradation. A notable essay on the
medical model gives a scathing rebuttal of psychiatry’s image as a morally
neutral, repair service industry: Goffman argued that, far from disinterested
‘tinkering’, doctors wielded enormous power in determining patients’ social
fate. He pointed to the ways in which identities were (re-)made through the
‘institutional arrangements’ of the hospital, whose unique and insular world
legitimated certain patterns of interaction:
The self, then, can be seen as something that resides in the arrangements prevailing in
a social system for its members. The self in this sense is not a property of the person
to whom it is attributed, but dwells rather in the pattern of social control that is
exerted in connexion with the person by himself and those around him. This special
kind of institutional arrangement does not so much support the self as constitute it.
(Goffman, 1961: 154)
The spatial organization of these sites was crucial. Institutions were ‘total’ insofar as they physically confined their inmates, limiting their access to valued
resources: not only material possessions but also time, personal space and control
over one’s daily routine. The TI was defined as:
… a place of residence and work where a large number of situated individuals, cut off
from the wider society for an appreciable length of time, together lead an enclosed,
formally administered round of life. (Goffman, 1961: xiii)
This included not only hospitals but army barracks, boarding schools, prisons
and so on, in which ‘disorderly’ groups were segregated, reformed and ultimately
Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
Revisiting the total institution Scott
‘improved’ (Wallace, 1971). The four key features of a TI were: (a) the unfolding
of the daily round in the same place and under the same authority; (b) batch
living, or being treated as part of an anonymous mass; (c) the rigid timetabling
and scheduling of activities; and (d) an institutional goal of resocialization.
Asylums represents an important rejoinder to the criticism that Goffman,
and Symbolic Interactionism more generally, neglected issues of power (Gouldner,
1979). The concept of the TI revealed how organizational structures shape the
behaviour of individuals through the ‘authoritative imposition of consequential
identities’ (Dennis and Martin, 2005: 191), albeit mediated by routine, microlevel encounters. Power was conceptualized as the capacity to influence others
through communicative practices that limit their access to resources (Rogers,
1979). Unfortunately, this is often taken to mean that Goffman held a pessimistic
view of the actor as passively controlled by institutional arrangements, lacking
the autonomy to determine their own fate. Iconic depictions of the asylum in
films and novels such as One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, An Angel at my Table
and Girl, Interrupted reinforce a stereotypical image of the TI as stark, austere
and rigidly controlling: a straw man whom it is difficult not to criticize. In sympathizing with the underdog, however, we overlook the ways in which inmates
themselves create a negotiation context that sustains and legitimates this definition of reality. The interaction order (Goffman, 1983) that the TI embodies is not
a static structure but a dynamic, agentic team performance, through which identities are collectively reshaped and redefined (cf. Jenkins, 2008).
Throughout Asylums, there is a tension as Goffman hints at the agency of
the actor, but suggests that it is compromised by institutional structures. While
the hospital staff enjoyed a privileged position within the status hierarchy, theirs
was a legitimate authority, based on the administration of bureaucratic rules
rather than conspiratorial repression. The ‘dirty work’ (Hughes, 1962) of changing people was effectively performed by the inmates themselves, in their perception and reification of an external rule structure. The TI was a precariously
constructed social reality that was constantly re-accomplished and upheld by
its members, but vulnerable to challenge. In this respect, Goffman’s analysis
comes closer to the model of negotiated order outlined by Strauss (1978): his
actors possessed agency and their compliance belied a ‘revolutionary potential’
(Day and Day, 1977: 131). Nevertheless, Goffman’s argument was that inmates
perceived themselves to be powerless, because of the ways in which their erstwhile identities were ground down. Their definition of the situation (Thomas
and Thomas, 1970[1928]), which was ‘real in its consequences’, was that the
staff were personally coercive and the institution was repressive.
Consequently, we can read Goffman’s inmate simultaneously as a passive
‘cultural dope’ (Garfinkel, 1967) and a knowledgeable actor engaging in strategic impression management. For example, much has been made of the ‘mortifying’ admission procedures (Goffman, 1961: 24–51) that stripped the inmates
of their previous identities: clothing and personal possessions were removed
and replaced with standard hospital issue; there were restrictions on the freedom
to come and go as one pleased and to organize one’s own daily schedule; and
Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
215
216
Sociology Volume 44
■
Number 2
■
April 2010
the territories of the self were subjected to ‘contaminating exposure’ to people,
objects and activities that one would rather avoid. On the other hand, Goffman
points to the ‘self-respecting tendencies’ patients employed to assert their autonomy and cling to their civilian selves: apologias, or accounting procedures
(1961: 66), served to distance actors from the roles ascribed to them:
I got here by mistake because of a diabetes diagnosis, and I’ll leave in a couple of
days. [The patient had been in seven weeks.] (1961: 140)
Likewise, there is ambiguity in the concept of the ‘moral career’ (Goffman,
1961: 117–55), the social process through which the inmate’s identity is
shaped and managed. This comprised three phases: pre-patient, when significant
others complained of one’s inappropriate behaviour and instigated a professional
intervention; in-patient, when one was hospitalized, treated as mentally ill and
denied the rights and privileges of a ‘normal’ civilian; and ex-patient, which
involved dealing with the stigmatizing effects of having been in this situation.
The inmate’s moral career was managed by the institutional machinery of the
hospital, insofar as routinized procedures were reified by tangible objects.
For example, the ‘ward system’ (1961: 137–8) – a graded hierarchy of living
arrangements, along which patients progressed in accordance with their perceived level of recovery (or willingness to comply with the rules) – was operationalized by the ‘case record’ (1961: 41–2), which documented the minutiae of
behaviour. Docility was rewarded by promotion to a more autonomous ward,
resistance was punished by increased confinement, and incidents of deviance
were ‘looped’ self-referentially to justify the patient’s diagnosis and treatment.
Goffman was sceptical about the way in which evidence of the patient’s
behaviour was selectively recorded to create a story of their progress (or lack
thereof), but he was equally unconvinced by the apparent transformations of the
self that the treatment regimes seemed to engender. Rather than experiencing a
‘sincere’ change of outlook, the inmate gave a ‘cynical’ performance (Goffman,
1959: 28) of compliance, strategically giving the desired responses in order to be
released: ‘The patient must “insightfully” come to take, or affect to take, the hospital’s view of himself’ (Goffman, 1961: 143). Long-term inmates experienced
‘moral loosening’ (1961: 152) as they ceased to care about their status within the
hospital and did whatever it took to get out. Rather than a simple breaking of
the will, this was an agentic instrumental act performed to manipulate those in
authority – a ‘shameless game’ of ‘civic apathy’ (1961: 151).
Elsewhere in Asylums, Goffman makes further references to the agency of
the inmate as a knowledgeable actor, consciously engaging in role performances.
The self may be enmeshed within a set of institutional arrangements, but can to
an extent choose its orientation to this power structure. Long-term inmates who
‘knew the ropes’ learned how to ‘play the system’ (1961: 56), by bending the rules
and manipulating staff, in order to make their stay more comfortable. Even apparently trivial successes, like sneaking extra sachets of salt into the dinner hall or
using newspapers to cushion uncomfortable seats, marked significant victories in
retaining a sense of self-control and independence. Goffman (1961: 187) called
Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
Revisiting the total institution Scott
these ‘make dos’, anticipating De Certeau’s (1984) micropolitics of resistance
in everyday life. They formed part of the ‘secondary adjustments’ (Goffman,
1961: 56) that were taught within a collusive network of patient fraternization:
the hospital ‘underlife’ (p. 157) offered the sanctuary of a resistance culture.
Patients also developed individual ‘lines’ of adaptation (p. 61), such as withdrawal (rendering oneself psychically inaccessible to staff), intransigence (refusing to cooperate), colonization (accepting and cynically performing a compliant
character) and conversion (undergoing genuine transformation); only the latter
implied full immersion in the mental patient role. Most commonly, inmates
learned to ‘play it cool’ (p. 64) with a combination of these techniques, vacillating
between different levels of commitment.
Rethinking Asylums
There is much to be gained from revisiting the concept of the TI. First, the latent
agency of Goffman’s inmate suggests a more complex picture of institutional
arrangements as being simultaneously repressive (confining and curtailing
the autonomy of inmates) and enabling (evoking defiant acts of resistance),
which in turn affords both passive and active constructions of the self. In reading Asylums as a critique of coercive identity erasure, we risk overlooking the
more subtle processes of negotiation, legitimation and mutual surveillance
through which power operates in the interaction order – a key theme of
Goffman’s original project. It is important to consider how the inmate culture
of a TI functions, not only in response to the imposition of power but in also
in the agentic production and perpetuation of it (cf. Lukes, 2005).
Second, it has been argued that flaws in Goffman’s methodology and theoretical analysis make Asylums unreliable as a document of institutional practices at the time (Davies, 1989; Smith, 2006). As a case study, St Elizabeth’s was
not necessarily representative of psychiatric hospitals, let alone other types of
TI (Perry, 1974); institutions vary in their degrees of totality, just as inmates
vary in their degree of commitment to them (Wallace, 1971). Goffman’s observations were selective and impressionistic, and there is no supporting evidence
from interviews with staff or patients (Smith, 2006), which may in turn have
meant that he misinterpreted the inmate experience as wholly undesirable. Scant
attention is paid to the idea that patients may regard hospital admission as a
welcome relief from their symptoms (Mouzelis, 1971), or that the latter may
have a physical, psychological and phenomenological reality that is meaningful
beyond the level of social construction (Sedgwick, 1982).
Third, the nature of the TI has changed since Goffman’s time. The process
of decarceration over the latter part of the 20th century involved the closure of
many traditional asylums and a shift away from long-term in-patient stays
towards community-based interventions, out-patient services and specialist
units (Rogers and Pilgrim, 2005). Ironically, it was the rhetorical power of
Asylums itself, along with the anti-psychiatry movement, that instigated much
Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
217
218
Sociology Volume 44
■
Number 2
■
April 2010
of this change, and it is easy to assume that the portrait Goffman painted is now
mercifully obsolete. Indeed, he commented in the 1980s that if he were to have
written Asylums at that point, it would have been ‘a very different book’
(Mechanic, 1989: 148, cited in Smith, 2006: 81). On the surface, then, it would
seem as if this powerful text, though influential in its time, can be stored away
in the annals of history as a document of bygone practices from which we have
become enlightened. However, I suggest that a new type of TI has emerged,
which, though ostensibly benign, subjects its inmates to a subtler form of social
control that I call ‘performative regulation’. The same characteristic mix of
coercion and voluntarism can be observed here, but a reversal of the balance
between the two has created new techniques of reinventing the self.
Reinventive Institutions
Since the late 20th century, there has been a growth of what I call Reinventive
Institutions (RIs): places to which people retreat for periods of intense selfreflection, education, enrichment and reform, but under their own volition,
in pursuit of ‘self-improvement’. These range from private residential clinics,
detoxification and rehabilitation centres, to spiritual retreats, utopian movements, and media-saturated worlds of self-discovery, such as the Big Brother
house (for further examples, see Gubrium and Holstein, 2001). The RI is both
reinvented, in its structural form, and reinventing, in its effects on members’
identities. Rather than being coerced into accepting treatment, they see themselves as consumers of a service who make an informed decision to undergo
resocialization. The aims of these institutions – therapeutic support, holistic
healing, empowerment and self-actualization – are apparently benevolent and
beneficial, promising not merely to repair but to enhance the damaged self.
This reflects a wider shift towards the culture of late modernity (Giddens,
1991) or reflexive modernization (Beck et al., 1994), with its themes of individualism, self-reflection, existential anxiety, and a quest for authentic living. It
is a strategy of the ‘worried well’ to seek help for stress, anxiety, and other
‘problems of living’ (Szasz, 1972[1961]), and this response is normalized within
the emotionally (over-)literate climate of contemporary western therapy culture
(Furedi, 2004). Far from being a stigmatizing sign of abnormality, it has become
quite popular, even trendy, to define oneself as having a crisis or breakdown and
check oneself in for treatment.
Many RIs may be understood as what Coser (1974) called greedy institutions.
These claim the totality of their members’ social identities by pervading every role
they play and every aspect of their lifestyle: for example, religious cults, vocational training schools and secret societies. Greedy institutions are exclusive and
demand absolute commitment: new recruits are expected to weaken existing ties
with other social groups and give the organization their undivided loyalty. Unlike
Goffman’s TI, the greedy institution rarely physically confines its inmates, but creates a symbolic boundary between insiders and outsiders that is equally powerful:
Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
Revisiting the total institution Scott
these are disciplinary mechanisms, not blockades (Foucault, 1977[1975]), or
‘institutions without walls’, which members are ostensibly free to leave but
choose not to.
The voluntaristic nature of these institutions suggests a different set of meanings, motivations and experiences for their inmates. Anticipating positive effects of
liberation, empowerment and self-actualization, they embrace the institution’s rules, venerate its staff as inspirational gurus, and willingly comply with its
timetabled activities, believing that it is in their best interests to do so. Whereas
Goffman’s asylum patients experienced a mortifying loss of self through institutionalization, RI clients willingly discard their old selves in the hope of finding
something better. Rather than cling defensively to their previous, civilian roles,
they embrace the prospect of acquiring or discovering a ‘new me’ (Throsby,
2008). The real, authentic self is perceived to reside not in the person who went
into the TI, but in the one who might come out.
Unsurprisingly, critics suggest that the seductive allure of these institutions is
disproportionately higher than their actual ability to heal. Craib (1994) argued that
the rising popularity of psychotherapy and counselling was fuelled by a culture that
encourages unrealistic hopes and desires: personal growth, fulfilment and selfactualization are presented not as abstract concepts but as concrete, political rights
to which every individual is entitled – ‘there is a tendency to equate morality with
self-expression, with the satisfaction of our needs and wants’ (1994: 5). For Craib,
human nature was an emotional ragbag of love and hate, success and failure,
impulse and restraint; the best we could hope for was to manage this ambivalence
and deal with the reality of disappointment. The myth of the perfectible self was
dangerously misleading and encouraged a blind faith in the power of the therapeutic industries – a trend spotted some 30 years earlier by Halmos (1965).
The rise of RIs can be contextualized within this culture of dissatisfaction
with the fallible self. They offer to process, reshape and reform by trimming
away negative emotional experiences, so that what emerges is a set of ‘gingerbread people’ (Craib, 1994), all fitting the same cookie-cutter model and chanting
the same views. Rhetorical discourses define the clients’ view of themselves and
discursively constitute their subjectivities (cf. Foucault, 1977[1975]). Ironically,
far from embarking on an individualistic journey of self-discovery, consumers
are provided with ‘McSelves’ – generic new identities, not so very different from
the standard hospital issue of the Goffmanesque asylum. The end result – a new
self – is the same in each case, but rather than being imposed on the mortified
remains of a prior identity, the RI gingerbread figure elects to fit itself into a
pre-existing mould.
Performative Regulation
In contrast to the repressive, authoritarian power of the asylum, RIs rely on a
more dispersed, intangible authority built into relationships and practices. A university’s curriculum, the ground rules of a rehab clinic, even the disembodied
Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
219
220
Sociology Volume 44
■
Number 2
■
April 2010
voice in the Big Brother diary room, all convey legitimate local knowledges,
accepted by their subjects as fair, objective, and morally benign. This power
operates through a pervasive gaze that captures every inmate and appears to
emanate impersonally from the institution itself and the expertise it represents,
rather than specific individuals within it.
This suggests a variant of Foucault’s (1977[1975]) disciplinary power,
epitomized in its original form by Bentham’s Panopticon prison. Panopticism
entailed the unilateral surveillance of inmates by guards concealed in a central
observation tower, and so is conventionally associated with the TI. However,
this gaze was not simply directed downwards but radiated panoramically; disciplinary power was dispersed and capillary-like, circulating within a network.
While Foucault’s later work moved away from this concept, others argue for
its contemporary relevance. Lyon (2001) points to the rise of a ‘surveillance
society’, wherein the panoptical gaze is no longer tied to the physical structure
of closed institutions but rather permeates the spaces of everyday life. In this
respect, the RI appears more quintessentially panoptical than the TI.
Rose (1998) identifies disciplinary power in the ‘psy’ industries, whose therapeutic discourses offer tantalizing ways of knowing oneself. The intellectual
apparatus of the clinical interview, counselling session and diagnostic tools are
technologies of the self (Foucault, 1977[1975]) that promise to reveal the essential truth of who we are or what we might become. Rose’s revision of Foucault’s
governmentality proposes a ‘genealogy of freedom’ (1999: 10), as the ultimate
weapon of power. We seek to improve, invent, even perfect ourselves in accordance with models of expertise, but far from being liberating, this can feel tyrannical. Existentially, we are condemned to freedom: it is no longer enough simply
to repair the damage to our selves; we must now fulfil our true potential –
without knowing what exactly that might be. This is life politics (Giddens, 1991)
writ large: an anxious preoccupation with the self as a reflexive project, and a
quest for authentic living that necessitates our trust in abstract systems of expertise.
However, Rose’s bilateral analysis remains focused on the vertical dimension of power (between the rulers and the ruled), and neglects its horizontal
exercise (within the ruled). Surveillance in RIs is maintained not only by disciplinary regimes imposed on and responded to by ‘docile bodies’ (Foucault,
1977[1975]: 136), but also by the negotiations of reality that occur between
these members in the context of their physical, spatial and social ‘institutional
arrangements’. As with the classic TI, it is not enough to say that inmates are
subjected to surveillance; we must also consider how their interactions collectively define this situation (cf. Thomas and Thomas, 1970[1928]) as noncoercive, and the meanings they attach to their obedience. The parallel observed
between Goffman’s and Foucault’s views of power as dispersed and ubiquitous
(Burns, 1992) begs the question of how institutional regimes are upheld by routinized conformity to interaction order – or, in Jenkins’ (2008: 163) words,
‘why do people put up with it?’. Both Goffman’s (1983: 6) ‘co-operation with
disadvantage’ and Foucault’s disciplinary power suggest essentially negative
motivations for compliance: actors either cynically conform in order to retain
Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
Revisiting the total institution Scott
the dramaturgical loyalty of their team-mates, or restrain themselves by
internalizing a punitive, omniscient gaze. However, where institutional membership is perceived as voluntary, discipline may be welcomed as positively
empowering, experienced through discourses of self-improvement that are both
internalized and personalized. Paradoxically, these private meanings are publicly shared, communicated between as well as to inmates, which strengthens
their belief that conformity is of mutual benefit.
This evokes Lukes’ (2005) argument that power is most effective when it
operates not through coercive domination but by securing the willing compliance
of subjects to be governed. This ‘third dimension’ of power may be subtle and
insidious, but it is not necessarily exploitative. Lukes warns against condescending theories of false consciousness and cultural doping, arguing that while cultural discourses may shape people’s perceptions of their ‘true’ or ‘best’ interests,
these individuals are actively involved in translating the generic principles into
personally meaningful terms. Furthermore, insofar as they perceive the effects of
power to be positive (for example, when therapy makes one feel better), they can
be said to have acted in their real interests. We should, therefore, beware of
underestimating the agency of RI inmates just as much as that of those in the TI.
Nevertheless, there is a further aspect of this third dimension of power to
consider: its dramaturgical deployment through symbolic interaction. I call this
performative regulation, a conceptual synergy of Foucault’s (1977[1975]) disciplinary power, Strauss’s (1978) negotiated order, and Goffman’s (1983) interaction order. Performative regulation occurs where groups of people submit
themselves to the authority of an institution, internalize its values and enact
them through mutual surveillance in an inmate culture. Power operates horizontally as well as vertically, as members monitor each other’s conduct, sanction deviance and evaluate their own progress in relative terms. The disciplinary
gaze is not merely transmitted but reticulated: dispersed and refracted through
an agentic network. The rituals of peer group interaction are central to this process, and can be as important as the formal instruction they receive in motivating people to commit to an RI instead of going it alone. Moral trajectories of
reinvention are mediated by this interaction context, and narratives of change
are collectively negotiated. In this respect, power is not only discursively constitutive but also interactively productive of new identities.
In dramaturgical terms, mutual surveillance involves performances of obedience and role embracement: members seek to demonstrate the sincerity of their
commitment to the institution, and manage the impressions they communicate
to fellow inmates as well as to staff. They play to each other as rule followers,
presenting themselves as troubled, recovering, transformed or reinvented, and find
these motivations reflected back to them through the audience’s own performances. The result is an emergent team impression (Goffman, 1959) of conformity: actors sustain a collective belief in both the institutional rhetoric and their
voluntary adherence to it, making resistance seem unnecessary.
This raises interesting parallels with Butler’s (1990) notion of performativity
as a reiterative series of acts that create only the illusion of a stable identity. Like
Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
221
222
Sociology Volume 44
■
Number 2
■
April 2010
speech acts (Austin, 1962), identity performances entail the individual actively
doing rather than passively being or having a self: authorship is an ongoing, agentic
process. However, whereas Butler’s claim that ‘identity is performatively constituted by the very “expressions” that are said to be its results’ (1990: 25) points
to the absence of an underlying, essential self (Chinn, 1997: 300), Symbolic
Interactionism retains the idea that there is an actor behind the character(s) in
one’s repertoire. Thus in the RI, there is an original subject who is doing their
own reinvention. Dramaturgical ‘performance’ differs from poststructuralist
‘performativity’ in this regard, but there are also similarities – indeed, Butler herself has been criticized for ‘reinventing’ Goffman’s wheel (Green, 2007). Most
notably, the mutability of the self is apparent in Goffman’s moral career as a progression of identities, and in actors’ propensity to vacillate between different lines
of self-presentation. Additionally, both theories suggest that performances rely on
audiences for their interpretation and validation, and are oriented towards this
evaluative context. Performative regulation can therefore be located at this conceptual juncture: the RI inmate is both an actor who performs and a subject
position defined by the sum of these performances. S/he is both agentically
performative and constrained by the discipline of interaction.1
A pertinent question, then, is whether and to what extent the transition from
TIs to RIs implies a real shift of power into the hands of their members, or whether
the latter have simply become complicit in a subtler form of social control. Below,
by way of illustration, I describe three salient types of RI and consider the ways in
which they exercise performative regulation over their respective inmates.
Therapeutic Clinics
Decarceration in the late 20th century created a shift towards community-based
alternatives to the asylum, fuelled by the institutional critiques of Goffman and
the anti-psychiatrists. Therapeutic communities, such as Kingsley Hall, were
designed by Laing and his colleagues to nurture the individual’s journey in and
out of madness as an existential ‘voyage of self-discovery’ (Laing, 1967). This
led to a mushrooming of radical projects such as the Austen Riggs Center
(Talbot and Miller, 1971) and Paddington Day Hospital (Spandler, 2006), which
conceptualized their members as democratic citizens rather than block patients.
However, by the end of the 1970s, the charismatic authority of the original
anti-institutional leaders became routinized and mainstreamed by bureaucracy
(Manning, 1989). Far from acquiring a magical new self, clients were doled out
a discursively pre-fabricated identity and staff felt resigned to treating generic
patient types (1989: 220).
More recently, RIs have been created to treat conditions beyond the normal
remit of psychiatry: ‘lifestyle diseases’ that lie on the margins of mental illness
and social deviance (Busfield, 1996). There has been a mushrooming of rehabilitation and detoxification clinics, such as The Priory and the Promis Recovery Centre,
which cater for not only drug and alcohol dependence but also newly defined
addictions to gambling, eating disorders and internet use. Mutual surveillance
Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
Revisiting the total institution Scott
operates as members display sceptical regard for each other’s avowed commitment
to recovery (Paik, 2006) in order performatively to assert the relative authenticity of their own transformation (Weinberg, 1996). Thus in a substance abuse
rehabilitation programme:
[Members] actively intervened to foster or suppress each other’s emotional displays
so as to bring them more completely into line with what they believed was characteristic of the local appearance of personal authenticity and successful recovery.
(Weinberg, 1996: 157)
Shyness Clinics (e.g. Henderson and Zimbardo, 2009), meanwhile, provide
courses of social skills training, CBT and role play exercises through militarystyle drills and disciplinary regimes (Foucault, 1977[1975]), which promise to
convert the social deviant into an obedient conformist (Scott, 2006). Central to
these programmes is the collective, participatory nature of therapeutic support,
whereby the obligation of ‘turning up to group’ each week keeps members
socially and emotionally committed. This seductive promise of salvation through
peer-mediated enlightenment creates a powerful institutional rhetoric:
… we provide you with a short-term, twenty session group programme which can
change your life. Our promise to you is: ‘We will help you to make dramatic and
long-lasting improvements in your self-esteem, in your ability and willingness to
socialise with others, and in your inner emotional state.’ (Friedman, 2008)
Utopian Retreats
A second type of RI is the community set up for those who feel disenfranchised
with aspects of late modern culture. Like the new religious movements of the
1960s and 1970s, these groups seek isolation from ‘contaminating’ ideologies,
such as consumerism, but rather than seeking spiritual enlightenment, pursue
this-worldly ideals of living ‘at one with’ nature or each other. Magnuson (2008)
describes the appeal of the mythopoetic men’s movement to upper-middle-class
white men who expressed disillusionment with the capitalist model of the materialistic, status-conscious breadwinner. Through male bonding rituals, they
explored new masculinities that reconciled archetypal notions of patriarchal
provision with post-feminist sensibilities and emotional literacy. However, for
Craib (1994), the true appeal of men’s movements lay not in their ideology, but
rather in the comforting social ritual of joining a group and sharing a vision.
He referred to the Durkheimian (1915[1912]) theory of religion as the worship
of collectivity per se, and suggested that were it not for the weekly meetings,
discussions and mutual reinforcement, the movement would not survive. This
valuation of group process, interaction and ritual echoes the performative
regulation found in therapeutic support groups.
In some such RIs, it is the interaction between members that creates the
utopian discourses in the first place. Studies of the naturist movement (Bell and
Holiday, 2000; Parry, 1982; Weinberg, 1965) reveal how the claim that nudity
is empoweringly natural, benign and non-sexual is a definition of the situation
Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
223
224
Sociology Volume 44
■
Number 2
■
April 2010
(Thomas and Thomas, 1970[1928]) that has to be continuously upheld by
mundane routines and practices. Naturist club members learn to perform
nonchalance until it becomes real, and affect a blasé attitude to the sexualized
potential of each others’ bodies: this is a ‘decent’ arena (Weinberg, 1965), in
which people are contemplating more cerebral matters. Parry (1982) suggests
that newcomers to the movement embark on a moral career, just like Goffman’s
asylum patients, as they make a series of personal adjustments to their new
identity. There is a shift from initial feelings of self-conscious embarrassment
and modesty to displays of confidence (real or affected), as the individual gradually substitutes the club’s view of nudity for the wider society’s and is resocialized into a new set of values. Rather like Becker’s (1953) marijuana smokers,
they ‘learn the techniques’ of being comfortably naked, encouraged by the
behaviour of other members, and find that within this bounded world, their
deviance is normalized.
This RI is typically ambivalent, showing signs of both coercion and voluntarism. On the one hand, it is a greedy institution that retains its exclusivity by
imposing a symbolic boundary between insiders and outsiders. Neophytes are
encouraged to ‘take off any phoney postures and status symbols of the everyday world’ (Parry, 1982: 90) and embrace the naturist culture when at the club,
while ‘insulating strategies’ ensure that the two worlds never meet: members do
not socialize outside of the clubs, nor do they refer to their civilian surnames,
occupations or family backgrounds while inside them. Like a secret society
(Simmel, 1950[1908]), this RI relies on a shared, tacit code of rules, norms and
practices, through which members collectively define the group’s distinctive
identity and reinforce their commitment. On the other hand, the naturist movement seeks to normalize its practices through a ‘campaign for respectability’
(Parry, 1982). Members are at pains to emphasize that they are neither ‘perverts’
nor ‘bearded cranks’ (Parry, ibid.), but rather are normal, morally upright citizens
of mainstream society. Thus inmates regulate each other, by citing the discourses,
performing the roles and monitoring their team performances (Goffman, 1959).
Old and new identities are decomposed, negotiated and rearticulated through the
process of performative regulation.
Academic Hothouses
A third type of RI is the organization designed to educate, enrich and develop
people’s talents or abilities. These include training schools of various kinds in
which members are expected to show more than the usual level of commitment
to their work, or to study with particular intensity outside of normal working
hours: boarding schools, university residences, performing arts academies and
so on. Academic hothouses mark a rite of passage by isolating groups of neophytes as they undergo a transformation; they represent a period of liminality
(Turner, 1967) in which individuals are suspended between two social identities: the selves they have been until this point, and the selves they will become
after they graduate.
Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
Revisiting the total institution Scott
Ethnographic studies of American college campuses (Becker et al., 1961;
Gusfield and Riesman, 1968), medical schools and nursing colleges (Davis, 1968)
have revealed how academic life revolves as much around the informal processes
of peer interaction as it does upon formal instruction, and that students seek to
establish new identities through these informal networks. Becoming a doctor,
nurse or sociologist means not only learning technical skills and knowledge but
also ‘doing member’ (Garfinkel, 1967) in communities of practice (Wenger, 1998).
The disciplinary power of the institution is channelled through its individual members, who perform the interpretive work of defining and negotiating their roles.
Entry to these establishments is competitive, and students may be required to
demonstrate their right to belong, not only to gain admission but also to justify
their presence throughout their stay. This involves further gestures of commitment,
performed as much to other members of the institution as to oneself. The performance of boarding school rituals, such as the Eton Wall Game or the daily march
into lunch at Christ’s Hospital, serves to reaffirm pupils’ sense of shared identity
and commitment. Meanwhile, the hazing rituals of fraternity and sorority houses
serve as initiation ceremonies, testing the will of would-be members who seek
acceptance into an exclusive community. Moral panics about dangerous or foolhardy pranks gone wrong (e.g. Hodges, 1995; Korry, 2005) focus on the pressure
inmates feel to demonstrate their dedication, resulting in a momentary loss of self.
The difficulty in acquiring evidence of violent abuse is attributed to the secretive
nature of these institutions, with their studiously observed codes of silence.
Those at performing arts academies, particularly, are socialized into a culture of commitment, where a devotion to one’s art must be rehearsed as fervently as the art itself. Wulff’s (1995) ethnography of a Swedish ballet company
describes how a distinct ‘ballet culture’ emerged through the perception of the
company as a surrogate family: from the hours spent practising (and being seen
to practise) to the backstage bickering that went on, members were intent on
demonstrating their immersion in this exclusive world. Wainwright and Turner
(2004) found that dancers not only normalized but valorized physical injury, as
an occupational hazard that symbolized their artistic passion. Wearing their
injuries as a badge of honour, they incorporated suffering into a vocational
habitus, posturing and performing an elaborate identity display.
The emotional intensity of hothouse students is fuelled by their mutual
surveillance, which creates an insular, impermeable culture. In the elite dance
conservatory Smith (2001) studied, two factors combined to discourage students from leaving. On the one hand, there were the classically ‘mortifying’ procedures of verbal abuse delivered by the staff: ‘they break you down mentally …
[and then] they build you back up through the rest of your years there the way
that they think a professional dancer should be’ (2001: 3). The liminal stage
of awaiting a new identity created a sense of being helplessly trapped in an
‘emotional prison’ (2001: 2):
[Taylor:] I sort of lost touch with the world outside of that school. Because you’re
there twenty-four-seven. I didn’t know anything else. What else am I going to do?
All I’ve done all my life is dance. (2001: 5)
Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
225
226
Sociology Volume 44
■
Number 2
■
April 2010
Equally important, however, were peer interaction and group pressure. The
insularity of the conservatory as a closed institution meant that dancers supported each other’s decisions not to leave, and together they sustained a belief
in its seductive allure:
[Mo:] it was like magic … because you were totally surrounded by artists. I mean
you’re closed off and … you’re surrounded by very talented people. (2001: 5)
This suggests that institutionalization and ‘release anxiety’ (Goffman, 1961)
remain a risk for members of the RI: despite their voluntary admission and lack
of physical confinement, inmates can feel equally controlled by the discipline of
performative regulation. As Flam (1993) argues, the emotional self can suppress
the will of the rational self to leave an organization, as fear combines with loyalty to ensure members’ commitment.
Indeed, we find such greedy practices in academia itself, as an overarching
RI that operates autonomously through higher education institutions to govern
the behaviour of its members. Recent studies of the impact of audit culture on
university faculty (Lucas, 2006; Strathern, 2000) have explored not only the
pressure this creates to ‘publish or perish’, but also how surveillance regimes
are internalized and re-enacted between participants. In his cautionary tale of
the Research Assessment Exercise, Sparkes’ (2007) character of The Weasel epitomizes the ways in which staff monitor each other’s progress and achievements,
suppressing the resistance of would-be intransigents. Academics rationalize that,
not only is research activity required to ensure (moral) career progression within
the institution, but also that it is in our best interests to improve ourselves thus.
Conclusion
Conventional readings of Asylums have perpetuated an image of the total institution as repressive and coercive, clouding our perception of both inmates’
latent agency and the negotiation contexts in which they are embedded. Goffman’s
concept of interaction order implies that his intention was to show not only
how identities are mortified and reconfigured, but also how this process is
upheld by the actions of inmates themselves. In the traditional TI, this agency
was limited to individual gestures of adaptation or (futile) resistance, but in the
RIs that have emerged since Goffman’s time, there is a more explicit emphasis
on members’ empowerment. I define the RI as a material, discursive or symbolic
structure through which voluntary members actively seek to cultivate a new
social identity, role or status. This is interpreted positively as a process of reinvention, self-improvement or transformation. It is achieved through not only
formal instruction in an institutional rhetoric, but also the mechanisms of performative regulation in the interaction context of an inmate culture.
RIs ostensibly represent a shift from coercion to voluntarism, as inmates
perceive themselves to have made an informed choice to rewrite their identities.
However, a subtler form of power operates through performative regulation,
Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
Revisiting the total institution Scott
whereby actors not only submit to disciplinary regimes but also participate in
their production and administration, through techniques of mutual surveillance; their motivations are shaped by seductive discourses and reinforced by
inmate cultures. Performative regulation advances the poststructuralist notion
of performativity by showing that while identities can be modified, adapted or
reinvented, actors’ performative repertoires may be constrained by the dramaturgical deployment of an institutional rhetoric, which defines both the actorreinventor and his/her array of possible selves. This suggests that both TIs and
RIs involve a mixture of coercion and voluntarism, but that the relative balance
has been reversed: whereas TI inmates were not simply docile bodies but potential rebels, RI members find their performative autonomy compromised by the
discipline of interaction order.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on an
earlier draft of this article.
Notes
1 Green (2007: 30–31) identifies a ‘deconstructionist impulse’ built into Symbolic
Interactionist accounts of identity that has been overlooked – or even poached –
by queer theory. Interactionism conceived the social self as a shifting formation of
multiple identities, and Goffman was particularly sceptical about the notion of an
underlying, core personality. However, this does not preclude the possibility of
actors constructing and believing in a coherent (albeit processually unfolding)
sense of self through biographical identity work, nor of there being an agentic
‘ghost in the machine’ who directs this operation. I have therefore sought to
poach the term ‘performative’ back from poststructuralism and reclaim it as an
Interactionist concept, invoking a dualistic notion of the actor as both performing and performed. Following Mead (1934), I envisage an agentic ‘I’ who
creates and reflexively manages their publicly presented ‘Me’, but who is in
turn affected by the way that others define this social object in situated contexts
of interaction.
References
Austin, J.L. (1962) How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Beck, U., A. Giddens and S. Lasch (1994) Reflexive Modernization. Cambridge: Polity.
Becker, H.S. (1953) ‘Becoming a Marihuana User’, American Journal of Sociology
59(3): 235–42.
Becker, H.S., B. Geer, E.C. Hughes and A.L. Strauss (1961) Boys in White: Student
Culture in Medical School. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
227
228
Sociology Volume 44
■
Number 2
■
April 2010
Bell, D. and R. Holliday (2000) ‘Naked as Nature Intended’, Body and Society
6(3–4): 127–40.
Berger, P.L., B. Berger and H. Kellner (1973) The Homeless Mind. Harmondsworth:
Penguin.
Burns, T. (1992) Erving Goffman. London: Routledge.
Busfield, J. (1996) Men, Women and Madness. London: Macmillan.
Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York:
Routledge.
Chinn, S.E. (1997) ‘Gender Performativity’, in A. Medhurst and S.R. Munt (eds)
Lesbian and Gay Studies: A Critical Introduction, pp. 294–308. London: Cassell.
Coser, L.A. (1974) Greedy Institutions: Patterns of Undivided Commitment.
New York: Free Press.
Craib, I. (1994) The Importance of Disappointment. London: Routledge.
Davis, F. (1968) ‘Professional Socialization as Subjective Experience: The Process of
Doctrinal Conversion among Student Nurses’, in H.S. Becker, B. Geer, D. Reisman
and R.S. Weiss (eds) Institutions and the Person, pp. 235–51. Chicago, Aldine.
Davies, C. (1989) ‘Goffman’s Concept of the Total Institution’, Human Studies
12: 77–96.
Day, R.A. and J.V. Day (1977) ‘A Review of the Current State of Negotiated Order
Theory: An Appreciation and a Critique’, The Sociological Quarterly 18: 126–42.
De Certeau, M. (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. S.F. Rendell. Berkeley,
CA University of California Press.
Dennis, A. and P.J. Martin (2005) ‘Symbolic Interactionism and the Concept of Power’,
British Journal of Sociology 56(2): 191–213.
Durkheim, E. (1915[1912]) The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. London:
Allen & Unwin.
Flam, H. (1993) ‘Fear, Loyalty and Greedy Organizations’, in S. Fineman (ed.)
Emotions in Organizations, pp. 58–75. London: Sage.
Foucault, M. (1997[1963]) The Birth of the Clinic. London: Routledge.
Foucault, M. (1977[1975]) Discipline and Punish. London: Allen Lane.
Friedman (2008) ‘The Shyness Clinic’, URL (consulted December 2009): http://www.
shyclinic.com/the_programme.html
Furedi, F. (2004) Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age.
London: Routledge.
Garfinkel, H. (1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-identity. Cambridge: Polity.
Goffman, E. (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Harmondsworth:
Penguin.
Goffman, E. (1961) Asylums. New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Co.
Goffman, E. (1967) Interaction Ritual. New York: Pantheon.
Goffman, E. (1983) ‘The Interaction Order’, American Sociological Review 48(1): 1–17.
Gouldner, A.W. (1979) The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. London: Heinemann.
Green, A.I. (2007) ‘Queer Theory and Sociology: Locating the Subject and the Self
in Sexuality Studies’, Sociological Theory 25(1): 26–45.
Gubrium, J. and J. Holstein (eds) (2001) Institutional Selves: Troubled Identities in
a Postmodern World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gusfield, J. and D. Riesman (1968) ‘Innovations in Higher Education: Notes on
Student and Faculty Encounters in Three New Colleges’, in H.S. Becker, B. Geer,
Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
Revisiting the total institution Scott
D. Reisman and R.S. Weiss (eds) (1968) Institutions and the Person, pp. 165–99.
Chicago, Aldine.
Halmos, P. (1965) The Faith of the Counsellors. London: Constable.
Henderson, L. and P.G. Zimbardo (2009) ‘The Shyness Home Page’, URL (consulted December 2009): http://www.shyness.com
Hodges, L. (1995) ‘Fraternity Hazing Rituals Come to Court’, Times Higher Education
13 January.
Hughes, E. (1962) ‘Good People and Dirty Work’, Social Problems 10: 3–10.
Hughes, E., H. MacGill Hughes and I. Deutscher (1958) Twenty Thousand Nurses Tell
Their Story: A Report on the American Nurses’ Association Studies of Nursing
Functions. Philadelphia, PA: Lipincott.
Jenkins, R. (2008) ‘Erving Goffman: A Major Theorist of Power?’, Journal of Power
1(2): 157–68.
Korry, E. (2005) ‘A Fraternity Hazing Gone Wrong’, National Public Radio,
14 November, URL (consulted December 2009): http://www.npr.org/templates/
story/story.php?storyId=5012154
Laing, R.D. (1967) The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise. Harmondsworth:
Penguin.
Lasch, C. (1984) The Minimal Self: Psychic Survival in Troubled Times. New York:
W.W. Norton.
Lucas, L. (2006) The Research Game in Academic Life. Buckingham: Open University
Press.
Lukes, S. (2005) Power: A Radical View, 2nd edn. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Lyon, D. (2001) Surveillance Society: Monitoring Everyday Life. Buckingham:
Open University Press.
Magnuson, E. (2008) ‘Rejecting the American Dream: Men Creating Alternative
Life Goals’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 37(3): 255–90.
Manning, N. (1989) The Therapeutic Community Movement: Charisma and
Routinization. London: Routledge.
Marris, P. (1996) The Politics of Uncertainty: Attachment in Private and Public
Life. London: Routledge.
Mead, G.H. (1934) Mind, Self and Society. Chicago, University of Chicago
Press.
Mechanic, D. (1989) ‘Medical Sociology: Some Tensions among Theory, Method
and Substance’, Journal of Health and Social Behaviour 30: 147–60.
Mouzelis, N. (1971) ‘On Total Institutions’, Sociology 5(1): 113–20.
Paik, L. (2006) ‘Are You Truly a Recovering Dope Fiend? Local Interpretive Practices
at a Therapeutic Community Drug Treatment Program’, Symbolic Interaction
29(2): 213–34.
Parry, O. (1982) ‘Campaign for Respectability’, Unpublished MPhil thesis, Cardiff
University.
Perry, N. (1974) ‘The Two Cultures and the Total Institution’, British Journal of
Sociology 25: 345–55.
Rogers, A. and D. Pilgrim (2005) A Sociology of Mental Health and Illness, 3rd edn.
Buckingham: Open University Press.
Rogers, M.F. (1979) ‘Goffman on Power, Hierarchy and Status’, in J. Ditton (ed.)
The View From Goffman, pp. 100–33. London: Macmillan.
Rose, N. (1998) Inventing Our Selves. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
229
230
Sociology Volume 44
■
Number 2
■
April 2010
Rose, N. (1999) Powers of Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Scott, S. (2006) ‘The Medicalisation of Shyness: From Social Misfits to Social
Fitness’, Sociology of Health and Illness 28(2): 133–53.
Sedgwick, P. (1982) Psychopolitics. London: Pluto.
Simmel, G. (1950[1908]) ‘The Secret and the Secret Society’, in K.H. Wolff (trans.
and ed.) The Sociology of Georg Simmel, pp. 307–74. London: Free Press,
Macmillan.
Smith, C. (2001) ‘The Conservatory as a Greedy Total Institution’, URL (consulted
December 2009): http://www.culturalresearch.org/conservatory.html
Smith, G. (2006) Erving Goffman. London: Routledge.
Spandler, H. (2006) Asylum to Action: Paddington Day Hospital, Therapeutic
Communities and Beyond. London: Jessica Kingsley.
Sparkes, A.C. (2007) ‘Embodiment, Academics and the Audit Culture: A Story Seeking
Consideration’, Qualitative Research 7(4): 521–50.
Strathern, M. (ed.) (2000) Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability,
Ethics and the Academy. London: Routledge.
Strauss, A.L. (1978) Negotiations: Varieties, Contexts, Processes and Social Order.
San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Szasz, T. ([1972]1961) The Myth of Mental Illness. St Albans: Paladin.
Talbot, E. and S.C. Miller (1971) ‘The Mental Hospital As a Sane Society’, in
S.E. Wallace (ed.) Total Institutions, pp. 131–9. New Brunswick, NJ:
Transaction Press.
Thomas, W.I. and D.S. Thomas (1970[1928]) ‘Situations Defined as Real Are Real
in Their Consequences’, in G. Stone and H. Farberman (eds) Social Psychology
through Interaction, pp. 154–5. Waltham, MA: Ginn-Blasidell.
Throsby, K. (2008) ‘Happy Re-birthday: Weight Loss Surgery and the “New Me”’,
Body and Society 14(1): 117–33.
Turner, V. (1967) ‘Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage’, in
The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual, pp. 93–111. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press.
Wainwright, S.P. and B.S. Turner (2004) ‘Epiphanies of Embodiment: Injury,
Identity and the Balletic Body’, Qualitative Research 4(3): 311–37.
Wallace, S.E. (1971) ‘On the Totality of Institutions’, in S.E. Wallace (ed.) Total
Institutions, pp. 1–7. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press.
Weinberg, D. (1996) ‘The Enactment and Appraisal of Authenticity in a Skid Row
Therapeutic Community’, Symbolic Interaction 19: 137–62.
Weinberg, M.S. (1965) ‘Sexual Modesty, Social Meanings, and the Nudist Camp’,
Social Problems 12(3): 311–18.
Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wulff, H. (1998) Ballet across Borders: Career and Culture in the World of Dancers.
Oxford: Berg.
Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
Revisiting the total institution Scott
Susie Scott
Is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Sussex. Her research and publications
are in the areas of shyness, self-identity and interaction; medical sociology; and qualitative
methodology. Her books include Shyness and Society (Palgrave, 2007) and Making Sense of
Everyday Life (Polity, 2009); a third, about Goffman and the total institution, is in progress
(Palgrave, forthcoming). Susie’s current research projects include the sociology of stage
fright; risk and treatability in ‘dangerous’ personality disorders; and the effects of ubiquitous
computing on shyness.
Address: Department of Sociology, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9SN, UK.
E-mail: [email protected]
Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 5, 2016
231