Self - Goffman

Goffman - Presentation of Self definition of the situation

belief: belief in the part, in the role social fronts: settings and personal fronts; the places and our appearances dramatic realization: social roles are produced the moment they are performed, in social interaction idealization: when we perform we try to live up to an ideal that has been learned

Self is a result of the collaborative performance. In this sense, the self is not a cause but is an effect. "The self, then, as a performed character, is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, and to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented, and the characteristic issue, the crucial concern, is whether it will be credited or discredited. In analyzing the self, then, we are drawn from its possessor, from the person who will profit or loose most by it; for he and his body provide the peg on which something of a collaborative manufacture will be hung for a time." p 198

"The key factor in this structure is the maintenance of a single definition of the situation, this definition having to be expressed, and this expression sustained in the ace of multitude of potential disruptions." p 198

2011, Inside social life, 6th ed. Cahill, S., & Sandstrom, K.L. eds. Oxford University Press, New York, NY.