More behaviour in public places

Curiously in these times of social distancing and social isolation, I find myself coming back again and again to Goffman’s thinking about human behaviour in public places (as a good sociologist, he saw most behaviour together or apart as essentially social).

I’m beginning to suspect that it’s now that his thinking talks to me so – now when all of the social certainties, the codes and expectations and our personal weaponries of distractions and redirections are denied us.

Goffman is wonderful writer about human behaviour – he has a keen eye for detail, a sharp analytic and a lucid style.

In this book in particular he explores the fine and translucent web of rules we (co-)create for different kinds of social interactions and contexts for those interactions and the complex tactics we evolve for navigating them (including how we might release the stress of performing whatever role we’ve had to perform by focusing our attention away from the social melee with a distraction – a cigarette).

Sometimes minor deviance is less accepted by those around is and can be used as a sign of abnormality with all the censure and othering involved in that.

“as has been suggested, the importance of a disciplined management of personal front (behaviour according to the social rules) is demonstrated in many ways by the mentally sick (sic).

A typical sign of an oncoming psychosis is the individual’s ‘neglect’ of his appearance and personal hygiene.

The classic home for these improprieties is ‘regressed’ wards in mental hospitals, where those with a tendency in this direction are collected, at the very same time that conditions remarkably facilitate this sort of disorientation. (Here, [this behaviour] will be tolerated and sometimes even subtly approved, because it can reduce problems of ward management)”

Ernest Goffman: Behaviour in Public Places, Introductory Definitions, 1963 Free Press NY

Conversely, he observes, should a patient with mental health problems start to show increased interest in their appearance and personal hygiene, they will be assumed to be on the mend.

Now of course, this is based on field work done more than 50 years ago and in that time much has changed in our understanding of mental health and its care. At least professionally: as private citizens many of us still cling to similar structures of meaning and behaviour.

My point here though is broader. Right now, we have been cast adrift: all the social contexts we are used to living in and thriving in are gone; all the rules and the shared signals have melted away.

What happens to a lawyer who no longer gets to splash in the legal paddling pool? What happens to the bar manager who has neither bar nor staff or customers to perform in front of? What happens to the accounts clerk who now works from their kitchen table rather than the open plan office?

For some time, I suspect we will be able to pretend (through busy Zoom call schedules and a firm grip on the email inbox) that our work world is still with us. That the roles and behaviours and rules we are accustomed to are still in play. But for how long? No wonder we are anxious (threats of death and economic collapse aside).

What would Goffman make of us now? We poor lost workplace warriors.