Abstract
Among the most commonly overlooked set of insights offered by Erving Goffman is his commentary, comprised of both explicit and implicit elements, on the interrelationship among power, hierarchy, and status in everyday life. In fact, Goffman has been subject to criticism for his apparent failure to treat these sorts of stratification-related phenomena. To date the most detailed critique of Goffman along these lines is Alvin Gouldner’s analysis.1
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Alvin W. Gouldner, The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, ( New York; Avon Books, 1970 ) pp. 378–90.
Ibid., p. 379; related criticisms have been advanced by Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology, (Englewood Cliffs; Prentice-Hall, 1967) p. 174; and by J. R. Young and Garth Massey, ‘The Dramaturgical Society: A Macro Analytic Approach to Dramaturgical Analysis’, Unpublished paper, (The Red Feather Institute, Colorado State University, n.d.).
Alvin W. Gouldner, For Sociology, ( New York, Basic Books, 1973 ) p. 347.
Mary F. Rogers, ‘Instrumental and Infra-Resources: The Bases of Power’, American journal of Sociology, Volume 79, (May, 1974) pp. 1418–33. Briefly put, instrumental resources are the means of influence, those attributes, circumstances, and possessions which can be activated or invoked to reward, punish, and/or persuade others. Infra-resources, on the other hand, are those attributes, circumstances, and/or possessions which relative to a given situation must be had before one’s relevant instrumental resources can be activated or invoked.
See, for example, Dorwin Cartwright, ‘Influence, Leadership, Control’, pp. 147, in James G. March (ed) Studies in Social Power, ( Ann Arbor; University of Michigan Press, 1965 ) p. 4
Terry N. Clark, ‘The Concept of Power’, pp. 1–47, in Terry N. Clark (ed) Community Structure and Decision-Making, ( San Francisco; Chandler, 1968 ) p. 47
William Gamson, Power and Discontent, ( Homewood, Illinois; Dorsey, 1968 ) p. 60
Andrew S. McFarland, Power and Leadership in Pluralist Systems, (Stanford; Stanford University Press, 1969) p. 6
Talcott Parsons, ‘On the Concept of Political Power’, pp. 251–284, in Roderick Bell, David V. Edwards, and R. Harrison Wagner, (eds) Political Power, ( New York; Free Press, 1969 ) p. 226
William H. Riker, ‘Some Ambiguities in the Notion of Power’, pp. 110–19, in Bell Edwards, and Wagner, (eds), op. cit., p. 117
Herbert A. Simon, ‘The Nature of Authority’, pp. 123–127, in William A. Glaser and David L. Sills (eds) The Government of Associations, ( Totowa, New Jersey; Bedminster Press, 1966 ) p. 123.
See John O’Neill, Sociology as a Skin Trade, ( New York; Harper and Row, 1972 ) p. 216.
Sensitive to that profundity, Ernest Becker, in Escape from Evil, (New York; Free Press, 1975) pp. 15, 13, acknowledges that, ‘many people have scoffed at Goffman’s delineation of the everyday modern rituals of face-work and status forcing’, and yet Becker maintains that Goffman has shown with, ‘consumate art how people impart to one another the daily sense that each needs, not with rivalry and boasting, but rather with elaborate rules for protecting their insides against social damage and deflation.’
Harold Garfinkel, ‘Studies of the Routine Grounds of Everyday Activities’, pp. 1–30, in David Sudnow, (ed) Studies in Social Interaction, ( New York; Free Press, 1972 ) p. 24.
See, C. Wright Mills, White Collar, (New York; Oxford University Press, 1956 ).
Max Lerner, America as a Civilisation, Volume II, Culture and Personality, (New York; Clarion Books, Simon and Schuster, 1957) p. 488.
Kurt B. Meyer, ‘The Changing Shape of the American Class Structure’, pp. 62–69, in Holger R. Stub (ed), Status Communities in Modern Society, ( Hinsdale, Illinois; Dryden Books, 1972 ) pp. 66–7.
Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, Character and Social Structure, (New York; Harcourt, Brace and World, 1953) p. 321; and Lerner, 1957, op. cit., P. 475.
Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb, The Hidden Injuries of Class, ( New York; Vintage Books, 1973 ).
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© 1980 Mary F. Rogers
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Rogers, M.F. (1980). Goffman on Power, Hierarchy, and Status. In: Ditton, J. (eds) The View from Goffman. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16268-0_5
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