WEEK 3
Social performance and presentation of self
Key thinkers: Erving Goffman & Jeffrey C. Alexander
Lecturer: Olivera Tesnohlidkova
o.tesnohlidkova@mail.muni.cz
Office hours: contact via e-mail beforehand

Erving Goffman (1922-1982)
uThe Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1956)
uExamines how individuals present themselves and their activity in everyday life to others
uGoal is “impression management” – controlling the impression others have of us as well as the
conduct/response of others
uStage – Actors – Audience
uEffective performances are those in which the audience acts as if the individual has conveyed the
desired impression
uBoth ‘actors’ and the audience project a definition of the situation that appears before them;
actors through their performance, audience through their response

uPerformance – “all the activity of a given participant on a given occasion which serves to
influence in any way any of the other participants” (p. 8)
uFront – part of individual’s performance which functions to define the situation for the observers
(intentional or unwitting)
uSetting (i.e., scenery, props)
uPersonal front – elements of expressive equipment attributed to the performer himself (clothing,
sex, age, rank, facial expressions, speech patterns)
u‘Appearance’ – stimuli which define the performers social status or the social activity he is
engaging in
u‘Manner’ – stimuli signifying the interaction role the performer expects to play (e.g., arrogant,
apologetic, angry…)
uAudience expect coherence between different elements of performance
uWhen different routines (performances) employ the same front, the social front becomes
institutionalized, creating a set of stereotyped expectations and meaning – the front becomes a
‘collective representation’

Regions & region behavior
uRegion – “any place that is bounded to some degree by barriers to perception” (p. 66) (e.g.,
classroom, hallway); ‘perception’ not only in visual terms
uFront region – place where a performance is given
uPoliteness vs. decorum – how one engages with audience vs. how the performer behaves himself in
front of audience
uDecorum is dictated by moral and instrumental requirements
uBack region (a.k.a. backstage) – space where impression made in the front region (i.e., during the
performance) is “knowingly contradicted” and where the impressions are “openly constructed” (p. 69)
uRegions are not universal; they are defined based on the purpose they serve during an individual
performance
uSpaces that serve no purpose during a performance – ‘the outside’
uOutsiders
u“impression management” requires maintaining control over regions
u

Jeffrey C. Alexander  (1947- )
A person wearing glasses Description automatically generated with medium confidence
uFounding figure of cultural sociology, a.k.a. the “strong program”
uTo believe in the possibility of a “cultural sociology” is to subscribe to the idea that every
action, no matter how instrumental, reflexive or coerced vis-a-vis its external environments, is
embedded to some extent in a horizon of affect and meaning (Alexander 1998).
uCharacteristics of the Strong Program
uCulture as an “independent variable” capable of “shaping actions and institutions, providing
inputs every bit as vital as more material or instrumental forces” (Alexander & Smith, 2003, p. 12)
– autonomy of culture
uCulture is not defined by social life, rather it takes part in defining it
uThick description of texts (Geertz) and structural hermeneutics
uCausal specificity – specifying mechanisms through which culture does its work
u
u

Performance and Power (2011)
uCultural pragmatics
u“Individuals and collectivities strategically direct their actions and mobilize all their
available resources, but their instrumental power usually depends on success of a cultural kind.
This does not mean that the explanation of their success should be purely symbolic. It means that
pragmatic and symbolic dimensions are intertwined” (p. 78)
uMacro-sociological model of social action as cultural performance
uCultural performance is “the social process by which actors, individually or in concert, display
for others the meaning of their social situation.” (p. 28)
uGoal: psychological identification and cultural extension (similarly to sacred rituals)
uCreating an emotional connection between audience, actor, and text, is required if the cultural
meanings are to be projected to an audience
u

Fusion, de-fusion, re-fusion
uDepending on the complexity of the collective organization, social and cultural parts are more or
less segmented and differentiated, and the elements of a social performance are more or less fused
uSimple collectivity = less segmentation and greater fusion of elements
uComplex collectivity = greater segmentation and weaker fusion (i.e., elements of a performance are
de-fused)
uTo be effective in complex societies, social performances must go through a process of re-fusion
(i.e., must become more ritual-like)
uIf identification and cultural transmission have been established, the elements of a performance
have been fused

Elements of Social Performance
uSystems of collective representation – background symbols and foreground scripts
uSystems of collective representation – actors’ symbol-bearing world(s) from which they draw upon
for symbolic referents that inform their performance
uMade up of deep background of collective representations and foreground scripts (i.e., referential
texts)
uActors – the one(s) performing and putting collective representations into practice
uLiterature vs. theatre (walking and talking)
uAudience/observers – evaluating performances; have the agency to reject it
uActors attempt to achieve identification by conveying authenticity

uMeans of symbolic production – venue of the performance, expressive equipment, material resources
uMise-en-scène – “putting into the scene”; performances must be directed, to walk and talk a text
must be “sequenced temporally and choregraphed spatially” (p. 32) uSocial power – social
performances are dependent on the distribution of power within a society which determine the access
to means of symbolic production (who gets to act, what can be acted, who can observe)

Case study – Ljubiša Preletačević Beli
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEhWOa-D3Wo&t=12s