What Is Going On? An Analysis of the Interaction Order

Vidar Halldorsson

doi:10.18778/1733-8077.18.2.01

Authors

Vidar Halldorsson University of Iceland, Iceland https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8800-0288

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.18.2.01

Keywords:

Goffman, Interaction Order, Situations, Disruption, Alignment, Power, Generational Cleavage, Visual Sociology, Local Sociology of Action

Abstract

Seeing sociology visually adds a sense of realness to the viewer compared to only reading sociological texts. In this paper, I aim to provide an example of how a single scene from a feature film can be utilized as a practical and meaningful means to analyze a social situation and to help students of sociology to grasp key features of Goffman’s theory of interaction order. More precisely, the main aims of the paper are 1) to illustrate Goffman’s theory of the interaction order by identifying acts of disruption and alignment in interaction through a film clip; and 2) to attempt to analyze, in a Goffmanian sense, what is really going on in the situational interaction. The scene is from the 2013 American movie August: Osage County and follows a dinner of immediate family in the wake of the funeral of the hostess’s late husband. The normative and civilized interaction of the meal is, however, jeopardized by the hostile and provocative mood of the hostess, as she repeatedly disrupts the interaction order with attempts to mock and/or uncover the hidden and vulnerable truths of the immediate members of her family, exemplifying her power status in the particular situation. The dinner guests, however, try to overlook and resist the provocation of the hostess and stick to their predetermined roles to save and sustain their idealized selves (their faces) and the interaction order (the faces of others), In doing so they, on the one hand, discard the uncomfortable truths acclaimed by the hostess and, on the other, explain the hostess’s provocative actions in terms of their claim that she is unwell and in need of medical attention. Thus, the attacked dinner guests in the scene align more alliance to the interaction order than to truth itself.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Vidar Halldorsson, University of Iceland, Iceland

Vidar Halldorsson, Ph.D., is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Iceland. He has mainly approached his work from within the paradigms of sociology of performance and achievement, sociology of culture, sociology of knowledge, and visual sociology. His research focus has generally been on collective behavior, achievement, social atmosphere, teamwork, and symbolic communication. He has applied his research interests on various topics, most notably in sports and popular culture. He is the author of Sport in Iceland: How Small Nations Achieve International Success.

References

Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2011. Performance and Power. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Becker, Howard S. 2007. Telling about Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Berger, Morroe. 1977. Real and Imagined Worlds: The Novel and Social Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674418998

Berger, Peter and Thomas Luckmann. 1991. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Penguin.

Blumer, Herbert. 1969. Symbolic Interaction: Perspective and Method. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Burton, C. Emory. 1988. “Sociology and the Feature Film.” Teaching Sociology 16(3):263-271. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/1317528

Collins, Randall. 2004. Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton: Princeton University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400851744

Collins, Randall. 2020. Charisma: Micro-Sociology of Power and Influence. London: Routledge.

Cooley, Charles H. 1964. Human Nature and the Social Order. New York: Schocken.

Demerath III, Nicholas J. 1981. “Through a Double-Crossed Eye: Sociology and the Movies.” Teaching Sociology 9(1):69-82. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/1317013

Duneier, Mitchell and Harvey Molotch. 1999. “Talking City Trouble: Interactional Vandalism, Social Inequality, and the ‘Urban Interaction Problem.’” American Journal of Sociology 104(5):1263-1295. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/210175

Durkheim, Émile. 1965. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. New York: Free Press.

Fine, Gary A. 2012. Tiny Publics: A Theory of Group Action and Culture. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Frank, Arthur W. III. 1976. “Making Scenes in Public: Symbolic Violence and Social Order.” Theory and Society 3(3):395-416. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00159494

Frisby, David and Mike Featherstone, eds. 1997. Simmel on Culture. London: Sage.

Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Goffman, Erving. 1961a. Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill.

Goffman, Erving. 1961b. Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. New York: Anchor Books.

Goffman, Erving. 1963. Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. New York: Free Press.

Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Chicago: Northwestern University Press.

Goffman, Erving. 1981. Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Goffman, Erving. 1983. “The Interaction Order: American Sociological Association, 1982 Presidential Address.” American Sociological Review 48(1):1-17. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2095141

Goffman, Erving. 1990. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin.

Goffman, Erving. 2005. Interaction Ritual: Essays in Face-to-Face Behavior. New Brunswick: Aldine Transaction.

Griffero, Tonino. 2016. Atmospheres: Aesthetics of Emotional Space. London: Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315568287

Halldorsson, Vidar. 2018. “Team Spirit in Football: An Analysis of Players’ Symbolic Communication in a Match between Argentina and Iceland at the Men’s 2018 World Cup.” Arctic & Antarctic: International Journal of Circumpolar Sociocultural Issues 12:45-68.

Halldorsson, Vidar. 2020. “Sjónræn félagsfræði: Að sjá og greina samfélagið í gegnum myndavélina [Visual Sociology: Seeing and Analyzing Society through the Camera].” Tímarit um Uppeldi og Menntun 29(1):21-44. DOI: https://doi.org/10.24270/tuuom.2020.29.2

Halldorsson, Vidar and Michael A. Katovich. 2019. “Going Bad and Staying Bad: Crystallizing Dramatic Self Change.” Symbolic Interaction 43(3):432-456. doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/symb.397 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/symb.397

Harper, Douglas. 2012. Visual Sociology. London: Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203872673

Katovich, Michael A. 1984. “Symbolic Interactionism and Experimentation: The Laboratory as a Provocative Stage.” Studies in Symbolic Interaction 5:49-67.

Katovich, Michael A., ed. 2017. “Carl J. Couch and the Iowa School: In His Own Words and in Reflection.” Studies in Symbolic Interaction 49(2). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-2396201749

Katovich, Michael A. 2021. “G. H. Mead, Morality, and Sociality: An Interactionist Reading of The Man in the High Castle.” Studies in Symbolic Interaction 52:35-52. doi: https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-239620210000052003 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-239620210000052003

Katovich, Michael A. and Carl J. Couch. 1992. “The Nature of Social Pasts and Their Use as Foundations for Situated Action.” Symbolic Interaction 15(1):25-47. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/si.1992.15.1.25

Kelly, Benjamin W. and W. Peter Archibald. 2019. “Erving Goffman and the Evolutionary Ecological Missing Link.” Studies in Symbolic Interaction 50:141-168. doi: https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-239620190000050007 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-239620190000050007

Lawler, Steph. 2014. Identity: Sociological Perspectives. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Manning, Philip K. 2000. “Credibility, Agency and the Interaction Order.” Symbolic Interaction 23:283-297. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/si.2000.23.3.283

McLean, Paul. 2017. Culture in Networks. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Mead, George H. 2002. The Philosophy of the Present. New York: Prometheus Books.

Moskovich, Yaffa and Simbha Sharf. 2012. “Using Films as a Tool for Active Learning in Teaching Sociology.” The Journal of Effective Learning 21(1):53-63.

Perinbanayagam, Robert. 2018. The Rhetoric of Signs. Bloomington, IN: Archway Publishing.

Prendergast, Christopher. 1986. “Cinema Sociology: Cultivating the Sociological Imagination through Popular Film.” Teaching Sociology 14(4):243-248. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/1318381

Rawls, Anne W. 1987. “The Interaction Order Sui Generis. Goffman’s Contribution to Social Theory.” Sociological Theory 5(2):136-149. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/201935

Rose, Gillian. 2016. Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials. Los Angeles: Sage.

Schneider, Christopher J. 2019. “2017 Couch-Stone Symposium Keynote Address: The Interaction Order in the Twenty-First Century and the Case of Police Legitimacy.” Studies in Symbolic Interaction 50:97-115. doi: https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-239620190000050004 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-239620190000050004

Scott, Susan. 2012. “Intimate Deception in Everyday Life.” Studies in Symbolic Interaction 39:251-279. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-2396(2012)0000039011

Sumartojo, Shanti and Sarah Pink. 2019. Atmospheres and the Experiential World: Theory and Methods. London: Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315281254

Tavory, Iddo and Gary A. Fine. 2020. “Disruption and the Theory of the Interaction Order.” Theory and Society 49:465-385. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-020-09384-3 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-020-09384-3

Tipton, Dana B. and Kathleen A. Tiemann. 1993. “Using the Feature Film to Facilitate Sociological Thinking.” Teaching Sociology 21(2):187-191. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/1318642

Verhoeven, Jef C. 1993. “An Interview with Erving Goffman, 1980.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 26(3):317-348. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327973rlsi2603_5

Þórlindsson, Þórólfur. 2012. “Siðfræði og fagmennska í heimi fáránleikans: Um siðrof og útlaga í kvikmynd Sams Peckinpahs the Wild Bunch [Ethics and Professionalism in the World of Absurdity: On Ethical Breach and Outlaws in Sam Peckinpah’s Film, The Wild Bunch].” Íslenska Þjóðfélagið 3:41-56.