Dramaturgy (sociology)


Dramaturgy is a sociological perspective commonly used in microsociological accounts of social interaction in everyday life. The term was first adapted into sociology from the theatre by Erving Goffman, who developed most of the related terminology and ideas in his 1956 book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Kenneth Burke, whom Goffman would later acknowledge as an influence, had earlier presented his notions of dramatism in 1945, which in turn derives from Shakespeare. However, the fundamental difference between Burke's and Goffman's view is that Burke believed that life was in fact theatre, whereas Goffman viewed theatre as a metaphor. If we imagine ourselves as directors observing what goes on in the theatre of everyday life, we are doing what Goffman called dramaturgical analysis, the study of social interaction in terms of theatrical performance.
In dramaturgical sociology it is argued that the elements of human interactions are dependent upon time, place, and audience. In other words, to Goffman, the self is a sense of who one is, a dramatic effect emerging from the immediate scene being presented. Goffman forms a theatrical metaphor in defining the method in which one human being presents itself to another based on cultural values, norms, and beliefs. Performances can have disruptions, but most are successful. The goal of this presentation of self is acceptance from the audience through carefully conducted performance. If the actor succeeds, the audience will view the actor as he or she wants to be viewed.
A dramaturgical action is a social action that is designed to be seen by others and to improve one's public self-image. In addition to Erving Goffman, this concept has been used by Jürgen Habermas and Harold Garfinkel, among others.

Dramaturgical perspective

Dramaturgical perspective is one of several sociological paradigms separated from other sociological theories because it does not examine the cause of human behavior but it analyzes the context. This is, however, debatable within Sociology. There are those sociologists who consider Dramaturgy a theory or theoretical framework, while others consider it a sociological paradigm. In Frame Analysis, Goffman writes, "What is important is the sense he provides them through his dealing with them of what sort of person he is behind the role he is in". The dramaturgical perspective can be seen as an anchor to this perspective, where the individual's identity is performed through role, and consensus between the actor and the audience. Because of this dependence on consensus to define social situations, the perspective argues that there is no concrete meaning to any interaction that could not be redefined. Dramaturgy emphasizes expressiveness as the main component of interactions. It is termed as the "fully two-sided view of human interaction".
Dramaturgical theory suggests that a person's identity is not a stable and independent psychological entity, but rather, it is constantly remade as the person interacts with others.
In a dramaturgical model, social interaction is analyzed in terms of how people live their lives like actors performing on a stage. This analysis offers a look at the concepts of status and role. A status is like a part in a play, and a role serves as a script, supplying dialogue and action for the characters. As on the stage, people in their everyday lives manage settings, clothing, words, and nonverbal actions to give a particular impression to others. Goffman described each individual's "performance" as the presentation of self, a person's efforts to create specific impressions in the minds of others. This process is sometimes called "impression management". Goffman makes an important distinction between "front stage" and "back stage" behavior. As the term/concept implies, "front stage" actions are visible to the audience and are part of the performance. People engage in "back stage" behaviors when no audience is present. For example, a server in a restaurant is likely to perform one way in front of customers but might be much more casual in the kitchen. It is likely that he or she does things in the kitchen that might seem unseemly in front of customers.
Before an interaction with another, an individual prepares a role, or impression, that he or she wants to make on the other. These roles are subject to what is in theater termed "breaking character". Inopportune intrusions may occur, in which a backstage performance is interrupted by someone who is not meant to see it. In addition, there are examples of how the audience for any personal performance plays a part in determining the course it takes: how typically we ignore many performance flaws out of tact, such as if someone trips or spits as they speak.

Performance

There are seven important elements Goffman identifies with respect to the performance:
  1. Belief in the part one is playing is important, even if it cannot be judged by others. The audience can only try to guess whether the performer is sincere or cynical.
  2. The front or 'the mask' is a standardized, generalizable and transferable technique for the performer to control the manner in which the audience perceives him or her.
  3. Dramatic realization is a portrayal of aspects of the performer that s/he wants the audience to know. When the performer wants to stress something, s/he will carry on the dramatic realization.
  4. Idealization. A performance often presents an idealized view of the situation to avoid confusion and strengthen other elements. Audiences often have an 'idea' of what a given situation should look like and performers will try to carry out the performance according to that idea.
  5. Maintenance of expressive control refers to the need to stay 'in character'. The performance has to make sure that s/he sends out the correct signals and quiets the occasional compulsion to convey misleading ones that might detract from the performance.
  6. Misrepresentation refers to the danger of conveying a wrong message. The audience tends to think of a performance as genuine or false, and performers generally wish to avoid having an audience disbelieve them.
  7. Mystification refers to the concealment of certain information from the audience, whether to increase the audience's interest in the user or to avoid divulging information which could be damaging to the performer.

    Teams

Within this analysis, teams are groups of individuals who cooperate with each other in order to share the 'party line'. Team members must share information as mistakes reflect on everyone. Team members also have inside knowledge and are not fooled by one another's performances.

Stages

Stages or regions refer to the three distinct areas where different individuals with different roles and information can be found. There are three stages: front, back and outside.

Front stage

Within society we are expected to present ourselves in a certain way, however, when a person goes against the norm society tends to notice. Therefore, we are expected to put on a costume and act different when in front of the audience. Goffman noticed this habit of society and developed the idea of front stage. In his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman defines front as "that part of the individual's performance which regularly functions in a general and fixed fashion we define the situation for those who observe the performance. Front, then, is the expressive equipment of a standard kind intentionally or unwittingly employed by the individual during his performance". During the front stage, the actor formally performs and adheres to conventions that have meaning to the audience. It is a part of the dramaturgical performance that is consistent and contains generalized ways to explain the situation or role the actor is playing to the audience that observes it. The actor knows he or she is being watched and acts accordingly. This is a fixed presentation. This concept can be seen in the 2005 film Waiting. The servers have to act much more proper and presentable in the dining room than they do in the kitchen. Goffman says that the front stage involves a differentiation between setting and personal front. These two concepts are necessary for the actor to have a successful performance. Setting is the scene that must be present in order for the actor to perform; if it is gone, the actor cannot perform.
Personal front consists of items or equipment needed in order to perform. These items are usually identifiable by the audience as a constant representation of the performance and actor. The personal front is divided into two different aspects, appearance and manners. Appearance refers to the items of the personal front that are a reflection of the actor's social status. Manner refers to the way an actor conducts themselves. The actor's manner tells the audience what to expect from his performance.

Back stage

Goffman's definition of backstage from his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life states that the back stage is where "the performer can relax; he can drop his front, forgo speaking in his lines, and step out of character". When all is said and done, and the individual returns to the back stage, they feel such a sense of relief that they know the actions that would not be condoned upon in the front stage are free to be expressed. All their actions are not to please anyone but their self in the backstage. Back stage is where performers are present but audience is not, and the performers can step out of character without fear of disrupting the performance. It is where facts suppressed in the front stage or various kinds of informal actions may appear. Simply put, the back stage is completely separate from the front stage. No members of the audience can appear in the back，and the back is a region where the performance of a routine is prepared. The actor takes many methods to ensure this.
Back region is a relative term, it exists only in regards to a specific audience: where two or more people are present, there will almost never be a true 'back region'.

Outside

Outside, or off-stage, is the place where individuals are not involved in the performance. The off-stage is where individual actors meet the audience members independently of the team performance on the front stage. Specific performances may be given when the audience is segmented as such.

Borders/regions

Borders or boundaries are important as they prevent or restrict movement of individuals between various regions. Performers need to be able to maneuver boundaries to manage who has the access to the performance, when and how. The border phenomenon is highlighted by Victor Turner's liminality-concept, and thus prolonged in the imaginable field: semiotics of ritual. The management of thresholds may be operated on several axes; the most crude is exclusion-inclusion, similar to the basic digital on-off ; to be a part or not may be seen as the fundamental asset in a society; but as far society is perceived as a rhizomatic conglomerate; rather such than a unitary, or arborescent whole; border-control, so to speak, becomes in a paradoxical fashion the central issue. Thus the study of liminality in sociology, ritual and theatre reveals the fictional elements underpinning society. Rites of passage seem to reflect this as the enactments of exclusion, and dissociation seem to be an essential feature of such. The enactment of exclusion from a society seem to be essential for the formation of an imaginary central governing.

Discrepant roles

Many performances need to prevent the audience from getting some information. For that, several specialized roles are created.

Secrets

There are different types of secrets which have to be concealed for various reasons:
There are three basic roles in Goffman's scheme, each centered on who has access to what information. Performers are most knowledgeable. Audiences know only what the performers disclosed and what they have observed themselves. Outsiders have little if any relevant information.
The roles can be divided into three groups and include:
Roles dealing with manipulation information and team borders:
Roles dealing with facilitating interactions between two other teams:
Roles that mix front and back region up:
  1. The "colleague": individuals who are similar to the performers but are not members of the team in question. Example: coworkers.
  2. The "confidant": individuals to whom the performer reveals details of the performance.

    Communication out of character

Performers may communicate out of character on purpose, to signal to others on their team, or by accident.
Common backstage communications out of character include:
Common frontstage communications out of character include:
refers to work on maintaining the desired impression. It is composed of defensive and protective techniques. Defensive techniques are employed before an interaction starts and involve:
Protective techniques are used once the interaction begins in order to cover mistakes. For example, relying on audience to use tact and overlook mistakes of the performers.

Critique

It has been argued that dramaturgy should only be applied in instances that involve people associated with a total institution. The theory was designed for total institutions and some believe that theories should not be applied where they have not been tested.
In addition to this, it also has been said that dramaturgy does not contribute to sociology's goal of understanding the legitimacy of society. It is claimed to be drafting on positivism, which does not offer an interest in both reason and rationality; called it a "commodity".

Application

Research on this is best done through fieldwork such as participant observation.
For one, dramaturgy has been used to depict how social movements communicate power. argued that "social movements can be described as dramas in which protagonists and antagonists compete to affect audiences' interpretations of power relations in a variety of domains". The people seeking power present their front stage self in order to captivate attention. However, the back stage self is still present, though undetectable. This is a competition of power, a prime example of dramaturgy.
A useful, and everyday way of understanding dramaturgy is to think of a waiter or waitress at a restaurant. Their main avenue of concern for him or her is "customer service". Even if a customer is rude, waiters and/or waitresses are expected to be polite as part of their job responsibilities. That same waiter or waitress speaks differently when going out to her/his break room. s/he may complain, mimic and discuss with their fellow peers how irritating and rude the customer is. In this example, the waiter/waitress acts a certain way when dealing with customers and acts a completely different way when with her/his fellow employees.
Dramaturgy has also been applied to the emerging interdisciplinary domain of scholarly research known as technoself studies; which deals with human identity in a technological society.
In terms of blogging, bloggers and their readers share a social setting in the form of an online platform. The blogger can build up his or her own persona and create an image of themselves that may be far removed from who they actually are in the real world—in other words, fashion blogging is an “authoritative performance” for one’s style. A relationship is created between the blogger and the audience where the blogger is in control of how and what represents them, while the audience are spectators to this presentation of the blogger's self.
Dramaturgy can also be applied to all aspects of theatre performers.
The theater metaphor can be seen in the origins of the word person, which comes from the Latin persona, meaning “a mask worn by actors.” We behave differently in front of different people. We pick out clothing that is consistent with the image we wish to project. We enlist the help of friends, caterers, and decorators to help us successfully “stage” a dinner for a friend, a birthday party for a relative, or a gala for a fundraiser. And if we need to adjust our clothing or wish to say something unflattering about one of our guests, we are careful to do so out of sight from others.
The presentation of ourselves to others is known as dramaturgy.