Micro-sociological theories are especially influential in the tradition of qualitative sociology. This refers mainly to methodological approaches that emphasize direct communication with social actors and observation of everyday social life. Ethnography, participant observation, interviews, and other methodological strategies are all examples. A key link to the micro-sociological theories presented in this Part is that these methods are used most often when sociologists want to develop analyses that make sense of the ways in which ordinary people understand their lives and the social world. This need not mean claiming that everyone already understands social interaction adequately or that everyday concepts can serve without modification as scientific ones. However, it does mean trying to grasp how everyday understanding and concepts work and how actors help to shape the reality in which they act.
NOTES
1 1. Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967).
2 2. George Ritzer, Modern Sociological Theory, 4th edn. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1996, p. 74).
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
1 Berger, Peter and Luckmann, Thomas. 1967. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Doubleday Anchor. (Applies the methods of Schutz’s phenomenology to problems in the sociology of knowledge. This has been one of the most important introductions to social phenomenology for English-language readers.)
2 Blumer, Herbert. 1969. Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. (Blumer’s own introductory overview to the approach he helped to create.)
3 Collins, Randall. 1981. “On the Micro-foundations of Macro-Sociology,” American Journal of Sociology 80: 984–1014. (A classic article on the ways in which micro-sociological analysis can support larger scale theory-building.)
4 Collins, Randall. 2004. Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
5 Coulter, Jeff. 1989. Mind in Action. Cambridge: Polity Press. (Provides a useful link between ethnomethodology and cognitive approaches to sociological analysis.)
6 Fine, Gary Alan, House, James B., and Cook, Karen. 1995. Sociological Perspectives on Social Psychology. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon. (Includes chapters on each of the theories presented here, and on different themes in which they are important.)
7 Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. (The classic foundation of ethnomethodology, based on several case studies disruptions in the established order of mutual understanding. Some of these were produced by Garfinkel’s famous “breeching method” of introducing clashes of categories.)
8 Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor. (Probably Goffman’s most famous book, a fascinating account of the ways in which people seek – consciously or unconsciously – to control the ways in which other people see them.)
9 Goffman, Erving. 1982. Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior. New York: Pantheon. (Contains several of Goffman’s most famous studies of the ways interpersonal interaction is socially organized.)
10 Goffman, Erving. 1988. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. (One of Goffman’s last major books, this provides an approach to studying the ways in which experience is structured by the frames – social or “natural” – through which we grasp it.)
11 Joas, Hans. 1997. G.H. Mead: A Contemporary Re-Examination of His Thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (The most substantial reinterpretation and representation of Mead’s thought and the theoretical foundations of symbolic interactionism for modern readers.) Manning, Philip. 1993. Erving Goffman and Modern Sociology. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. (A brief but clear introductory overview of Goffman’s thought and legacy.)
12 Schutz, Alfred and Luckmann, Thomas. 1989. The Structures of the Lifeworld. (Schutz and his most important student collaborate to present a phenomenological approach to the world of direct experience in everyday life.)
13 Stryker, Sheldon. 1980. Symbolic Interactionism: A Social Structural Version. Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin Cummings. (An attempt to connect micro- and macro-order based on symbolic interactions.)
Chapter 1 The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life [1959]
Erving Goffman
Masks are arrested expressions and admirable echoes of feeling, at once faithful, discreet, and superlative. Living things in contact with the air must acquire a cuticle, and it is not urged against cuticles that they are not hearts; yet some philosophers seem to be angry with images for not being things, and with words for not being feelings. Words and images are like shells, no less integral parts of nature than are the substances they cover, but better addressed to the eye and more open to observation. I would not say that substance exists for the sake of appearance, or faces for the sake of masks, or the passions for the sake of poetry and virtue. Nothing arises in nature for the sake of anything else; all these phases and products are involved equally in the round of existence.
George Santayana, Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (New York: Scribner’s, 1922), pp. 131-2
Belief in the Part One is Playing
When an individual plays a part he implicitly requests his observers to take seriously the impression that is fostered before them. They are asked to believe that the character they see actually possesses the attributes he appears to possess, that the task he performs will have the consequences that are implicitly claimed for it, and that, in general, matters are what they appear to be. In line with this, there is the popular view that the individual offers his performance and puts on his show “for the benefit of other people.” It will be convenient to begin a consideration of performances by turning the question around and looking at the individual’s own belief in the impression of reality that he attempts to engender in those among whom he finds himself.
At one extreme, one finds that the performer can be fully taken in by his own act; he can be sincerely convinced that the impression of reality which he stages is the real reality. When his audience is also convinced in this way about the show he puts on – and this seems to be the typical case – then for the moment at least, only the sociologist or the socially disgruntled will have any doubts about the “realness” of what is presented.
At the other extreme, we find that the performer may not be taken in at all by his own routine. This possibility is understandable, since no one is in quite as good an observational position to see through the act as the person who puts it on. Coupled with this, the performer may be moved to guide the conviction of his audience only as a means to other ends, having no ultimate concern in the conception that they have of him or of the situation. When the individual has no belief in his own act and no ultimate concern with the beliefs of his audience, we may call him cynical, reserving the term “sincere” for individuals who believe in the impression fostered by their own performance. It should be understood that the cynic, with all his professional disinvolvement, may obtain unprofessional pleasures from his masquerade, experiencing a kind of gleeful spiritual aggression from the fact that he can toy at will with something his audience must take seriously.
It is not assumed, of course, that all cynical performers are interested in deluding