The American sociologist, sociolinguist and social psychologist of Canadian origin Irving Hoffman (1922-1982) earned a reputation among many social scientists, although he was a recognized master (even a “genius”) of sociological microinterpretations, but at the same time an esoteric and unique thinker. As a result, those who write about Hoffmann tend to exaggerate the individuality and originality of his thought. The purpose of this article is to present Hoffmann as an organic part of a large European and American socio-philosophical and sociological tradition, to trace the origins of his basic concepts in order to better understand his personal contribution to theoretical sociology in this context.

Whenever one speaks of the influences and closest relatives of Hoffmann's "social dramaturgy," it is most often regarded as one of the later offshoots of "symbolic interactionism," reputedly the most primordially American of the best-known "schools" of sociology. At the beginning of the century, the founders of symbolic interactionism (although this name was established much later) in their own way made an individualistic and voluntaristic turn in American sociology, similar to the European offensive against positivist sociology, launched somewhat earlier by the neo-Kantians. However, these founders themselves (and in particular, George Herbert Mead, posthumously turned into the main authority of symbolic interactionism) were mostly participants in a wide, not just philosophical, but, perhaps, social movement- pragmatism, the ideas of which also indirectly connected them to the tradition of English empiricism and methodological individualism of the 18th century. About the influence of the table-

permanent references to the texts of W. James, J. Santayana of the period of passion for James and other authors of the same circle. Hoffmann owes them many of his key concepts. Pragmatism diverged from positivism (based on similar principles of methodological naturalism) mainly in the interpretation of the relationship between the organism and the environment, the individual and society. The mood of pragmatism is purely activist: in principle, a person should be considered as an active volitional subject, and not as an object passively obeying the laws of nature, capable only of contemplating and scientifically cognizing “objective” processes independent of human will in the natural and social environment. This corresponds to the general epistemological maxim of pragmatism: any truth is not a neutral state of consciousness, but a state of being, formed by people in accordance with their goals. Although the naturalistic determination of human actions is not denied here, research attention is shifted from the facts of their dependence on the environment to human freedom, to the possibility of controlling and manipulating the environment. The environment, especially the social environment, includes other active organisms, and a person becomes a person in the process of interacting with this active environment. Society can be understood through the analysis of the interaction and mutual influence of individuals.

Already in James and John Dewey, the creator of a special kind of pragmatism - “instrumentalism”, the notion of “communication”, which is significant for symbolic interactionism, appears, concretizing the general idea of ​​interaction And the basic one in the Hoffmann system of concepts. In the first approximation, communication is the process of transferring to each other and, consequently, the gradual socialization of private experience, ideas, emotions, values, etc. The formation of an individual, society, and a social institution, organization or institution depends on this active process. The dependence of the formation of a personality on the process of transmitting life experience to other individuals and receiving counter messages from them (“communication” includes both transmission and reception) implies a theoretical divergence both with psychologism, which admits the existence of some ready-made, innate natural motives for human action, independent of social environment, situations, surrounding institutions, and with extreme sociologism, which represents a person as something like a tabula rasa - a blank slate passively filled with direct impulses from the natural and social environment, collective consciousness, etc. The dependence of the formation and functioning of public associations, organizations and institutions from the process of communication is manifested in the fact that they are comprehended by ossification, sterility, and eventually disintegration, if they do not serve the cause of facilitating and enriching communication between people in every possible way.

By analyzing and detailing this double dependence, pragmatist philosophers (Mead was a direct participant in the pragmatic movement, who never called himself a sociologist during his lifetime) discovered the future theoretical and sociological significance of the problem of communication. In fact, the very existence of society was reduced by them to a set of processes of communication and information exchange that form the “common property” (in Dewey’s phrase) necessary for joint activity of all people for more or less equally understood goals, views, expectations, etc. Compared with Comte’s concept of "consensus omnium" - a key concept in the old positivist sociology and also assumed a commonality of feelings, thoughts and opinions - here, at first glance, there was only a transfer of research interests from a static interpretation of "consensus" as a necessary attribute of society to an analysis of the process of formation of the above community . But even this provided a significant change in the research perspective. Instead of the Comte-Durkheimian intuition of society as a powerful, almost divine given, created by the past, the image of society as something created along the way, so to speak, situationally, became the starting point. It was this shift that marked the beginning of a kind of sociological constructivism in a significant part of American social science - the interpretation of social reality as a continuously created product of everyday interactions, semantic interpretations and reinterpretations. This approach can be traced not only in Hoffmann, but also in such related areas of sociology as social phenomenology, ethnomethodology, etc. some form of social unity. Therefore, Hoffmann's assurances of following the Simmelian tradition are not at all accidental, just as Simmel's authority among the founders of symbolic interactionism is not accidental - a rare phenomenon for a representative of European sociology in America in the first decades of the 20th century.

The consequence of the pragmatism adopted by the pillars and the position adopted by Hoffmann was an extremely pluralistic concept of society, which fits perfectly into James' picture of the "Pluralistic Universe" and potentially substantiates his democratic idea of ​​"the diversity of religious experience." There is no uniform organization of society. There are as many types of public associations as there are goods and values ​​in circulation that can multiply in the process of mutually enriching exchange between people and become new points of social crystallization. Mead was generally inclined to consider the problem of the structure of society (as well as the structure of the individual) as falsely posed problems, for everything in the world is a continuous becoming, so that everyday practice and science always deal with processes and never with frozen states.

Such a position prohibits considering both human behavior as an exclusively individual asset and its environment as a frozen system of social relations or ready-made norms to which the individual is forced to passively adapt. It would seem that personal behavior is always shared by others in the sense that any individual activity causes a reaction in the human environment in the form of encouragement, protest, joining, ignoring, etc. Pragmatists usually expressed this fluidity and collective “doability”, the constructability of the environment in the concept of , which is included in the system of Hoffmann's basic concepts. The principles for interpreting this concept were already laid down in the “functional psychology” of John Dewey, which proceeded from the fact that human behavior is a response not to any single object, stimulus, event, not even to an arbitrarily isolated set of objects or events, but always to an assessment of the situation as a whole, based on the entire context of accumulated and current life experience. From this there was only a step to the sociological concept definition of the situation introduced by William Thomas (1863-1947) and masterfully used by Hoffmann.

Thomas proceeded from the fact that any specific human activity turns out to be the denouement of a specific situation, and with his term “situation definition” he emphasized that, more or less consciously choosing their lines of behavior, acting subjects participate in the creation of its general rules for a given case, and not just follow some universal, faceless and binding norms. The most important part of the situation for any actor was, according to Thomas, the attitudes and values ​​of its other participants. Therefore, any reaction of the individual to these "others" had to be analyzed not as a direct reaction to what they do and say, but as an indirect reaction to the meanings attributed to their words and deeds by this individual. The social world is primarily a probabilistic world of meanings. Hoffmann sympathetically cites Thomas' opinion (see p. 34 of this ed.) that in everyday life people make decisions, act and achieve their goals on the basis of purely conjectural inferences, and not statistical and other scientific calculations. For example, there is no scientific guarantee that the guests at any reception will not steal anything, but the duty of hospitality is nevertheless performed on the basis of the assumption of the decency of all those invited. It follows that imaginary, hypothetical values ​​can have the most real consequences in the form of purposeful actions of people. This is evidenced by the so-called Thomas theorem: “If people define situations as real, then they are real in their consequences.”

Thomas's theorem is already directly related to the problem of symbolism in social interaction, most authoritatively developed by Mead for adherents of pragmatism and symbolic interactionism. The main theme of his social philosophy was the analysis of the transition from the simplest social relations, which have a biological background and use gestural communication, to social relations based on symbolic communication. Mead explains its origin and evolution quite * materialistically”, in terms of the Darwinian theory of evolution. He proceeds from the fact that human society is a continuation and growth of some simple and fundamental socio-physiological relationships between biological organisms. The simplest cooperation, the primary social acts in the living world, are formed under the influence of biological impulses of hunger and sexual desire. The most elementary way of mutual adaptation of the actions of living organisms and their mutual influence on each other's behavior is gestures. In essence, any movement of an organism that causes adaptive reactions from other organisms can become a gesture. Gestures (for example, various instinctive grimaces, grins of fangs, etc.) remain as such until the organism is aware of their more or less precise values, as long as they are produced without the intention of causing a certain reaction in others. Anticipation of responses to gestures indicates their rise to new level communications - level significant characters, about their transformation into language. A gesture is a predominantly private, particularistic phenomenon, a symbol is a universal tool.

Mead consistently implemented this naturalistic approach, exploring the development of symbolic communication in the context of the overall evolution of man. The separation of man from the animal kingdom was studied and evaluated according to several interrelated criteria: the development of the ability to use meaningful symbols (languages), the formation abstract thinking(which involves the use of symbolic languages ​​in internal dialogue), the emergence and development of personality, the formation of the rudiments of social organization (that is, some stable institutional framework for social interaction). All these criteria, in principle, are equal, but still the most developed and generalizing in Mead was the picture of the evolutionary process as a whole from the point of view of the formation and social functioning of the individual. The mechanisms of this functioning described by Mead largely became the source of the system of concepts in Hoffmann's social dramaturgy and therefore deserve a brief review.

Like all pragmatists, according to Mead, personality is not some kind of unchanging structure, but an ongoing process. In contrast to the Comte-Durkheim tradition, Mead is not concerned with the problem of the individual's assimilation of ready-made social norms, but with the problem of acquiring the ability for an independent assessment of one's own behavior and activities, acquiring a personality. Personality has a social origin. It is formed dialogue. Talking with others teaches the ability to talk to oneself, teaches one to think, because thinking is essentially an “internal dialogue”. Mead stands on the Aristotelian positions of the primacy of social experience: an individual acquires a partner in himself, develops self-perception not directly, but indirectly, perceiving the point of view of other members of the social group to which he belongs, or some generalized position of this group as a whole. Thanks to the assimilation of the true or imaginary attitudes of others towards oneself, a person learns to look at himself and act accordingly "objectively" and thereby becomes a full-fledged "subject" of social action. A person as a product of biosocial evolution is an organism that has acquired a personality, that is, capable of perceiving and conscious of itself, capable of regulating its behavior, changing its settings in the process of internal dialogue, self-reflection. A person as a person acquires the ability to internalize social action, in other words, to turn the patterns of reactions of “others” to this or that situation into their own internal motives for action.

Mead calls the most important mechanism of this internalization taking on rolesrole- talking) . The individual acts in the roles of other people in front of himself, in each imaginary situation, as if playing a certain role in front of a certain imaginary audience, thinking step by step how certain viewers will react to his performance, and depending on the conclusions regarding the expected reaction, choosing the future one. line of real behavior. There are two different types the adoption of roles that characterize the two phases in the development of personality. In the first, the individual tries on roles and imitates the behavior of specific individuals (parents, immediate family, family doctor, cook, etc.). The mental processes that take place in this case resemble some of the transference phenomena described in psychoanalysis. In the second phase, the socio-psychological attitudes of other people undergo generalization, "generalized other"(the generalized other), represented in terms of “people”, “morality”, “God”, “society”, etc. The generalized other is associated with the formation of general abstract rules of behavior, the implementation of which supports the existence of this community as a whole.

In this Mead scheme, the main idea of ​​Hoffmann's theatrical approach to the analysis of the forms and rituals of interpersonal interaction is already visible. But the concept of social personality, which is key to this analysis, has much deeper roots than Mead's philosophy alone. Within the framework of the pragmatist movement, the personality formation scheme of Charles Cooley (1864-1929), known as the concept of “mirror self” (looking - glass - self), is close to the Meadian one. Cooley meant that a person learns to control his Self by peering into his image in the mirror of other people, imagining how these others see him, and correlating his own ideas about himself with the ideas attributed to him by the people with whom his life brings him. Compared with Mead, Cooley gives only a general formulation of the problem. This setting itself goes back to a much more interesting and profound treatment of the related problem of reconciling the private and the public good by Adam Smith in his main book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759).

The progenitor of all constructions similar to the "mirror self" scheme was Smith's concept of "sympathy" and "impartial spectator". Smith directly used the "mirror" metaphor when discussing the educational impact of society on the individual. If we imagine a person who grew up in isolation, without any communication (communication) with his own kind, then such a person would not be able to judge either his own character, or good or evil in his thoughts, feelings and behavior, or even his appearance. Only society presents the individual with a mirror in which he is able to see and appreciate these qualities that are indifferent in themselves. In human nature, according to Smith, there is, firstly, a natural ability for everyone to sympathize (sympathy) with other people, mainly expressed in a sympathetic understanding of their feelings, which are supposedly the motives for the corresponding actions; and, secondly, the ability to evaluate one's own actions, imagining how an impartial observer, endowed with the same natural sympathy for another and, on its basis, a tendency to moral assessments, would react to them and their motives. Smith literally anticipated Mead's "generalized other" formula, arguing that a person carries society in himself, accepting the generalized norms, assessments and feelings of other people as part of himself.

An impartial observer manifests himself in life, so to speak, in two ways. The first is the “internal observer”, which in Russian is called conscience. In conscience as an internal observer, not only moral norms are represented that have developed in the course of the natural evolution of mankind and are approved by the majority of contemporaries who are part of the same cultural circle, but also transcendent moral norms that reflect faith in higher justice, at least beyond the grave, and thus spiritually unite the individual a person with God, giving him the strength to follow the absolute principles of behavior, regardless of empirical disappointments in life's justice. The second hypostasis of an impartial observer is the market, an honest mirror in which each individual person's need for others is reflected and evaluated, primarily in order to satisfy his material needs, and not just to obtain moral approval of his behavior. The market is a mirror that truthfully shows everyone whether and how much society needs his activity, and according to which the individual adjusts the quality and the assigned price of his work. In isolation, without interaction with others, all this is impossible. In market relations, the moral principle of mutual sympathy is manifested in the economic form of mutually beneficial exchange, which in principle remains moral, because it satisfies a person’s natural desire for his own good while maintaining a benevolent attitude towards others, and what is natural is fair. The elementary relations of reciprocity and exchange serve as a starting point in the analysis of a just economic system, to which the most famous book by the professor of moral philosophy Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), is devoted. The consequence of these seemingly simple considerations of human nature was the nominalist conception of society as an unintended order of interactions of predominantly free producers and sellers, who, despite self-interest, are able to coexist with each other thanks to a condescending feeling of mutual sympathy. This feeling can be experienced only for another person, but not for society as some kind of abstract whole.

Such an extensive historical digression about Smith's views was needed to show against their background the limitations of the seemingly similar “communication” interpretation of society by symbolic interactionists and pragmatists, a limitation not recognized by most of them, but, as we will see later, well recognized by Hoffmann. In the foundation on which the theory of society was to be built, Smith laid the philosophical principles and dimensions of “human nature”, which are not exhausted by the opening prospects of interpretations. No wonder Smith, the moralist and economist rolled into one, are also referenced by evolutionary sociologists, supporters of evolutionary ethics, who are sure that morality is developed by humanity on historical experience different ethnic groups by trial and error; and those who believe in the original “natural harmony” and the hidden wisdom of Providence, without which man is powerless and which, without the knowledge of people, compensates for the costs of individual freedom; and numerous schools of neoclassical and neoliberal economics; and those for whom economics and sociology are value-neutral, naturalistic in the method of science; and defenders of the moral status of these sciences. The main thing is that Smith analyzed not only the elementary spiritual foundations of society, but also objective social relations that spontaneously arise over time and phenomena of higher levels of complexity, such as the processes of self-organization of the market order, which he described using the metaphor of the “invisible hand”. The main shortcoming of symbolic interactionism against this background was pointedly revealed by Cooley with his tendency to completely dematerialize society, interpreting social interaction primarily as a game of people's imaginations about each other. A person directly exists for another person only as an imaginary entity that affects his mind. In direct social contacts and relationships with others, the imagination of a given person participates as a real person. Therefore, society as a direct concrete reality exists in the minds in the form of a set of relationships between imaginations about neighbors.

Although Mead called such a position “social solipsism,” his “generalized other” is also just the germ of the usual “average sociological” concept of society, even potentially unable to reflect many of the most important and defining relationships. For example, the communication scheme, which implicitly assumes the interaction of individuals on the principles of complete equality and voluntary participation, still allowed Mead to come from the concept of a generalized other to the depleted concept of “social control”, identified with self-control, but such an asymmetric relationship between people as power (this most real means of social control) simply has no place in this theoretical scheme. The term "society", indiscriminately attributed by Mead to all situations where there is some kind of interaction between individuals, unwittingly imposed a false idea of ​​the fundamental homogeneity of systems of social relationships in these situations. Ultimately, overcoming Cooley's "social solipsism" came down to Mead's potential expansion of the boundaries of society as the radius of action of all types of communication increased and, consequently, to the expansion of the possibilities of taking on the roles of persons not only from the immediate environment, but also distant in space and time. .

Probably the most logical consequence of such assumptions about the universal and uniform socially generating effect of communication would be a simple and popular interpretation of its components in the spirit of Durkheim: the “generalized other” as an analogue of Durkheim’s “collective representations”, “role-taking” as an analogue of the process of their assimilation and education of the social conformism. However, Mead himself did not want to be content with such a simple scheme of relations between the individual and the public, and in the manner of psychoanalysis (but independently of it) distinguished in the personality (self) - an active participant and at the same time a product and an object of influence of the communication process - two continuously interacting dynamic subsystems of its elements: so to speak, the individualistic hypostasis of the social personality, indicated by the English personal pronoun of the first person singular I, and the collectivist hypostasis, indicated by the indirect case of the same pronoun - Me. Me - this is a standard, traditional part of the personality, it is an organized set of attitudes, skills, customs, and reactions of other people generally accepted in a given social group, assimilated by this individual. But to this necessary standard component, which allows a person to be a member of the collective, the individual reacts as an individual, as I. Hence I denotes all manifestations of self-expression, the unique creative response of a unique biological organism and the unique inner world of a given individual to the attitudes of other people in an organized community.

Apparently, the Meadows I was supposed to serve as a kind of socio-psychological equivalent of the philosophical concept of free will. In the relentless internal struggle between Me And I, between the conformist desire for collective security and the activist thirst for new experience, the degree of freedom of the individual's social actions is determined. But where do the contradictions come from? Me And I, as long as both subsystems of personality components equally have a social origin? What are the social sources of these contradictions? What are the socially acceptable boundaries of individual freedom? Mead is unlikely to find answers to such questions. For this purpose, it is better to return to Smith.

Of course, his general religious solution to the problem of freedom today will not suit many people. Smith was not afraid of human freedom, primarily because he believed in the providential harmony of the actions of free people. Free choice according to conscience, under the control of this impartial internal observer, was for him a natural-divine condition for the development of society. But the completely scientific explanation by the neo-liberal and neo-evolutionist F. A. Hayek of intrapersonal contradictions between the subjective thirst for unlimited “self-expression” and socially beneficial positive freedom, which somehow reflects the objective truth of economic and other laws of human society, also appeals to Smith. Hayek developed in a new way the idea of ​​the Scottish moralists (among whom Adam Smith was the star of the first magnitude) that a person constantly lives in two different worlds: the microcosm (that is, small or, according to Cooley, “primary” groups such as the family, various communities and etc.) and the macrocosm (civilization, the world system, the market order - in a word, what Hayek generically calls the "extended order of human cooperation").

These worlds have different systems of rules and coordination of behavior. In intimate circles of communication in human behavior there is much more scope for the direct manifestation of feelings and instincts and for the conscious cooperation of personally known people, united by the joint pursuit of specific common goals. In macrosystems, there are impersonal, unified for all abstract rules of behavior and prohibitive traditions of morality, which determine the legal boundaries of the freedom and rights of the individual, allow him to set his own goals and make personal decisions. These rules and traditions are not consciously chosen by people. They develop in the course of evolutionary intergroup natural selection and are instilled in the members of groups (surviving and spreading their influence thanks to a particularly happy combination of moral traditions found) through cultural mechanisms of imitation, education, training and all other varieties of interpersonal communication. The discipline of impersonal rules, imposed by any self-sustaining "extended order" beyond the will and desires of its participants, often causes subconscious self-loathing on their part. But only within the framework of such a common discipline is it possible peaceful coexistence individual freedoms. The conflict between abstract rules of behavior that are difficult to inculcate and what one instinctively likes, primarily in spontaneous communication in small intimate communities of people, is not only, as Hayek claims, “the main theme of the history of civilization,” but, we add, the deepest cause of those intrapersonal contradictions. which manifest themselves in everyday acting and putting on various masks in inter-human contacts, which phenomena I. Hoffman studied all his life.

The fundamental distinction between micro- and macrocosm, all sorts of communities of individuals who maintain personal contacts with each other, and million-headed anonymous orders, of course, is not Hayek's sole discovery. But he most persistently and reasonably proved the methodological and theoretical viciousness of naming two worlds that are completely different in terms of the type of connections with the same term “society”. This practice leads to attempts to explain and build an “extended order” in the image and likeness of the original intimate group dear to the heart or the social environment in which a person lived at the most impressionable age. to expanded orders of human cooperation. It seems that it is the neglect of this distinction, stimulated by the universality/application of the category of communication, that is largely to blame for the rosy picture of society characteristic of many symbolic interactionists, which rests almost entirely on spiritual interaction. Among them, Hoffmann stood out for his clear understanding of the theoretical consequences of the distinction described above and for his conscious limitation of his main scientific task.

Hoffmann adopted the basic principles of symbolic interactionism for the analysis of social activity. Among them was the conviction, expressed shortly before his death in his 1982 presidential address to the American Sociological Association, that social life must be studied "naturalistically," in the manner of the natural sciences, and from the point of view of eternity. Hoffmann's nomination of the physical interaction of human biological bodies as a structure of the lower level, from which all others grow, also goes back to Mead. He also retained a pragmatic interpretation of the socio-creative process in terms of the activities of individuals who are forced to solve the next problems in the next situations, independently finding new means of redefining them and controlling them. The guiding methodological postulate of symbolic interactionism, according to which all the facts and meanings dealt with by the sociologist must be explained within the framework of the process of social interaction as the final instance, has not been challenged either. This implies the prohibition to look at the interaction only as a means through which its participants are influenced by some forces external to the interaction itself. And, of course, the vast majority of human interactions are symbolic in the sense that most of the reactions of individuals to others are mediated by the phase of interpretation, reflection and self-reflection, in which the meaning of the subject of interaction for each of its participants is clarified. But if so many symbolic interactionists still naively believe that the above general principles are sufficient for constructing a theory of society as a whole, then Hoffmann deliberately used them to microanalyze a special reality that occurs only in social situations where participants are in the physical presence of each other and have opportunity directly (albeit on the basis of those developed in the previous and current personal experience semantic interpretations) to respond to the actions of others. Hoffmann called this reality (by his own admission, “for lack of a better term”) “the order of interaction”. This is the title of his aforementioned presidential address. Therefore, the “order of interaction” must be understood as the order of interaction face-to-face, and the term “social interaction” that he also uses without specification in most cases means social interaction face-to-face in his texts.

“The order of interaction” is considered by Hoffmann as a meaningfully independent and full-fledged field of research. Its independence is proved at least by the fact that with the acceptance of this starting point of theorizing, that is, the direct interaction of individuals, the fundamental dichotomous distinctions of traditional “big sociology”, which usually oppose contrasting types of social relations, become unimportant. Indeed, the forms and rituals of, say, courtesy in direct contact as such can be studied at the home table and in courtrooms, in the family bedroom and in supermarkets, that is, regardless of the traditional oppositions of Gemeinschaft and Geselschaft, personal and impersonal, domestic and public, urban and rural, etc. But at the same time, Hayek's "extended order" undoubtedly and in many ways influences the order of direct interpersonal interaction. For example, in his most popular book, Presenting Yourself to Others in Everyday Life, analyzing girl performances of feigned stupidity in front of suitors, Hoffman advises not to forget that it is American girls from the American middle class who play stupid. But the problem of connections between the “order of interaction” and different structures of social relations in each case requires a special and concrete study.

There is, however, one, not particularly specified, general context, without taking into account which it is impossible to properly understand either Hoffmann's approach to social microsystems of interaction, or, more broadly, the social philosophy of American pragmatism. This context is the mentality of a citizen of a democratic society, a kind of spontaneously naive pluralistic ontology of society, based on the prosperous experience of this citizen. In a slightly different connection, we have already mentioned the pluralistic universe of W. James, where as many centers of organization are allowed as there are self-conscious wills. This general premise is more or less consistent with James's concept of a plurality of social personalities, or social I(social selves) of a person, the most simple and logical of all pragmatic constructions on the same topic, moreover, it played the role of a primary source in relation to them. Since pragmatism fundamentally rejects any monistic substantiality of consciousness, the thesis about the continuous process of production of personal self-consciousness in society due to interaction with other people looks logical. An important element of this interaction is the expectations and evaluations of these others, addressed to the acting subject and becoming part of his internal motivation. Since a person usually participates in a variety of different groups, then it has as many different social I, how many groups exist, consisting of persons whose opinion he values. Each of these groups shows a different side of his personality. Thus, the interaction takes place not so much between individuals as subjects, integral indivisible personalities, but between different social faces of individuals, as if between the characters portrayed by them. No wonder James is considered the founder of the theory of roles that took shape later. Forced to put on the most diverse social masks that correspond to the everyday expectations of the mass of carriers of a democratic collective consciousness, numerous “subjective I”, endowed with a despotic will to transform their social environment pragmatically and utilitarianly, pacify and neutralize each other. Everything works out for the best in a democratic world.

Hoffmann adopted James's concept of the social personality as a starting point in his analysis of interaction microsystems. This is what proves that in his interests he was a sociologist, and not an exotic "depth psychologist", as he is sometimes portrayed *. Together with James, Robert Park and many others, Hoffmann wants to study these masks, the masks of social actors, which in the end grow into the face and become more authentic. I, than what is imaginary I, what these people want to be. The mask, the role is justified by life. The concept of a person about his role becomes second nature and part of the personality. If sometimes Hoffmann speaks of “the mismatch between our natural self and our social self,” then he thinks about this not in terms of opposing the biologically innate and the socially acquired, but rather in terms of different social requirements imposed in different circles of communication. In some, we are expected to have a certain “bureaucratization of the spirit” and discipline of actions, regardless of bodily conditions, in others there is room for manifestations of impulsiveness and the dependence of the results of our activities on poor health.

In the book offered to the reader in this edition, Hoffmann further narrowed and clarified his main research problem. He focused on the “dramatic” or “theatrical” problems of a participant in a microinteraction presenting his activity to others. At the same time, the specific content of this activity or its role functions in a working social system are not considered. In order to better understand Hoffmann's formulation of the problem, we can compare it with similar ideas of M. M. Bakhtin's “philosophy of the act”. Bakhtin considered a human act as a kind of potential text, the meaning of which can only be understood in the context of his time. Hoffmann temporarily puts this context out of the brackets. But continuing his thought, Bakhtin says that even the physical action of a person must be understood as an act, but an act cannot be understood outside of its possible symbolic expression. It is this symbolic equipment, the symbolic toolkit of activity presented to others, that interests Hoffmann the most.

With an expanded perspective, the same task is formulated as the task of studying social micro-formations, organizations, institutions - in short, any isolated social spaces in which a certain kind of activity is carried out, from the point of view of managing the impressions created there and defining the situation. A description of the methods of managing impressions developed in a given relatively closed microsystem, the difficulties in this matter, its main performers and executive teams organized on this basis, etc., etc. - all this Hoffman singles out as a special dramatic approach. According to his plan, it should complement the traditional perspectives of sociological analysis of social formations: technical (from the point of view of organizing activities in them to achieve certain goals); political (in terms of asymmetric social control over the distribution of activity resources and the use of power); structural (clarifying the set of horizontal and vertical relations between operating units); cultural (in terms of moral and other general cultural values ​​that affect the nature of activity in a given social space).

• * For example, in the only monograph about Hoffmann known to us in Russian (Kravchenko E.I. Ervin Hoffman. Sociology of acting. M.: MSU, 1997), where Hoffmann’s “self” is sometimes interpreted in a dubious way as “deep self”.

The dramatic approach must have its own special, “situational” system of concepts due to the internal dialectic of the development of forms of social life face-to-face and the special status of time in these forms. The relatively short duration in time and space of their constituent events allows people to follow the course of these events from beginning to end with their own eyes. Due to visual visibility, such forms are easier to assimilate and repeat by people (in this development, the role of “empathy” is great - getting used to the world of subjective feelings of partners), and because of the transience of these forms, participants who are heterogeneous in many respects are forced to quickly reach a working mutual understanding.

All of them enter the current social situation with some kind of life experience of communicating with different categories of people and with a mass of cultural prerequisites, presumably shared by all. In fact, in any microsystem of face-to-face interaction, people enter into culturally conditioned cognitive relationships with other directly present participants, without which it would be impossible to streamline joint activities either in verbal or behavioral forms. The main situational term for the analysis of human activity in Hoffmann's social dramaturgy is performance(performance) - denotes all manifestations of the activity of an individual or a “team” of individuals during their continuous presence in front of specific viewers (some kind of everyday “audience”) - Initially, all these manifestations of activity, covered by the term “performance”, are focused on the implementation of purely working tasks. But then the dialectic of any social interaction begins to operate, eventually leading to a partial or complete transformation of “normal” work activity into representative activity, oriented towards the tasks of communication and the most effective self-expression.

Entering into an unfamiliar situation with many participants, a person usually seeks to reveal its real character as fully as possible in order to competently meet the expectations of those present. But information about their true feelings towards him, about their past social experience, etc. is usually not enough. And then, in order to foresee the development of the situation, one has to use substitutes: random remarks, slips of the tongue, and slips of the tongue, as in psychoanalysis, status symbols, material signs of social position, etc. perception, the more attention should be paid to external manifestations, appearances, impressions that other participants create during interaction about their past and future course of action.

In this mutual process of production of impressions (and thus “self-expression” of the participants), Hoffmann distinguishes two different types of communication (sign activity): free expression, which people give information about yourself in generally valid symbols, and spontaneous expression, which they issue themselves (for example, they accidentally give out with some gesture their upbringing, which is not sufficient for the declared claims to a certain social status). The second type of communication - usually unintentional, non-verbal and more theatrical - interests Hoffmann in the first place. But when using both channels of communication, there are objective restrictions on direct interaction between people (the need to stick out some facts and hide others, idealization, etc.). These restrictions affect its participants and transform the ordinary manifestations of their activities into theatrical performances. At the same time, instead of simply performing a work task and freely expressing feelings, people begin to intensively depict the process of their activity and convey their feelings to others in a deliberate, but acceptable form for others.

That is why the language of theatrical performance, the performance, is used. Hoffmann speaks of the “front” of a performance as that part of it that regularly appears in a stable form, defining the situation for those who watch this performance. He speaks about the “settings”, “decorations” of the performance, the spatial arrangement of the participants in the interaction, about the division of the stage space of everyday games into the back (behind the scenes) zone, where an impeccable performance of everyday routine actions is prepared, and the front zone, where this performance is presented to others. Hoffman also introduces an analogue of a theater troupe - the concept of a team of performers who combine their efforts for the duration of the existence of a given microsystem of interaction in order to present their definition of the situation to those present (audience). “Team” is another “situational” concept used by Hoffmann instead of the usual “structural” concept of “social group”. A team is also a grouping, but not in the context of historically long-term and stable relations of a social structure or organization, but in the context of the next staging of some routine everyday interaction or a series of such interactions, where it is necessary to plant and hold the necessary definition of the situation. This definition includes a working agreement (consensus, agreement) about the necessary "command ethos", which must be supported by tacitly accepted rules of courtesy and decency. The main task of the team is to control the performance experience, in particular by guarding access to its backstage areas in order to prevent outsiders from seeing the secrets of the performance not intended for them. These secrets from the public (audience), which could expose and disrupt the worldly performance, are known to all the performers in the team and are guarded by them together. Therefore, in the relations of team members, a special solidarity and friendly familiarity of initiates usually develop.

But, as Hoffmann emphasizes more than once in his book, the language of the theatrical stage is not an end in itself and not yet another illustration of the Shakespearean metaphor that has turned into a banality “the whole world is a theater, and people are just actors on the stage.” Pedaling stage analogies, by Hoffmann's own admission, was for him to a large extent a rhetorical ploy and a tactical maneuver. In fact, he was not interested in the elements of the theater that penetrate into everyday life and are abundantly presented in his books. His research task is to identify the structure of social contacts, direct interactions between people and, more broadly, that structure of phenomena public life, which occurs every time when any persons are physically co-present in the limited space of their interaction. The key factor in this structure is the maintenance of some definition of the situation, which must be sustained to the end in spite of the many potential dangers that threaten to undermine it from all sides. As we already know, Hoffmann gives the system of relations characterized by this desired structure a conditional abbreviated generalized name “interaction order”.

This “order” that takes shape in life is by no means a theater, although it has in common with it that those involved in life situation ordinary people, in order to maintain its initially chosen definition, actually use the same techniques and means of self-expression that are at the disposal of professional actors. But Hoffmann's analysis of the "order of interaction" is not reduced to revealing the forms and rituals of its theatricalization and representational deception. Communication acts, even if performed with the aim of embellishing one's activities, imply a certain moral relationship with the audience. The impressions made by the participants in the communication, all their inadvertent grimaces, involuntary gestures and "verbal gestures" (Mead's expression) are interpreted as hidden promises or claims. And this is material for moral judgments. The performers and the audience they are working for act as if there is a tacit obligation between them to maintain a certain balance of opposition and agreement. This balance rests on an often unconscious moral cognitive agreement not to mislead each other too much, for impressions made by people are sometimes the only way to know the other, his intentions and activities.

In general, the structure of the "order of interaction" is formed under the influence of opposing forces acting on the performers. On the one hand, their daily life is entangled with moral restrictions, so that they subjectively and objectively reside in the sphere of moral relations. On the other hand, every person in the cycle of everyday affairs sooner or later faces a situation where, for

For the benefit of the case, it is necessary to concentrate and slightly correct the impressions (that is, resort to manipulating them) produced by its actions on others. Business actions then essentially turn into “gestures” addressed to the audience. The life practice of a person is theatricalized. And here he is primarily interested in the inherently immoral problem of creating an appearance, a convincing impression for others, that all norms of morality and legality are observed in his actions. That is why everyday life often turns ordinary people into sophisticated experts in theatrics.

All of the above once again confirms the validity of Hoffmann's selection of the “order of interaction” as an independent area sociological research. In principle, the main thing he wants to know about this “order” is the question of what kind of impressions from the realities and accidents of any direct social interaction are capable of destroying the impressions carefully planted and educated in ordinary performances of everyday life. Hoffmann's attention is mainly focused on the ways and causes of undermining the mutual trust of people in the impressions they receive in the course of joint activities, and not on the problem of the nature of social reality as such. Therefore, he devotes so much space and time to disguised false ideas and techniques of misinforming communication, all sorts of ambiguities and omissions that allow you to create an advantageous illusion, without at the same time descending to a direct lie, very vulnerable to exposure. In the same way, he analyzes sophisticated defensive techniques that protect the chosen line of behavior and the “dark secrets” of team and individual performances from such revelations. The success of these techniques is again possible with a certain moral discipline of the performers, which Hoffmann characterizes with the phrases “dramatic fidelity”, “dramatic prudence”, etc.

It has already been said that Hoffmann's awareness of the specifics of the "order of interaction" as an independent field of research required the development of a special apparatus of "situational" concepts for his analysis. To the previously mentioned terms, one can add such detailing and analytically dismembering the basic concept of “performance” terms, such as contact(any event in the zone of possible direct response of another); almost synonymous with contact single interaction(all manifestations of interaction in a separate episode); party, routine and others. In principle, it is possible to connect these situational terms with structural terms generally accepted in sociology. Thus, if a “social role” is a set of rights and obligations associated with a certain status, then one social role may include more than one party, understood as a routine pattern of action that is played out before audiences of the same type. However a common problem Finding points of contact between Hoffmann's “order of interaction” and elements of social organization traditionally singled out by sociology is extremely complex and hardly touched upon by Hoffmann in his various works. His descriptions of the direct influences of "situational effects" and certain characteristics of the "interaction order" on macroworlds outside the sphere of the latter concern relatively minor phenomena. For example, in the presidential address mentioned earlier, he tries to establish some links between the order of direct interpersonal interaction and the main status-determining characteristics of individuals in the “big” social structure: age, gender, social class and race - All these are very limited attempts.

On the whole, Hoffmann seems to be of the opinion that the social microsystem of face-to-face interaction cannot be a direct reflection of macrosociological structures and laws, so that it is difficult to judge the latter on the basis of the laws of microsociology. It seems that Hoffmann's experience undermines the hope of fulfilling the cherished dream of sociological theorists - to build a bridge between observations and generalizations at the level of everyday everyday situations and historical generalizations of macrosociology, and build not in the form of intuitive insights and superficial metaphors, but in the form of a ladder of strict concepts included in general theoretical framework. It seems that from reading Hoffmann one should conclude that it is better to study these different worlds, that is, micro-interactions (“the stage setting” of which he analyzed so well) and macrostructural processes, to study separately. This does not prevent us from appreciating the subtlest “artistic” observations, capturing the interpenetration of the two worlds, scattered in abundance in Hoffmann's books.

Presenting yourself to others in everyday life

“Masks are frozen expressions and superb echoes of feeling, at the same time truthful, restrained and exaggerated. Living organisms, in contact with the external environment, are forced to acquire some kind of protective shell, and no one protests against such shells on the grounds that they are supposedly not their main parts. However, some philosophers seem to be annoyed that images are not things, and words are not feelings. Words and images are like shells, as integral to nature as the substances they cover, but more to the eye and more open to observation. By this I do not mean to say that substance exists for the sake of appearance, face for the sake of masks, passion for the sake of poetry and manifestations of virtue. Nothing arises in nature for the sake of something else: all such phases and works are equally included in the circle of being...”

J. Santayana Santayana G. Soliloquies in England and later soliloquies. L.: Constable, 1922.

Foreword

This book seems to me to be something like a textbook, which deals in detail with one of the possible sociological approaches to the study of social life, especially that kind of it that is organized within the clear material boundaries of a building or institution. It describes many techniques that together form a methodological framework that can be applied to the study of any particular social order, whether family, industrial or commercial.

The approach developed in this work is the approach of theatrical performance, and the principles that follow from it are dramaturgical principles. It examines the ways in which the individual presents himself and his activities [p. 29] to other people in the most common work situations, the ways in which he directs and controls the formation of their impressions of himself, as well as patterns of what he can and cannot do. do while presenting yourself in front of them. In applying this model, I will try not to neglect its obvious insufficiency. The scene presents the viewer with events that are plausibly imagined; life supposedly presents us with events that are real and usually unrehearsed. Even more important, perhaps, is the fact that on the stage the actor plays in the mask of a certain character, in accordance with the masks portrayed by other actors. There is also a third participant in the performance - the public (or audience), a very important participant, and yet one that would not be there if the stage performance suddenly became a reality. In real life, these three participants are compressed into two: the role played by one adapts to the roles played by others present, and these others also constitute the audience. Other inconsistencies of the theatrical approach to real circumstances will be discussed later.

The illustrative materials used in this study are of a mixed nature: some are taken from quite respectable works, where competent generalizations are made about reliably established regularities; some are borrowed from unofficial memoirs written by various colorful personalities; many belong to some intermediate region. In addition, material from my own study of a local subsistence farming community in one of the Shetland Islands* was often used. The justification for this approach (and, it seems to me, related to the approach of G. Simmel) is that these illustrations, taken together, are built into a fairly coherent system of concepts that combines scraps of experience that the reader already has and provides the student with a kind of guide worthy of verification in mono-research of the institutional foundations of social life.[p.30]

This system of concepts unfolds logically. The introduction is necessarily abstract and can be omitted.

This book is the result of a scientific study of human interaction undertaken on behalf of the Department of Social Anthropology and the Social Science Research Committee at the University of Edinburgh, and a study of social stratification carried out with the support of the Ford Foundation, led by Professor E. A. Shils of the University of Chicago. I am very grateful to these organizations for their initiative and support. In addition, I would also like to express my gratitude to my teachers: C. W. M. Hart, W. L. Warner and E. C. Hugh. I also thank Elizabeth Bot, J. Littlejohn, and E. Banfield, who helped me in the beginning of the study, and colleagues at the University of Chicago, who helped me later. Without the cooperation and help of my wife, Angelika Hoffman, this work would never have been written.

• *Taught in part in an unpublished doctoral dissertation: Goffman E . Communication conduct in an island community (Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, 1953). [p.31]

Introduction

When a person is present where others are present, these others usually seek to obtain fresh information about him or to use already existing information. As a rule, they will be interested in his general socio-economic position, his concept of himself, his attitudes towards them, his competence in some matters, his reliability, etc. Although sometimes the search for individual information, apparently, become an end in itself, there are usually quite practical reasons for collecting such information about a person. Information about this individual helps to define the situation, allowing others to know in advance what he expects from them and what they can expect from him. With this information, others know how best to proceed in order to get the desired response from this individual.

There are many sources of information at the disposal of the others present, and many media (or "symbolic means of expression") for its transmission. Even if observers are not familiar with a person, they are able to pick up some clues from his behavior and appearance that will allow them to apply to him their previous experience of communicating with approximately similar people or, more importantly, to use stereotypes that have not yet been tested. On the basis of past experience, they may also assume that in a given social setting, only certain sorts of people are likely to be encountered. Observers may rely either on what a person says about himself or on documentary evidence of who and what he really is. If observers know the individual himself or have information about him from the experience of a previous interaction [p. 32]-

Viya, they can rely on assumptions about a certain constancy and general direction of his psychological properties as a means of predicting his present and future behavior.

However, during the time of the individual's direct presence in the society of other people, too few events may occur that can immediately provide these others with the convincing information they need if they intend to act prudently. Many decisive facts and indications are outside the time and place of direct interaction or are contained in it in covert. For example, the “true” or “real” attitudes, beliefs and feelings of an individual can only be clarified indirectly, thanks to his confessions or involuntary manifestations in behavior. Similarly, when an individual offers a certain product or service to others, it often happens that during the entire duration of direct contact, others are not given the opportunity to "see through" this person. Then they are forced to accept some moments of interaction as conventional or natural signs of something that is not directly accessible to the senses. In the terminology of G. Ichheiser 1 , the individual will have to act in such a way that, intentionally or unintentionally, express yourself and others, in turn, must receive impression about him.

The ability of the individual to "self-express" (and thus his ability to impress others) seems to contain two completely different types of sign activity: the arbitrary self-expression by which he gives information about himself, and involuntary self-expression, which he issues myself. The first includes verbal symbols, or substitutes for them, used commonly and individually to convey information that the individual and others are known to associate with the given symbols. This is “communication” in the traditional and narrow sense. The second includes the vast field of human action which others may regard as symptomatology of the actor when there is reason to believe that the action was taken for reasons other than the mere transmission of information in that manner. As we shall see, this distinction is only initially significant, for, rest assured, an individual can convey intentional misinformation using both of these types of communication: the first is outright deception, the second is pretense.

• 1 Ichheiser G . Misunderstanding in human relations // The American Journal of sociology. Supplement Lv. September. 1949.P. 6-7.[p.33]

Understanding communication both in a narrow and in a broad sense, one can come to the conclusion that when an individual finds himself in the direct presence of others, his activity will have the character of a certain promise. In all likelihood, others will feel that they must accept this individual on faith, offering him a reasonable equivalent in return (while he is “present” before them) in exchange for something whose true value can be established after his departure. (Of course, others use hypothetical inferences in their contacts with the physical world, but it is only in the world of social interactions that the objects inferred about can purposefully facilitate or inhibit this process.) The reliability of the conclusions being tested about the individual will, of course, vary depending on such factors as the amount of information others already have about him, but no amount of past knowledge can apparently completely eliminate the need to act on the basis of conjectural inferences. As William Thomas insisted:

It is also very important for us to understand that in everyday life we ​​do not actually conduct our business, make decisions, and achieve goals statistically or scientifically. We live by guesswork. Let's say I'm your guest. You cannot know and determine scientifically whether I will steal your money or your spoons. But presumably I still won't steal, and also presumably you are hosting me as a guest.

Let us now turn from the position of others to the point of view of the individual who presents himself to them.

• 2 Quot. by: Social behavior and personality (Contributions of W. I. Thomas to theory and social research) / Ed. by E.H. Volkart. N. Y.: Social Science Research Council, 1951. P. 5.

Perhaps he wants to give them a high opinion of himself, or to make them think that he has a high opinion of them, or so that they understand what his real feelings are towards them, or so that they do not get any definite impression. The individual may also want to have enough harmonious relationships with others to maintain interaction with them, or want to get rid of them, deceive, confuse, confuse, antagonize, or harm them. Regardless of the specific goal present in the mind of the individual, and from the motives for setting this goal, it is in his interests to control the behavior of others, especially their response to his actions 3 . This control is achieved mainly by influencing the definition of the situation at the beginning of its formulation by others, and this definition can be influenced by the individual by expressing himself in such a way as to give others the impression that induces them to act voluntarily, but according to his own plans. Therefore, when an individual finds himself in the company of others, he usually also has reasons to become active in order to make such an impression on them that it is in his interests to inspire. For example, if girlfriends in a student dormitory judge girl popularity by the number of calls to the phone, it is quite possible to suspect that some girls will begin to deliberately arrange such calls for themselves, and therefore Willard Waller's finding is predictable in advance: to the phone in a student dormitory, often taking time to give all her friends enough to hear her name called out several times 4 .

Of the two types of communication - the processes of voluntary and involuntary self-expression - the book primarily focuses on the second, more theatrical and context-dependent, non-verbal and probably unintentional (whether in the case of purposefully organized communication or not). As an example of what we should try to investigate, let us quote from a long fictional episode in which one Pridi, an Englishman on holiday, is described as furnishing his first appearance on the beach of a summer hotel in Spain: It goes without saying that one must try not to make eye contact with anyone. First of all, he must make it clear to those possible companions that he is not at all interested in them. To look through them, past them, over them - a sort of look into space. It's like the beach is empty. If the ball accidentally falls in his path, he must look taken by surprise. Then a smile of joyful amazement will light up his face (Good-natured, Kind Come!), As he begins to look around, amazed that on the beach it turns out, There is people, and throws the ball back to them, lightly laughing at himself, and not over people- and then he casually resumes his careless survey of space.

• 3 In understanding this issue, I owe a lot to an unpublished article by T. Burns from the University of Edinburgh, in which he argued that the hidden nerve of any interaction is the desire of each of its participants to control and manage the reactions of others present. A similar argument was recently developed by J. Haley in an unpublished article, but in connection with a special kind of control aimed at determining the nature of the relationship between the persons involved and the interaction of the persons.
• 4 Waller W. The rating and dating complex // American Sociological Review. II. p . 730.

But the time will come to arrange a small parade of the virtues of the Ideal Come. As if by chance, he will give anyone who wants a chance to catch a glimpse of the title of the book in his hands ( spanish translation Homer's reading is classic, but not provocative, besides cosmopolitan), and then he slowly folds his beach cover-up and bag into a neat sand-protected pile (Methodical and Practical Come), at ease stretches himself to his full gigantic height (Big Cat Come), and relieved to throw off his sandals (at last, Carefree Come!).

And marriage Come and the sea! In this case - their rituals. Firstly, the procession along the beach, suddenly turning into a run with a jump into the water, and immediately after emerging, smoothly, with a powerful silent crawl there - beyond the horizon. Well, of course, not necessarily beyond the horizon. He could suddenly roll over on his back and violently kick up the white foam (no one doubts that he could swim further if he wanted to), and then suddenly jump half a body out of the water standing up so that everyone could see who it was.

The other move was simpler: it didn't require a cold water test and the risk of appearing overly spiritual. The whole point is to look so accustomed to the sea, to the Mediterranean and to this beach, that such a person, at his own discretion, could sit at least in the sea, at least not in the sea without harm to his reputation. Such a pastime allowed for a slow [p.36] walk down the water's edge (he does not even notice how the water wets his feet, he does not care what water is like earth!) eyes are turned to the sky and sternly seek out signs of future weather invisible to others (Local fisherman Come!) 5 .

The novelist wants to show us that Comee does not adequately interpret the vague impressions that his purely bodily actions, as he thinks, produce on those around him. We can continue to make fun of Comee, believing that he is acting in order to create a special impression of himself and a false impression, while others present either do not notice him at all, or even worse, the impression of himself that Comee passionately wants to make them accept. , turns out to be a purely private biased impression. But the only thing that matters to us in this is that the kind of impression that Pridi thinks he makes is the real kind of impression that others in their midst rightly or wrongly receive from someone.

As said above, when an individual appears in front of others, his actions begin to influence the definition of the situation that they began to form before his appearance. Sometimes this individual will act completely calculated, expressing himself in this way, in order to produce on others the very Impression that is most likely to evoke in them the response he desires. Often, being prudent in his activities, he may be relatively weakly aware of this. At times he will intentionally and consciously express himself in a certain way, but mainly because such expressions are caused by the tradition of his group or his social status, and not by any specific reaction (other than vague acceptance or approval), probably expected from people who are under the impression of this self-expression. Finally, from time to time, the very traditions of one of the roles of the individual allow him to create a harmonious impression of a certain kind, although he may not have intended to give such an impression either consciously or unconsciously. Others, in turn, may either get the impression simply from the individual's efforts to convey something, or misunderstand the situation and come to conclusions that are not justified by either the intentions of this individual or the facts. Anyway, since others act like this, as if the individual was conveying a particular impression, one can take a functional or pragmatic approach, assuming that the individual "effectively" implemented the given definition of the situation and "effectively" implemented the understanding of what the given state of affairs implies.

• 5 Sansam W . A contest of ladies. L.: Hogarth, 1956. P. 230 - 232.

There is one point in the reaction of others which requires special comment here. Knowing that the individual is likely to present himself in a favorable light, others may divide what they observe into two parts: a part that is relatively easy for the individual to manipulate at will, since it consists primarily of his verbal statements; and a part consisting predominantly of manifestations of involuntary self-expression of the individual, which he apparently has little or no control over. In such a case, others may use what are believed to be the unguided elements of his expressive behavior to test the validity of what is conveyed by the managed elements. This shows a fundamental asymmetry inherent in the process of communication: the individual is supposedly aware of communication only through one of his channels, while observers perceive messages both through this channel and through some other. For example, the wife of a Shetland farmer, serving local island dishes to a guest from the “mainland” (the main island of Great Britain), listened with a polite smile to his polite praise of what he ate, and at the same time noticed the speed with which the guest brought a spoon or fork to his mouth, greed with which he swallowed food, expression of pleasure when chewing, using these signs to test the expressed feelings of the eater. The same woman to reveal that one of her acquaintances A“actually” thinks of another friend B, waiting for the moment when B in the presence of L found himself involved in a conversation with someone else IN. Then she secretly watched the change of expressions on her face. A, the observer [p.38] who gave B c conversation with IN. Without participating in the conversation with B and without fear of his direct observation, A sometimes relaxed, lost his usual restraint, feigned tact, and freely expressed his “real” feelings towards B. In short, this Shetland woman observed an observer not observed by anyone else.

Further, given that others are likely to compare more controllable elements of a person's behavior with less controllable ones, one might expect that sometimes an individual will try to capitalize on this very probability by directing the impressions of his behavior in such a way that they are perceived as informationally reliable. 6. For example, when admitted into a tight social circle, a participating observer may not only maintain an acceptable appearance while listening to an informant, but also try to maintain the same appearance when observing an informant talking to others. Then it will not be so easy for observers of the observer to reveal what his real position is. A concrete illustration of this can be found in life in the Shetland Islands. When a neighbor looks in on a local resident for a cup of tea, the latter, passing through the door of the house, usually depicts on his face at least a semblance of a warm expected smile. In the absence of physical obstacles outside the house and the lack of light inside it, it is usually possible to observe a guest approaching the house without being noticed. Often the islanders allowed themselves the pleasure of admiring how a guest drives off in front of the door. face the former expression and replaces it with a secular-sociable. However, some visitors, anticipating this neighborly examination, automatically assumed a secular appearance at a far distance from home, thereby ensuring the constancy of the image shown to others.

This kind of control over part of the individual restores the symmetry of the communication process and sets the stage for a kind of information game - a potentially endless cycle of concealments, false revelations, discoveries and rediscoveries. To this it must be added that, since others are likely to be rather careless about the uncontrollable elements in the behavior of the individual, this latter, by controlling them, will be able to gain a lot. Others, of course, may feel that he is manipulating the supposedly spontaneous aspects of his behavior, and see in this very act of manipulation some shadow element in his behavior that he has not been able to control. This gives us yet another test of the individual's behavior, this time of his supposedly uncalculated behavior, thus restoring once again the asymmetry of the communication process. Note in passing that the art of penetrating other people's pranks with "calculated indiscretion" seems to be more developed than our ability to manipulate our own behavior, so that no matter how many steps are taken in the information game, the spectator will probably always have an advantage over the actor, and the initial asymmetry of the communication process seems to be preserved.

• 6 Stephen Potter's well-known and highly respected writings, in particular, discuss signs that can be rigged to give the astute observer the supposedly random clues he needs to discover hidden virtues that the manipulator does not really possess.

Assuming that the individual plans the definition of the situation when he appears before others, we must also see that these others, no matter how passive their role may seem, will themselves successfully direct the definition of the situation through their responses to the actions of the individual and all kinds of undertakings opening up to him. new ways of action. Usually, the definitions of the situation projected by several different participants are sufficiently consonant with each other that open contradictions rarely occur. This does not mean that when each participant candidly expresses what he really feels and honestly agrees with the expressed feelings of others present, there will certainly be some kind of consensus. This kind of harmony is an optimistic ideal and is not at all necessary for the well-coordinated work of society. Rather, each participant in the interaction is expected to suppress his immediate heartfelt feelings so that he conveys only that [p. 40] view of the situation that he feels others will be able to accept, at least temporarily. Maintaining this superficial agreement, this semblance of consensus, is helped by the concealment by each participant of his own desires behind a stream of statements asserting values, to which everyone present feels obliged to swear allegiance, even if only in words. In addition, one usually has to reckon with a peculiar division of labor in determining the situation. Each participant is allowed to establish tentative authorized rules for dealing with subjects that are vital to him but do not directly affect others, such as rational explanations and justifications for his past activities. In exchange for this polite tolerance, he keeps quiet or avoids topics that are important to others but not so important to him. In this case, we have a kind of modus vivendi * in interaction. The participants jointly form the only common definition of the situation, which implies not so much a real agreement on the status quo, but a real agreement on whose claims and on what issues will temporarily be recognized by all. There must also be real agreement on the desirability of avoiding open conflict between different definitions of the situation 7 . This level of agreement can be called “working consensus”. It must be understood that a working consensus that has been established in one environment of interaction will be completely different in content from a working consensus that has developed in a different situation. Thus, between two friends at dinner, a mutual demonstration of affection, respect and interest in each other is maintained. In another case, for example, in the service sector, an employee of the institution can also maintain the image of disinterested enthusiasm for the problem of the client, to which the client responds by demonstrating respect for the competence and decency of the specialist serving him. But regardless of such differences in content, the general form of these working devices is the same.

• 7 Of course, the interaction can be specifically designed to find a time and place for expressing differences of opinion, but in such cases, the participants must agree that they will not quarrel over a certain tone of voice, vocabulary and level of seriousness of the argument, and also agree about mutual respect, which the disputing participants are obliged to carefully observe in relation to each other. This debatable or academic definition of the situation can be resorted to both urgently and in a leisurely-reasonable manner as a way of translating a serious conflict of views into one that can be managed within acceptable limits for all those present.
• * Conditions of existence (lat.).

Given the tendency of the individual participant to accept requests for definition of the situation made by others present, one can appreciate the key importance of the information that the individual originally possesses or acquires about his accomplices, because it is on the basis of this initial information that the individual begins to determine the situation and build his own line of response. The original projection of the individual makes him follow who he thinks he is and give up all pretense of being someone else. As the interaction of participants develops, additions and modifications are, of course, made to this initial informational state, but it is essential that these later changes correlate without contradiction with the initial positions (and even build on them) of individual participants. It seems that at the beginning of the meeting it is easier for the individual to make a choice as to which line of treatment to extend to other people present and which one to demand from them than to change the line once accepted when the interaction is already in full swing.

In everyday life, too, of course, there is a clear understanding of the importance of first impressions. Thus, the work proficiency of those employed in the service sector often depends on the ability to seize and maintain the initiative in customer service relationships - an ability that requires subtle aggressive tactics on the part of service personnel if their socioeconomic status is lower than that of the client. W. White explains this with the example of the behavior of a waitress:

The first thing that catches the eye is the fact that the waitress, who works under intense pressure from all sides, does not just passively respond to the demands of her customers. She skillfully [p.42] acts to control their behavior. The first question that comes to mind when we see her relationship with the clientele is: “Will the waitress restrain the client, or will the client suppress the waitress?” A qualified waitress understands the crucial importance of this question...

A skillful waitress stops the client confidentially, but without hesitation. For example, she may find that a new customer has sat down at the table himself before she has had time to clear the dirty plates and change the tablecloth. At the moment he is leaning on the table, teaching the menu. She greets him, says, “Please let me change the tablecloth,” then, without waiting for an answer, takes the menu from him, forcing him to move away from the table, and does her job. The relationship with the client is politely but firmly on track, and there is no question of who is in charge 8 .

When an interaction initiated under the influence of “first impressions” is itself the first in a vast series of interactions with the same participants, we speak of a “good start” and feel the decisive importance of this beginning. Thus, some teachers in their relations with students adhere to the following views:

Never let them get the better of you - or you're lost. That's why I always start hard. On the very first day, entering a new class, I let them know who is the boss here ... You just have to start hard, so that later you can loosen the reins. If you start with indulgence, then when you try to be firm, they will just look at you and laugh.

In the same way, ministers in psychiatric hospitals often feel that if a new patient on the first day of his stay in the ward is sharply laid down and shown to him who is the boss, this will prevent many future troubles 10 .

Recognizing that the individual is capable of successfully projecting the definition of the situation when meeting others, one can also assume that within the framework of this interaction, events are quite possible that will contradict, discredit or otherwise call into question this projection. When such disruptive events happen to her, the interaction itself can stop in confusion and embarrassment. Some of the assumptions on which the participants' reactions were based turn out to be untenable, and they find themselves drawn into an interaction for which the situation was poorly defined and then not defined at all. At such moments, the individual whose self-image to the microsociety is compromised may experience shame, while others present may feel hostility, and all participants may feel painful awkwardness, confusion, loss of self-control, embarrassment, and a kind of anomalous situation as a consequence of the collapse of the social microsystem of face-to-face interaction. -face.

• 8 Whyte, W. F. (ed.). industry and society. Ch. 7. When workers and customers meet. N.Y.: McGraw-Hill. 1946. P. 132 - 133.
• 9 Becker H. S. Social class variations in the teacher-pupil relationship // Journal of Educational Sociology. Vol. 25. P. 459.
• 10 Taxel H. Authority structure in a Mental Hospital Ward / Unpublished Muster's thesis. Department of Sociology . University of Chicago . 1953. [p. 43]

In emphasizing the fact that the initial definition of the situation projected by the individual tends to become a plan for subsequent joint activity, that is, considering everything primarily from the point of view of this action itself, one cannot lose sight of the decisive fact that any projected definition of the situation has also clearly expressed moral character. And it is on this moral character of projections that the scientific interest of this study is predominantly focused. Society is organized on the principle that any individual who possesses certain social characteristics has a moral right to expect others to be treated and appreciated accordingly. A second principle is also connected with this principle, namely, that an individual who secretly or explicitly signals to others that he has certain social characteristics must, in fact, be what he proclaims himself to be. As a result, when an individual projects a definition of a situation and thereby implicitly or explicitly claims to be a person of a certain kind, he automatically imposes on others a certain moral requirement to evaluate him and treat him in the way people of his category have the right to expect. He also implicitly waives all claims to represent himself as [p.44]

He is not really 11 , and therefore waives the claim to be treated as such. Then others will agree to admit that the individual informed them both about what is in reality and about what they must see as this "is". It is impossible to judge the importance of breakdowns in the process of determining the situation by the frequency with which they occur, for it is obvious that they would occur even more often if constant precautions were not observed. I think that in order to avoid these disruptions, preventive practices are constantly applied, as well as corrective actions to repair the damage from malicious incidents that could not be avoided. When an individual uses these strategies and tactics to defend his own projections, these actions are called "defensive practice"; when one participant uses them to salvage the definition of the situation projected by another, this is referred to as "in patronizing practice" or "tact". presence in front of others.To this, although it is relatively easy for people to see that without the use of defensive practices no initial impression would survive, it is probably much more difficult for them to understand that very few impressions could survive if the recipients of these impressions did not observe tact in their perception.

In addition to the fact that precautions are taken to prevent disturbances in projected definitions of the situation, it can also be noted that increased attention to such disturbances plays an essential role in the social life of the group. Crude social mystifications and jokes are played there, where uncomfortable, embarrassing situations are purposefully adjusted, which should be taken lightly 12 . Fantasies are concocted in which dizzying revelations take place. Anecdotes are told and retold from the past (real, embellished or fictional), describing in detail the former or almost former difficulties that they managed to brilliantly cope with. There seems to be no variety of group that does not have a ready stock of such games, fantasies, and edifying stories, a stock to be used as a source of humor, anxiety relievers, and sanctions to encourage individuals to be modest in their pretensions and prudent. in anticipation. A person can also reveal himself in stories about imaginary getting into awkward situations. Families like to talk about the case of a guest who mixed up dates and arrived when neither the house nor the people in it were ready to receive him. Journalists talk about cases when a typographical error so significant and understandable to everyone was made that the feigned objectivity of the newspaper and the decorum it observed were humorously exposed. Public service workers tell of clients who, in a very amusing way, misunderstood the questions on the questionnaires they filled out and gave answers that implied highly unexpected and bizarre definitions of the situation 13 . Sailors, whose “family” is all-male away from home, tell stories of a sailor on vacation who, at his home table, casually asked his mother to pass him “such-and-such butter*14. Diplomats retell the tale of the short-sighted queen asking the Republican ambassador about the health of his king, 15 etc.

• 11 This role of witnesses in limiting the possibilities of self-expression of the Individual was especially emphasized by existentialists, who saw this as the main threat to individual freedom. See: Sartre J.-P. Being and nothingness. L.: Methuen, 1957.

Let's sum up now. I admit that when an individual appears before others, they have many motives for trying to control the impression they get from observing the situation. This book explores some of the common techniques people use to maintain such impressions, and some of the common uses for these techniques. The specific content of any activity of an individual participant, or the role that it plays in the interdependent activities of a working social system, is not discussed in it. I am only interested in the dramatic problems of the participant presenting his activity to others. The problems that stagecraft and stage direction solve are sometimes trivial, but very common. Stage tasks appear to be encountered at every turn in social life, thus providing a clear guiding thread for formal sociological analysis.

• 12 Goffman E. Communication conduct in an island community. P. 319-327.
• 13 Blau P. Dynamics of bureaucracy / Ph.D. dissertation. Department of Sociology. Columbia University. University of Chicago Press, 1955. P. 127 129.
• 14 Beattie W. M. (jr.). The merchant seaman / Unpubliaahed M-A. report. Department of Sociology. University of Chicago, 1950, p. 35.
• 15 Ponsonby F. Recollections of three reigns. L.: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1951.

It is appropriate to end this introduction with a few definitions that were implied in the previous and will be needed in the future presentation. For the purposes of this study, an approximate general definition of interaction (more precisely, face-to-face interaction) as the mutual influence of individuals on each other's actions in the conditions of the direct physical presence of all participants is sufficient. Single interaction can be defined as all manifestations of interaction in any one episode, during which a given set of individuals was continuously in the presence of each other. The term "contact". “Performance”(or “performance”) can be defined as all the activities of a given participant in a given episode that in any way affect any other participants in the interaction. By taking one particular participant and his performance as a reference point, other categories of performers can be defined as audience, audience, observers, or contributors. A predetermined pattern of action, which is revealed in the course of some performance and which can be performed or played in other cases, can [p. 47] be designated by the terms “party” or “routine” 16 . These situational terms are easy to associate with generally accepted structural ones. When an individual or "performer" in different circumstances plays the same part to the same audience, then it probably makes sense to speak of the emergence of a "social relation." Having defined a “social role” as a set of rights and obligations associated with a given status, it can be argued that one social role can include more than one party and that each of these different parties can be presented by the performer in a number of cases to the same types of audience or audience. consisting of the same persons.

• 16 See comments in Neumann and Morgenstern's book on the importance of distinguishing between a routine of interactions and any particular instance in which that routine is specifically enacted: Neumann J . von, Morgenstern O. The theory of games and economic behavior. Princeton University Press, 1947. P. 49.

Hoffman writes that this book is intended to become a kind of guide for the reader in his studies of various social structures (family, industrial, commercial). Any reader can find in it many techniques that form a certain methodological framework that can be applied in such studies. For sociology, this book is tutorial, which examines in detail a certain social approach to the study of social life. The dramatic approach focuses on the principles of theatrical performance, i.e. on how exactly the individual presents himself and his activity to others, controls in these people the formation of a certain impression of himself and what he can do and what not during this presentation. This book explores precisely this theatrical presentation by the individual of himself to others.

Hoffman distinguishes two forms of expression:

Arbitrary (a way of expression in which an individual gives others some information about himself)

Involuntary (a way of expression in which an individual gives himself away)

Those. if we are talking about the first method, then the individual transmits some information through verbal symbols (conversation, communication), and the second method is that the individual can give some information about himself involuntarily with the help of a certain manner of communication, with the help of his distinctive qualities, various activities etc. Communication for Hoffmann is the process of transmitting information, which includes various generalized symbols and symptoms of individual individuals.

Assumptions allow a person to start interacting with another, to construct the initial course of his actions, to build initial conclusions about him. Through subsequent communication with the other, some conclusions will be refuted, some on the contrary will be strengthened, perhaps the course of action in relation to the other will be reconstructed.

To a greater extent, Hoffmann is interested in the second type of self-expression - involuntary (which he also calls theatrical, non-verbal and unintentional).

The elements of expressed behavior are: the definition of the situation by the individual, the promotion of various assumptions, the construction of the action by the individual, the action itself, the emergence of various conclusions about the individual and the possible change in these conclusions in the future.

The asymmetry of communication is as follows: the individual is aware of only an arbitrary part of self-expression (that part of self-expression that consists of the individual's verbal statements). Observers also take into account both the arbitrary and involuntary part of the individual's self-expression (the involuntary part is the part that consists of manifestations of the involuntary self-expression of the individual, which he almost does not own and almost does not control). The symmetry of communication can be restored through the individual's control over the involuntary part of self-expression, planning a certain situation by him.

Hoffman identifies two modes of role performance (two poles):

1) Belief in one's own role - a mode in which the individual is completely carried away by his own action

2) Lack of faith in one's own role - a mode in which the individual is cynical about his own action

These modes are subject to change. If initially a person did not have faith in his own role, then soon a person can “get used” to the role he plays and acquire faith in this role. If initially there was faith in the role, then gradually a person is protected from his role in order to protect his inner self from too close contact with the audience. Hoffman also writes that there are fluctuations in faith: a situation where an individual fluctuates between faith and cynicism and, in the end, stops at one thing.

The foreground is "a standard set of expressive techniques and instruments ... developed by an individual in the course of performance", which accompany him only in exceptional cases. Personal foreground - a set of expressive techniques and instruments that are closely related to the performer himself and accompany him everywhere. The foreground elements are the various elements of the setting: furniture, decorations, the physical location of the participants, and so on. The elements of the personal foreground are the elements of the appearance of a person and his manners: the distinctive titles of the official position or rank, the ability to dress, gender, age, racial characteristics, dimensions, appearance, posture, characteristic speech turns, facial expressions, gestures, etc. These elements represent some props for the flow of human action. This fact makes them extremely important for staging this action. The information communicated by the foreground is always abstract and generalized. This is due to the fact that it contains norms that can be used by various routine representations.

Idealization is the process by which an individual embodies the generally accepted values ​​of a certain society to a greater extent than in everyday life (to a perfect degree). Idealization is manifested in the fact that the individual takes on a certain role (an ideal pattern of behavior) that is not characteristic of him in everyday life and follows it for a certain period of time. Through idealization, an individual can inspire the audience with a certain impression, which can often help him in the implementation of his selfish goals.

The performance zone is any place where the perception of the performance is limited in one way or another. Performance zones focus individuals on certain aspects of performance and limit others.

The foreground zone is the location of a performance in which a performance is the starting point (in other words: a location in which certain elements of a particular performance are expressively emphasized). Behavior in this zone is aimed at creating a certain impression about the individual, the impression that the activity of the individual in this zone is aimed at maintaining and implementing certain social norms and standards.

The performer adheres to certain rules of courtesy (the norm of verbal address of the performer to the audience) in a conversation and certain propriety of behavior (observance by the performer of certain restrictions in behavior when he is in the zone of visibility or hearing of the audience, but does not necessarily speak to it), which can be divided into moral requirements and instrumental.

The background zone is a place in which "realized contradictions with the implanted impression are taken for granted" (in other words: a place in which facts hidden from the public appear and are recognized). The background zones play the role of the so-called backstage, because various performances are rehearsed and prepared in them, and there is no way for members of the audience to get into them (only performers can get into them).

Analytical review of the work of Hoffmann I. "Introducing yourself to others in everyday life."

Introduction to the book by I. Hoffmann.
The book, he says, appears to be something like a textbook on sociology, which deals with one of the sociological approaches to the study of social life, especially that variety of it that is organized within the clear material boundaries of some task or institution. It describes many techniques that form a methodological framework applicable in the study of any particular social structure. The approach developed in this work is that of theatrical performance, and the principles that follow from it are dramatic. It examines the ways in which the individual presents himself and his activities to other people in the most common work situations, how he directs and controls the formation of their impressions of himself, as well as examples of what he should and should not do during self-presentations. them.

When a person is present where others are, these others seek to obtain fresh information about him or use the information already available. Information about the individual helps to define the situation, allowing others to know in advance what he expects from them and what they can expect from him. They collect information about his socio-economic position, his concept of himself, his attitudes towards them, his competence, reliability, and so on. Often, due to the limited time of contact with an individual, few events can occur that would constitute a block of information. If others fail to immediately "crack" the individual, they are forced to accept some moments of interaction as conventional or natural signs of something that is not directly accessible to the senses.

In the terminology of G. Ilheiser, the individual will have to act in such a way as to intentionally or unintentionally "express himself", and others, in turn, must receive an "impression" of him. An individual can "self-develop" arbitrarily, which gives information about himself and involuntarily, to whom he "gives" himself. The first "self-expression" contains verbal symbols or their substitutes to convey information that the individual and others are known to associate with these symbols. This is "communication" in the traditional narrow sense of the word. The second may deliberately present misinformation. Using both of these types of communication: with the first, direct deception is used, with the second, pretense. In everyday life, says I. Hoffman, we must understand that we do not actually conduct our business, do not make decisions and do not achieve goals statistically or scientifically. We live by guesswork. Using the example of a guest from friends, it is impossible to immediately determine whether the guest will steal money or not, but presumably it can be assumed that the guest will not steal and just as presumably he is accepted as a guest. When an individual is in society, he actively tries to create such an impression about him in order to emphasize to others about his integrity and in his interests to inspire society with this.

I. Hoffman pays more attention to the second type of "self-expression", more theatrical depending on the context, non-verbal and, probably, unintentional (whether it is a case of purposefully organized communication or not). Analyzing further in his work the behavior of the individual, I. Hoffman highlights the asymmetry of communication. It consists in the fact that other observables divide the behavior of an individual into two parts, seeking to present themselves in a favorable light. One part that is easy for the individual to manipulate at will, as it consists of his verbal statements.; the second part, consisting of manifestations of the involuntary self-expression of the individual, which he does not own, does not control. In such a case, others can use the uncontrolled elements of its behavior to check the validity of what is passed by the controls. For the observables, it is of interest to compare the more controlled elements of human behavior with the less controlled ones.

And it can be expected that sometimes the individual tries to capitalize on this very possibility, so that the impressions of his behavior are directed so that they are perceived as reliable. This kind of control over part of the individuality restores the symmetry of the communication process. Usually, the definitions of the situation projected by several different participants are sufficiently consonant with each other that open contradictions rarely occur. But each participant is allowed to establish authorized rules, relations to subjects vital to him, but not affecting others. In that case, we have a kind of " modysviventi in interaction. In short, the participants jointly form a single common definition of the situation, which implies a real agreement on whose claim and on what issues will be recognized by all. Given that individual participants can accept applications for certain situations made by others, one can evaluate the importance of the information that the individual "initially" possesses or acquires from his accomplices.On the basis of this initial information, the individual begins to determine the situation and build his own line of behavior.

The individual projects the initial definition of the situation and it becomes his plan for subsequent joint activities. Considering, first of all, from the point of view of this action, one cannot lose sight of the decisive fact that any projected definition of the situation also has a moral character. This moral character of projection is the focus of the scientific interest of this study. Society is organized on the principle that any individual who possesses certain social characteristics has a moral right to expect others to be treated and appreciated accordingly. In the process of determining the situation, disruptions are also possible. And if constant precautions were not observed, they would occur much more purely than cases actually have. In order to prevent disruptions, preventive practices are constantly applied, as well as corrective actions to recover from malicious incidents. Actions by an individual to defend their own projections are called "defensive" practice, while others use them to save certain situations provoked by others, this is said to be "protective practice or" so.

Hoffmann states that "protective and patronizing practices" taken together protect the impressions endured by the individual during his presence in front of others. It is appropriate to end this introduction with a few definitions that were implied earlier and will be needed in the future presentation. "A single interaction is all manifestations of interaction in any one episode in which many individuals were together." "Contact" is a term that can be applied to "single interaction". "Performance" (or performance) can be defined as all manifestations of the activity of a given participant in a given episode that act on other participants in the interaction. Just as a term like "party", "routine" is a pre-established pattern of action that is revealed in the course of some performance and which can be performed or played in other cases. A "social role" is a set of rights and obligations about social relations, one can say when an individual or "performer" in different circumstances plays the same part in front of the same audience.

Versions

Faith in the role played

Hoffman notes that when an individual performs some kind of epithean part in interaction with others, he implicitly takes his observers seriously the image created in front of them. The performer puts on a performance, supposedly for the benefit of other people. But when a person has no faith in his own action and no interest in the beliefs of his audience, you can call him a cynic. In his research, Hoffman discovered a cycle "from disbelief to faith", when the initial conviction and enthusiasm are replaced by cynicism and vice versa, when cynic people go back this way.

Foreground performance
We are already familiar with the term "execution" and its meaning. Hoffman proposes to call "foreground" that part of an individual performance that regularly appears in a generalized and stable form, defining the situation for those who observe this performance. The foreground is a standard set of expressive techniques and tools developed immediately or implicitly by an individual in the course of performance. Standard components: first of all, "furnishings", furniture, scenery, location of participants, stage props. The term "foreground" refers to the components that are directly related to the performer: his status, gender, clothing, race, size, etc. Information about the foreground is abstract and generalized information. It can be said that routine performances can use the same foreground, which characterizes it, as a rule, to be institutionalized in the form of generalized stereotypical expectations, the development of which it gives impetus.

Theatrical incarnation
The activity of the individual will become familiar to others only if, throughout the interaction, his actions will express exactly what he wants to convey and inspire others. In many cases, theatricalization of one's own work is problematic. The problem is that if we move from a specific performance as a point of reference to the individuals representing that performance, we can see interesting feature of that circle of routine parties, the execution of which is served by some group or class of individuals. In doing so, one will find that the members of her or his tend to associate self-esteem, personal self-esteem, their ego, attaching much less importance to other parts that they perform.

Idealization
Hoffman distinguishes two ways of "socialization" of performance: One way - the performance of a routine party declares with its representative foreground some abstract claims to a part of the audience - claims that can be made to these people during the performance of other routines. The second is the tendency of performers to inspire their audience with an idealized impression in several respects. The idea that everything fulfills an idealized vision of a situation is quite common. As an illustration, we can take Ch. Cooley's point of view: "If people did not try to seem, at least a little, what they are, we could improve or learn from the external manifestations of the inner world and man." The same desire to show oneself exclusively from the best or idealized side leads to the hypocrisy of the performers. Thus, when an individual presents himself to others, his "performance" will carry the values ​​accepted by society, to a greater extent than does his behavior in general.

In life, many members of society cultivate their modesty, downplaying their abilities in order to belittle themselves as a performer, the position of a performer. So, American students hid their intelligence, ability and determination in the presence of peers. This proves the "natural" superiority of men and confirms that women are the weaker sex. This is an example of negative idealization.

The performer is often inclined to hide those motives, actions, facts that are incompatible with his idealized version. But often the performer inspires his audience with the belief that he is connected with them more ideally and intimately than ever. First, the performers inspire the audience that his routine part at the moment is the only, most important of all. Secondly, performers prefer to give everyone the impression that their today's performance of a routine part and their attitude towards their today's audience has something special and unique in it. In his executive activity, an individual can lose the perception of the audience even with a slight hint, gesture. The performer in such a situation tries to cover up his mistake by introducing as many minor events as possible into the situation so as not to create the impression of being incompatible and inconsistent with the accepted general definition of the situation. This means that the performer must keep his expressions under control. As natural human beings, we are made to be apparently impetuous, impulsive individuals whose moods change from moment to moment. But as players of characteristic roles assumed for presentation to an audience, we must not allow abrupt changes and whims.

According to J. Santayana, the process of socialization not only transforms, but also consolidates spiritual states. Thanks to social discipline, the characteristic mask can be held in place by internal efforts.

False representations
In the previous sections of this chapter, the reader has been offered some general characteristics of human performance, it is not worth listing them. But all these performance characteristics can be seen as limiting the interaction from the consistency of the impressions being performed, which affect the individual and transform the ordinary manifestations of his activity into a theatrical performance. Instead of simply fulfilling his task of freely changing feelings, the individual will intensify the process of his activity and convey his feelings to others in an acceptable form. In this case, the representation of the activity in front of others will differ from the activity in itself, and thus inevitably present it in a distorted way. Implanted appearances can be debunked by dissociative reality. Often, there is no reason to believe that facts that diverge from the perceived impression are a more real reality than the reality they call into question.

For sociologists, the question of interest is: "How is it possible to undermine the credibility of a given impression?" - and this is not at all the same as the question: "How does a given impression become false?"

Hoaxes
There is some connection between informational and ritual moments. The failure to regulate the information consumed by the audience entails the inevitable disintegration of the projected definition of the situation, the failure to regulate contacts means the possible decay of the ritual discipline of the performer.

Teams
Considering the performer in the role of distinguishable situations, Hoffman draws attention to the fact that in teams of individuals the foreground of their behavior changes dramatically depending on the projected interpretation. He introduces the term "performing team" or "team" for short, which is used to refer to any set of individuals cooperating in the life staging of any single routine part. If earlier, as a performer, a separate individual was meant, then if the special interest of the researcher is focused on studying the management of impressions, studying the possibilities that arise in the process of disturbing some impression and studying the methods for realizing these possibilities, then the command and command exclusion will most likely be the best choice as a starting point. Starting from it, one can also master such situations where two persons interact, describing such situations as the interaction of two teams, in which each team consists of one person. Logically, one can imagine that the proposed audience is an audience contemplating a team performance in which the team does not have a single member.

Along with teams where there is mutual familiarity, this type formed in this way should not be mixed with other types of group, such as an informal group or clip. "An executive team differs from informals in that no matter how an individual in a team behaves, even if it causes trouble, he still remains a member of the team. Team members cooperate in maintaining a definition of the situation in relation to those who are above and below them. And small cliques are formed not in order to advance the interests of the people with whom this individual puts on a life spectacle, but rather to protect him from unwanted identification with these people, therefore, cliques often function not to protect the individual from persons of other social ranks, but from persons of his own rank.

People involved in activities that take place within a social institution, become team members when they cooperate and present their activities in a certain light. But in assuming the role of an executor in a team, individuals will differ among themselves in how they allocate their time between pure activity and pure representation. At one pole will be concentrated individuals who do not pursue publicity and have little interest in visibility. On the other - representatives of "purely ceremonial roles" - presidents, leaders of the national trade union. Such roles of performers are seen as part of "window simplification".

Zones and zonal behavior
A performance zone can be defined as any place where the perception of a performance is limited in one way or another. The zone determines the specific impressions and understanding implanted by this performance, usually filling the entire zone-time interval allotted to this performance, so that any person in this spatio-temporal collector can observe the performance and be guided by the definition of the situation that is nurtured by this performance.

If a specific performance is taken as a starting point, then sometimes it is convenient to use the term "foreground zone" to indicate the place of performance. The performance of the individual in the foreground zone can be seen as an effort to create the impression that his activity in this zone embodies and maintains certain social norms and standards. The performer in this zone must adhere to the rules of courtesy, decency, and moral principles. It is clear that the performers prefer to show "winning" percussion facts in the foreground zone. But it is clear that there must also be a "background zone" or "behind the scenes zone" where facts hidden from the public appear and are recognized. Background zone - a place associated with background performance, in which perceived contradictions with implanted impressions are taken for granted.

The backstage area is separated from the foreground, for example, by a partition with a passage. behind the scenes, the performer can relax, express something other than his direct meaning. While in the foreground, the performer can receive assistance from behind the scenes. No one from the audience is allowed into the backstage area, that is, backstage control plays an essential role in the process of "worker control" by which people try to absorb the pressure of the deterministic vital necessities surrounding them from all sides.

Hoffmann, speaking of the anterior and posterior zones, considers it reasonable to add a third - residual zone, namely, all other places that are different from the two already defined types. It is logical to call such a zone "external". Such a zone can be called one that is neither front nor back for a given representation. An example is an institution where walls separate it from the outside world, internal working rooms. Those people behind the walls of the building in the outside world can be called "outsiders". There are many facts when a person in some kind of stage production ignores another, but is just as kind to him in a different scenario. For the performer, the solution to this problem is to divide the audience so that the people who lead him in one role would not see him in another. This is the foreground control.

Conflicting roles
The goal of any command is to support certain situations generated by its execution. When a performance is fragile and unrelated, facts may arise in the team that will cast doubt or oppression on the impression created by this performance. And therefore, the main problem for many of these performances is the problem of information control: the public should not receive "destructive information about the situation that is certain for it. In other words, the team must be able to keep and hide their secrets from everyone.

What are these secrets? What are the types?
Revealing different types of team secrets can threaten the performance in different ways. The typology of secrets is based on: the function that this secret performs and the relation of this secret to the perception of its owner by others. It is assumed that any particular secret may belong to more than one such type.

Taking a specific performance as a reference current, we distinguish in it (according to the functions of the participants) three key roles: those who perform, those for whom they perform: outsiders who are not involved in the performance and do not follow it. These key roles can also be distinguished based on the information available to the people involved in the performance. The designated roles can be described in the following way: performers perform in the visible (front) and backstage areas of the performance, only the front area is available to the public. Outsiders are excluded from both zones. It can be assumed that throughout the performance there is a relationship between the function performed, the available information and the available zones, and knowing the zones where the performer entered, it is possible to establish what role he played and what information he has.

In reality, such consistency may not exist. Blacked-out positions may appear. Some of these positions are used in such a way that they can also be classified as roles, although compared to the three key positions, they are better called "conflicting roles." The most obvious case is those contradictory roles that introduce a person into an established environment, into a false guise. Hoffman identifies several of these conflicting roles: the role of informer, the role of decoy, detectives, the role of an inactive person, an extra, a service specialist, a training specialist, and a confidant or confidant.

Speaking of collegiate groupings, Hoffmann changed the original framework for their definition. It should include a borderline type of "weak" audience, whose members do not have personal contact with each other during some kind of performance, but ultimately somehow combine their reactions to a certain performance, seen by them independently of each other.

Communications
Situations are sometimes created where a new set of motives may suddenly become influential and the established distance between teams may sharply increase or decrease. Hoffman gave the example of a four-star general riding an army jeep without papers. He was stopped by a patrol, and while the police were rummaging around in their jeep, thinking about what charges to bring against the driver, the latter put on a cap with four stars. The first patrolman exclaimed: "Oh, my God!", then made a clumsy attempt to justify himself: "I did not recognize you, Sir!". Such expressions are an extreme measure of interpersonal communication with the exit of the performer from the character or role he represents, and yet they have become commonplace, which act almost as an official request for indulgence on the grounds that in this life we ​​all are unsuccessful performers. The performer finds himself, through his own fault, in a position in which it is obviously impossible to preserve any imagined character.

The presence of communication with an exit from the represented character is another argument in favor of the relevance of studying the phenomenon, performed in the categories of team actions and their potential violations. Of the many types of communication in which the performer participates and which convey information inconsistent with the impression officially maintained during the interaction, four will be considered in this chapter: discussion of absentees, stage conversations, team collusion, rebuilding during performance.

Ridiculing and belittling those who are absent, the backstage position of the audience serves to maintain a certain morale of the team. It may be true that behind-the-scenes activities often take the form of a council of war, but when two teams meet on the field of interaction, it looks like they are meeting for neither peace nor war. When moving temporarily, everyone does their own thing.

The Art of Impression Management
In this chapter, Hoffmann would like to consider some of the techniques for managing impressions, which manifest the properties necessary for the performer to stage a character. First of all, Hoffman identifies some main types of breakdowns in performance, because that is the function of mastering the technique of managing impressions in order to avoid such breakdowns. When an outsider accidentally intrudes into the area where he is giving a performance, or when a member of the audience inadvertently passes backstage, then such an intruder, as it were, catches those present " flagante delicato ". In this case, the disruption of performance is due to a "sudden intrusion." Involuntary gestures, untimely intrusions are all sources of confusion and disagreement, they were not part of the intention of the person if he knew about the consequences.

However, some deliberately roll up "scene" with the intention of destroying or disturbing to a dangerous edge the appearance of polite consent. The breakdowns just considered are called "incidents", in order to prevent the occurrence of incidents and the confusion they cause, all participants in the interaction must possess certain properties and be able to apply them in practical actions developed to save this performance.

Framework for Social Interaction
Any social formation is some kind of space surrounded by more or less fixed barriers that prevent other people's perception - a space in which a certain kind of activity is regularly carried out. That is, social formations are presented as relatively closed systems. It was assumed that the ratio of one social formation to others is sufficiently accessible for rational research and should be analytically interpreted as part of a set of facts of a different order, the order of institutional integration.

Hoffman believes that it would be good to try to introduce the research perspective adopted in his book in the context of other approaches, implicitly or explicitly used in the study of various social formations as closed systems. Hoffman singled out four approaches, but settled on the fifth, the dramatic one. This approach can be applied as the final point of analysis, as the final way to organize facts. This involves a description of the techniques of managing impressions developed in a given social entity, the main problems of managing impressions in it, the criteria for identifying individual executive teams operating within such an entity and the relationships between them. The technical and dramatic research perspectives clearly overlap, probably in terms of standards of work.

Political and dramatic perspectives clearly intersect when considering the ability of one person to direct the activities of another. The intersection of structural and dramatic perspectives is perhaps most clearly seen in the analysis of social distance. Cultural and dramatic perspectives most obviously intersect on the issue of maintaining moral standards. The cultural values ​​of a given social formation determine in detail how its participants should relate to a variety of existing things and phenomena and at the same time establish a framework for appearances that must be preserved regardless of what moral feelings are hidden behind these frameworks. The Westerner prefers to operate in a stationary setting, keeping outsiders out of the action and using the opportunity for some privacy to comfortably prepare for a public show. Taking for granted Western general dramaturgical rules and inclinations of behavior, one should not overlook entire areas of life in other societies where people apparently follow different rules of behavior.

In this book, the expressive component of social life was treated as a kind of source of impressions that are repressed or perceived by others. Impression, in turn, was considered as a source of information about non-obvious facts and as a means by which recipients are able to regulate their reaction to the informant without clarifying all the consequences of this information format. Consequently, the expression of expressiveness was considered on the basis of the communicative role that it played during social interaction.

The person tends to treat others present based on the impression they create of their past, future tense interaction. It is at such moments that communicative acts turn into moral acts. Hoffman notes that the producers of the impressions used by the observing individual observe many norms of politeness and application of norms in the environment of social communication and the sphere of performance of work tasks, and from this it follows that everyday life is shrouded in moral restrictions and predilections.

The need for experience management arises from the fact that, as full-fledged performers, everyone has an interest in maintaining experience, whether they live by the set of norms by which people and their products are judged. Since there are a great many of these norms, individuals acting as performers remain subjectively and objectively in the sphere of moral relations. But as executive functionaries, people are more interested not in the moral problem of implementing these norms in life, but, in fact, in the immoral problem of creating a convincing impression that these norms are being implemented.

The structure of the human self can be seen in the performances staged in Anglo-American society. In this work, the individual acted in two aspects - as a performer and as a stage character-character. The qualities of the performer and the qualities of character are different. But these two sets have their own meaning in the conditions of the performance, which cannot be avoided in life. In the present study, the performed I was considered as some kind of image, usually commendably positive, which is staged, in the corresponding character-character, the acting individual tries well to excite and fix in the minds of others in relation to himself. Although this image is comprehended in relation to this individual in such a way that some kind of I is attributed to him, the very properties of this I are produced not from the low personal properties of the individual, but from the entire stage setting of his action, that is, this point of view on the I in a dramatic perspective and it will change when the scenario of staged activity changes.

The American sociologist, sociolinguist and social psychologist of Canadian origin Irving Hoffman (1922-1982) earned a reputation among many social scientists, although he was a recognized master (even a “genius”) of sociological microinterpretations, but at the same time an esoteric and unique thinker. As a result, those who write about Hoffmann tend to exaggerate the individuality and originality of his thought. The purpose of this article is to present Hoffmann as an organic part of a large European and American socio-philosophical and sociological tradition, to trace the origins of his basic concepts in order to better understand his personal contribution to theoretical sociology in this context.

Whenever one speaks of the influences and closest relatives of Hoffmann's "social dramaturgy," it is most often regarded as one of the later offshoots of "symbolic interactionism," reputedly the most primordially American of the best-known "schools" of sociology. At the beginning of the century, the founders of symbolic interactionism (although this name was established much later) in their own way made an individualistic and voluntaristic turn in American sociology, similar to the European offensive against positivist sociology, launched somewhat earlier by the neo-Kantians. However, these founders themselves (and in particular, George Herbert Mead, posthumously turned into the main authority of symbolic interactionism) were in the majority participants in a broad, not just philosophical, but, perhaps, social movement - pragmatism, the ideas of which indirectly connected them also to the tradition of English empiricism and methodological 18th century individualism About the influence of the table-

permanent references to the texts of W. James, J. Santayana of the period of passion for James and other authors of the same circle. Hoffmann owes them many of his key concepts. Pragmatism diverged from positivism (based on similar principles of methodological naturalism) mainly in the interpretation of the relationship between the organism and the environment, the individual and society. The mood of pragmatism is purely activist: in principle, a person should be considered as an active volitional subject, and not as an object passively obeying the laws of nature, capable only of contemplating and scientifically cognizing “objective” processes independent of human will in the natural and social environment. This corresponds to the general epistemological maxim of pragmatism: any truth is not a neutral state of consciousness, but a state of being, formed by people in accordance with their goals. Although the naturalistic determination of human actions is not denied here, research attention is shifted from the facts of their dependence on the environment to human freedom, to the possibility of controlling and manipulating the environment. The environment, especially the social environment, includes other active organisms, and a person becomes a person in the process of interacting with this active environment. Society can be understood through the analysis of the interaction and mutual influence of individuals.

Already in James and John Dewey, the creator of a special kind of pragmatism - “instrumentalism”, the notion of “communication”, which is significant for symbolic interactionism, appears, concretizing the general idea of ​​interaction And the basic one in the Hoffmann system of concepts. In the first approximation, communication is the process of transferring to each other and, consequently, the gradual socialization of private experience, ideas, emotions, values, etc. The formation of an individual, society, and a social institution, organization or institution depends on this active process. The dependence of the formation of a personality on the process of transmitting life experience to other individuals and receiving counter messages from them (“communication” covers both transmission and reception) implies a theoretical divergence both with psychologism, which admits the existence of some ready-made, innate natural motives for human action, independent of the social environment, situation surrounding institutions, and with extreme sociologism, which represents a person as something like a tabula rasa - a blank slate passively filled with direct impulses from the natural and social environment, collective consciousness, etc. The dependence of the formation and functioning of public associations, organizations and institutions on process of communication is manifested in the fact that they are ossified, sterile and eventually decay, if they do not serve the cause of facilitating and enriching communication between people.

By analyzing and detailing this double dependence, pragmatist philosophers (Mead was a direct participant in the pragmatic movement, who never called himself a sociologist during his lifetime) discovered the future theoretical and sociological significance of the problem of communication. In fact, the very existence of society was reduced by them to a set of processes of communication and information exchange that form the “common property” (in Dewey’s phrase) necessary for joint activity of all people for more or less equally understood goals, views, expectations, etc. Compared with Comte’s concept of "consensus omnium" - a key concept in the old positivist sociology and also assumed a commonality of feelings, thoughts and opinions - here, at first glance, there was only a transfer of research interests from a static interpretation of "consensus" as a necessary attribute of society to an analysis of the process of formation of the above community . But even this provided a significant change in the research perspective. Instead of the Comte-Durkheimian intuition of society as a powerful, almost divine given, created by the past, the image of society as something created along the way, so to speak, situationally, became the starting point. It was this shift that marked the beginning of a kind of sociological constructivism in a significant part of American social science - the interpretation of social reality as a continuously created product of everyday interactions, semantic interpretations and reinterpretations. This approach can be traced not only in Hoffmann, but also in such related areas of sociology as social phenomenology, ethnomethodology, etc. some form of social unity. Therefore, Hoffmann's assurances of following the Simmelian tradition are not at all accidental, just as Simmel's authority among the founders of symbolic interactionism is not accidental - a rare phenomenon for a representative of European sociology in America in the first decades of the 20th century.

The consequence of the pragmatism adopted by the pillars and the position adopted by Hoffmann was an extremely pluralistic concept of society, which fits perfectly into James' picture of the "Pluralistic Universe" and potentially substantiates his democratic idea of ​​"the diversity of religious experience." There is no uniform organization of society. There are as many types of public associations as there are goods and values ​​in circulation that can multiply in the process of mutually enriching exchange between people and become new points of social crystallization. Mead was generally inclined to consider the problem of the structure of society (as well as the structure of the individual) as falsely posed problems, for everything in the world is a continuous becoming, so that everyday practice and science always deal with processes and never with frozen states.

Such a position prohibits considering both human behavior as an exclusively individual asset and its environment as a frozen system of social relations or ready-made norms to which the individual is forced to passively adapt. It would seem that personal behavior is always shared by others in the sense that any individual activity causes a reaction in the human environment in the form of encouragement, protest, joining, ignoring, etc. Pragmatists usually expressed this fluidity and collective “doability”, the constructability of the environment in the concept of , which is included in the system of Hoffmann's basic concepts. The principles for interpreting this concept were already laid down in the “functional psychology” of John Dewey, which proceeded from the fact that human behavior is a response not to any single object, stimulus, event, not even to an arbitrarily isolated set of objects or events, but always to an assessment of the situation as a whole, based on the entire context of accumulated and current life experience. From this there was only a step to the sociological concept definition of the situation introduced by William Thomas (1863-1947) and masterfully used by Hoffmann.

Thomas proceeded from the fact that any specific human activity turns out to be the denouement of a specific situation, and with his term “situation definition” he emphasized that, more or less consciously choosing their lines of behavior, acting subjects participate in the creation of its general rules for a given case, and not just follow some universal, faceless and binding norms. The most important part of the situation for any actor was, according to Thomas, the attitudes and values ​​of its other participants. Therefore, any reaction of the individual to these "others" had to be analyzed not as a direct reaction to what they do and say, but as an indirect reaction to the meanings attributed to their words and deeds by this individual. The social world is primarily a probabilistic world of meanings. Hoffmann sympathetically cites Thomas' opinion (see p. 34 of this ed.) that in everyday life people make decisions, act and achieve their goals on the basis of purely conjectural inferences, and not statistical and other scientific calculations. For example, there is no scientific guarantee that the guests at any reception will not steal anything, but the duty of hospitality is nevertheless performed on the basis of the assumption of the decency of all those invited. It follows that imaginary, hypothetical values ​​can have the most real consequences in the form of purposeful actions of people. This is evidenced by the so-called Thomas theorem: “If people define situations as real, then they are real in their consequences.”

Thomas's theorem is already directly related to the problem of symbolism in social interaction, most authoritatively developed by Mead for adherents of pragmatism and symbolic interactionism. The main theme of his social philosophy was the analysis of the transition from the simplest social relations, which have a biological background and use gestural communication, to social relations based on symbolic communication. Mead explains its origin and evolution quite * materialistically”, in terms of the Darwinian theory of evolution. He proceeds from the fact that human society is a continuation and growth of some simple and fundamental socio-physiological relationships between biological organisms. The simplest cooperation, the primary social acts in the living world, are formed under the influence of biological impulses of hunger and sexual desire. The most elementary way of mutual adaptation of the actions of living organisms and their mutual influence on each other's behavior is gestures. In essence, any movement of an organism that causes adaptive reactions from other organisms can become a gesture. Gestures (for example, various instinctive grimaces, grins of fangs, etc.) remain as such until the organism is aware of their more or less precise values, as long as they are produced without the intention of causing a certain reaction in others. Anticipation of responses to gestures indicates their rise to a new level of communication - the level significant characters, about their transformation into language. A gesture is a predominantly private, particularistic phenomenon, a symbol is a universal tool.

Mead consistently implemented this naturalistic approach, exploring the development of symbolic communication in the context of the overall evolution of man. The separation of man from the animal kingdom was studied and evaluated according to several interrelated criteria: the development of the ability to use meaningful symbols (languages), the formation of abstract thinking (which involves the use of symbolic languages ​​in internal dialogue), the emergence and development of personality, the formation of the rudiments of social organization (that is, some stable institutional framework for social interaction). All these criteria, in principle, are equal, but still the most developed and generalizing in Mead was the picture of the evolutionary process as a whole from the point of view of the formation and social functioning of the individual. The mechanisms of this functioning described by Mead largely became the source of the system of concepts in Hoffmann's social dramaturgy and therefore deserve a brief review.

Like all pragmatists, according to Mead, personality is not some kind of unchanging structure, but an ongoing process. In contrast to the Comte-Durkheim tradition, Mead is not concerned with the problem of the individual's assimilation of ready-made social norms, but with the problem of acquiring the ability for an independent assessment of one's own behavior and activities, acquiring a personality. Personality has a social origin. It is formed dialogue. Talking with others teaches the ability to talk to oneself, teaches one to think, because thinking is essentially an “internal dialogue”. Mead stands on the Aristotelian positions of the primacy of social experience: an individual acquires a partner in himself, develops self-perception not directly, but indirectly, perceiving the point of view of other members of the social group to which he belongs, or some generalized position of this group as a whole. Thanks to the assimilation of the true or imaginary attitudes of others towards oneself, a person learns to look at himself and act accordingly "objectively" and thereby becomes a full-fledged "subject" of social action. A person as a product of biosocial evolution is an organism that has acquired a personality, that is, capable of perceiving and conscious of itself, capable of regulating its behavior, changing its settings in the process of internal dialogue, self-reflection. A person as a person acquires the ability to internalize social action, in other words, to turn the patterns of reactions of “others” to this or that situation into their own internal motives for action.

Mead calls the most important mechanism of this internalization taking on rolesrole- talking) . The individual acts in the roles of other people in front of himself, in each imaginary situation, as if playing a certain role in front of a certain imaginary audience, thinking step by step how certain viewers will react to his performance, and depending on the conclusions regarding the expected reaction, choosing the future one. line of real behavior. There are two different types of role-taking that characterize two phases in personality development. In the first, the individual tries on roles and imitates the behavior of specific individuals (parents, immediate family, family doctor, cook, etc.). The mental processes that take place in this case resemble some of the transference phenomena described in psychoanalysis. In the second phase, the socio-psychological attitudes of other people undergo generalization, "generalized other"(the generalized other), represented in terms of “people”, “morality”, “God”, “society”, etc. The generalized other is associated with the formation of general abstract rules of behavior, the implementation of which supports the existence of this community as a whole.

In this Mead scheme, the main idea of ​​Hoffmann's theatrical approach to the analysis of the forms and rituals of interpersonal interaction is already visible. But the concept of social personality, which is key to this analysis, has much deeper roots than Mead's philosophy alone. Within the framework of the pragmatist movement, the personality formation scheme of Charles Cooley (1864-1929), known as the concept of “mirror self” (looking - glass - self), is close to the Meadian one. Cooley meant that a person learns to control his Self by peering into his image in the mirror of other people, imagining how these others see him, and correlating his own ideas about himself with the ideas attributed to him by the people with whom his life brings him. Compared with Mead, Cooley gives only a general formulation of the problem. This setting itself goes back to a much more interesting and profound treatment of the related problem of reconciling the private and the public good by Adam Smith in his main book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759).

The progenitor of all constructions similar to the "mirror self" scheme was Smith's concept of "sympathy" and "impartial spectator". Smith directly used the "mirror" metaphor when discussing the educational impact of society on the individual. If we imagine a person who grew up in isolation, without any communication (communication) with his own kind, then such a person would not be able to judge either his own character, or good or evil in his thoughts, feelings and behavior, or even his appearance. Only society presents the individual with a mirror in which he is able to see and appreciate these qualities that are indifferent in themselves. In human nature, according to Smith, there is, firstly, a natural ability for everyone to sympathize (sympathy) with other people, mainly expressed in a sympathetic understanding of their feelings, which are supposedly the motives for the corresponding actions; and, secondly, the ability to evaluate one's own actions, imagining how an impartial observer, endowed with the same natural sympathy for another and, on its basis, a tendency to moral assessments, would react to them and their motives. Smith literally anticipated Mead's "generalized other" formula, arguing that a person carries society in himself, accepting the generalized norms, assessments and feelings of other people as part of himself.

An impartial observer manifests himself in life, so to speak, in two ways. The first is the “internal observer”, which in Russian is called conscience. In conscience as an internal observer, not only moral norms are represented that have developed in the course of the natural evolution of mankind and are approved by the majority of contemporaries who are part of the same cultural circle, but also transcendent moral norms that reflect faith in higher justice, at least beyond the grave, and thus spiritually unite the individual a person with God, giving him the strength to follow the absolute principles of behavior, regardless of empirical disappointments in life's justice. The second hypostasis of an impartial observer is the market, an honest mirror in which each individual person's need for others is reflected and evaluated, primarily in order to satisfy his material needs, and not just to obtain moral approval of his behavior. The market is a mirror that truthfully shows everyone whether and how much society needs his activity, and according to which the individual adjusts the quality and the assigned price of his work. In isolation, without interaction with others, all this is impossible. In market relations, the moral principle of mutual sympathy is manifested in the economic form of mutually beneficial exchange, which in principle remains moral, because it satisfies a person’s natural desire for his own good while maintaining a benevolent attitude towards others, and what is natural is fair. The elementary relations of reciprocity and exchange serve as a starting point in the analysis of a just economic system, to which the most famous book by the professor of moral philosophy Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), is devoted. The consequence of these seemingly simple considerations of human nature was the nominalist conception of society as an unintended order of interactions of predominantly free producers and sellers, who, despite self-interest, are able to coexist with each other thanks to a condescending feeling of mutual sympathy. This feeling can be experienced only for another person, but not for society as some kind of abstract whole.

Such an extensive historical digression about Smith's views was needed to show against their background the limitations of the seemingly similar “communication” interpretation of society by symbolic interactionists and pragmatists, a limitation not recognized by most of them, but, as we will see later, well recognized by Hoffmann. In the foundation on which the theory of society was to be built, Smith laid the philosophical principles and dimensions of “human nature”, which are not exhausted by the opening prospects of interpretations. No wonder Smith, the moralist and an economist rolled into one, are also referred to by evolutionary sociologists, supporters of evolutionary ethics, who are sure that morality is developed by mankind on the historical experience of different ethnic groups by trial and error; and those who believe in the original “natural harmony” and the hidden wisdom of Providence, without which man is powerless and which, without the knowledge of people, compensates for the costs of individual freedom; and numerous schools of neoclassical and neoliberal economics; and those for whom economics and sociology are value-neutral, naturalistic in the method of science; and defenders of the moral status of these sciences. The main thing is that Smith analyzed not only the elementary spiritual foundations of society, but also objective social relations that spontaneously arise over time and phenomena of higher levels of complexity, such as the processes of self-organization of the market order, which he described using the metaphor of the “invisible hand”. The main shortcoming of symbolic interactionism against this background was pointedly revealed by Cooley with his tendency to completely dematerialize society, interpreting social interaction primarily as a game of people's imaginations about each other. A person directly exists for another person only as an imaginary entity that affects his mind. In direct social contacts and relationships with others, the imagination of a given person participates as a real person. Therefore, society as a direct concrete reality exists in the minds in the form of a set of relationships between imaginations about neighbors.

Although Mead called such a position “social solipsism,” his “generalized other” is also just the germ of the usual “average sociological” concept of society, even potentially unable to reflect many of the most important and defining relationships. For example, the communication scheme, which implicitly assumes the interaction of individuals on the principles of complete equality and voluntary participation, still allowed Mead to come from the concept of a generalized other to the depleted concept of “social control”, identified with self-control, but such an asymmetric relationship between people as power (this most real means of social control) simply has no place in this theoretical scheme. The term "society", indiscriminately attributed by Mead to all situations where there is some kind of interaction between individuals, unwittingly imposed a false idea of ​​the fundamental homogeneity of systems of social relationships in these situations. Ultimately, overcoming Cooley's "social solipsism" came down to Mead's potential expansion of the boundaries of society as the radius of action of all types of communication increased and, consequently, to the expansion of the possibilities of taking on the roles of persons not only from the immediate environment, but also distant in space and time. .

Probably the most logical consequence of such assumptions about the universal and uniform socially generating effect of communication would be a simple and popular interpretation of its components in the spirit of Durkheim: the “generalized other” as an analogue of Durkheim’s “collective representations”, “role-taking” as an analogue of the process of their assimilation and education of the social conformism. However, Mead himself did not want to be content with such a simple scheme of relations between the individual and the public, and in the manner of psychoanalysis (but independently of it) distinguished in the personality (self) - an active participant and at the same time a product and an object of influence of the communication process - two continuously interacting dynamic subsystems of its elements: so to speak, the individualistic hypostasis of the social personality, indicated by the English personal pronoun of the first person singular I, and the collectivist hypostasis, indicated by the indirect case of the same pronoun - Me. Me - this is a standard, traditional part of the personality, it is an organized set of attitudes, skills, customs, and reactions of other people generally accepted in a given social group, assimilated by this individual. But to this necessary standard component, which allows a person to be a member of the collective, the individual reacts as an individual, as I. Hence I denotes all manifestations of self-expression, the unique creative response of a unique biological organism and the unique inner world of a given individual to the attitudes of other people in an organized community.

Apparently, the Meadows I was supposed to serve as a kind of socio-psychological equivalent of the philosophical concept of free will. In the relentless internal struggle between Me And I, between the conformist desire for collective security and the activist thirst for new experience, the degree of freedom of the individual's social actions is determined. But where do the contradictions come from? Me And I, as long as both subsystems of personality components equally have a social origin? What are the social sources of these contradictions? What are the socially acceptable boundaries of individual freedom? Mead is unlikely to find answers to such questions. For this purpose, it is better to return to Smith.

Of course, his general religious solution to the problem of freedom today will not suit many people. Smith was not afraid of human freedom, primarily because he believed in the providential harmony of the actions of free people. Free choice according to conscience, under the control of this impartial internal observer, was for him a natural-divine condition for the development of society. But the completely scientific explanation by the neo-liberal and neo-evolutionist F. A. Hayek of intrapersonal contradictions between the subjective thirst for unlimited “self-expression” and socially beneficial positive freedom, which somehow reflects the objective truth of economic and other laws of human society, also appeals to Smith. Hayek developed in a new way the idea of ​​the Scottish moralists (among whom Adam Smith was the star of the first magnitude) that a person constantly lives in two different worlds: the microcosm (that is, small or, according to Cooley, “primary” groups such as the family, various communities and etc.) and the macrocosm (civilization, the world system, the market order - in a word, what Hayek generically calls the "extended order of human cooperation").

These worlds have different systems of rules and coordination of behavior. In intimate circles of communication in human behavior there is much more scope for the direct manifestation of feelings and instincts and for the conscious cooperation of personally known people, united by the joint pursuit of specific common goals. In macrosystems, there are impersonal, unified for all abstract rules of behavior and prohibitive traditions of morality, which determine the legal boundaries of the freedom and rights of the individual, allow him to set his own goals and make personal decisions. These rules and traditions are not consciously chosen by people. They develop in the course of evolutionary intergroup natural selection and are instilled in the members of groups (surviving and spreading their influence thanks to a particularly happy combination of moral traditions found) through cultural mechanisms of imitation, education, training, and all other varieties of interhuman communication. The discipline of impersonal rules, imposed by any self-sustaining "extended order" beyond the will and desires of its participants, often causes subconscious self-loathing on their part. But only within the framework of such a discipline common to all is the peaceful coexistence of individual freedoms possible. The conflict between abstract rules of behavior that are difficult to inculcate and what one instinctively likes, primarily in spontaneous communication in small intimate communities of people, is not only, as Hayek claims, “the main theme of the history of civilization,” but, we add, the deepest cause of those intrapersonal contradictions. which manifest themselves in everyday acting and putting on various masks in inter-human contacts, which phenomena I. Hoffman studied all his life.

The fundamental distinction between micro- and macrocosm, all sorts of communities of individuals who maintain personal contacts with each other, and million-headed anonymous orders, of course, is not Hayek's sole discovery. But he most persistently and reasonably proved the methodological and theoretical viciousness of naming two worlds that are completely different in terms of the type of connections with the same term “society”. This practice leads to attempts to explain and build an “extended order” in the image and likeness of the original intimate group dear to the heart or the social environment in which a person lived at the most impressionable age. to expanded orders of human cooperation. It seems that it is the neglect of this distinction, stimulated by the universality/application of the category of communication, that is largely to blame for the rosy picture of society characteristic of many symbolic interactionists, which rests almost entirely on spiritual interaction. Among them, Hoffmann stood out for his clear understanding of the theoretical consequences of the distinction described above and for his conscious limitation of his main scientific task.

Hoffmann adopted the basic principles of symbolic interactionism for the analysis of social activity. Among them was the conviction, expressed shortly before his death in his 1982 presidential address to the American Sociological Association, that social life must be studied "naturalistically," in the manner of the natural sciences, and from the point of view of eternity. Hoffmann's nomination of the physical interaction of human biological bodies as a structure of the lower level, from which all others grow, also goes back to Mead. He also retained a pragmatic interpretation of the socio-creative process in terms of the activities of individuals who are forced to solve the next problems in the next situations, independently finding new means of redefining them and controlling them. The guiding methodological postulate of symbolic interactionism, according to which all the facts and meanings dealt with by the sociologist must be explained within the framework of the process of social interaction as the final instance, has not been challenged either. This implies the prohibition to look at the interaction only as a means through which its participants are influenced by some forces external to the interaction itself. And, of course, the vast majority of human interactions are symbolic in the sense that most of the reactions of individuals to others are mediated by the phase of interpretation, reflection and self-reflection, in which the meaning of the subject of interaction for each of its participants is clarified. But if so many symbolic interactionists still naively believe that the above general principles are sufficient for constructing a theory of society as a whole, then Hoffmann deliberately used them to microanalyze a special reality that occurs only in social situations where participants are in the physical presence of each other and have the ability to directly (albeit on the basis of semantic interpretations developed in previous and current personal experience) to respond to the actions of others. Hoffmann called this reality (by his own admission, “for lack of a better term”) “the order of interaction”. This is the title of his aforementioned presidential address. Therefore, the “order of interaction” must be understood as the order of interaction face-to-face, and the term “social interaction” that he also uses without specification in most cases means social interaction face-to-face in his texts.

“The order of interaction” is considered by Hoffmann as a meaningfully independent and full-fledged field of research. Its independence is proved at least by the fact that with the acceptance of this starting point of theorizing, that is, the direct interaction of individuals, the fundamental dichotomous distinctions of traditional “big sociology”, which usually oppose contrasting types of social relations, become unimportant. Indeed, the forms and rituals of, say, courtesy in direct contact as such can be studied at the home table and in courtrooms, in the family bedroom and in supermarkets, that is, regardless of the traditional oppositions of Gemeinschaft and Geselschaft, personal and impersonal, domestic and public, urban and rural, etc. But at the same time, Hayek's "extended order" undoubtedly and in many ways influences the order of direct interpersonal interaction. For example, in his most popular book, Presenting Yourself to Others in Everyday Life, analyzing girl performances of feigned stupidity in front of suitors, Hoffman advises not to forget that it is American girls from the American middle class who play stupid. But the problem of connections between the “order of interaction” and different structures of social relations in each case requires a special and concrete study.

There is, however, one, not particularly specified, general context, without taking into account which it is impossible to properly understand either Hoffmann's approach to social microsystems of interaction, or, more broadly, the social philosophy of American pragmatism. This context is the mentality of a citizen of a democratic society, a kind of spontaneously naive pluralistic ontology of society, based on the prosperous experience of this citizen. In a slightly different connection, we have already mentioned the pluralistic universe of W. James, where as many centers of organization are allowed as there are self-conscious wills. This general premise is more or less consistent with James's concept of a plurality of social personalities, or social I(social selves) of a person, the most simple and logical of all pragmatic constructions on the same topic, moreover, it played the role of a primary source in relation to them. Since pragmatism fundamentally rejects any monistic substantiality of consciousness, the thesis about the continuous process of production of personal self-consciousness in society due to interaction with other people looks logical. An important element of this interaction is the expectations and evaluations of these others, addressed to the acting subject and becoming part of his internal motivation. Since a person, as a rule, participates in many different groups, he has as many different social I, how many groups exist, consisting of persons whose opinion he values. Each of these groups shows a different side of his personality. Thus, the interaction takes place not so much between individuals as subjects, integral indivisible personalities, but between different social faces of individuals, as if between the characters portrayed by them. No wonder James is considered the founder of the theory of roles that took shape later. Forced to put on the most diverse social masks that correspond to the everyday expectations of the mass of carriers of a democratic collective consciousness, numerous “subjective I”, endowed with a despotic will to transform their social environment pragmatically and utilitarianly, pacify and neutralize each other. Everything works out for the best in a democratic world.

Hoffmann adopted James's concept of the social personality as a starting point in his analysis of interaction microsystems. This is what proves that in his interests he was a sociologist, and not an exotic "depth psychologist", as he is sometimes portrayed *. Together with James, Robert Park and many others, Hoffmann wants to study these masks, the masks of social actors, which in the end grow into the face and become more authentic. I, than what is imaginary I, what these people want to be. The mask, the role is justified by life. The concept of a person about his role becomes second nature and part of the personality. If sometimes Hoffmann speaks of “the mismatch between our natural self and our social self,” then he thinks about this not in terms of opposing the biologically innate and the socially acquired, but rather in terms of different social requirements imposed in different circles of communication. In some, we are expected to have a certain “bureaucratization of the spirit” and discipline of actions, regardless of bodily conditions, in others there is room for manifestations of impulsiveness and the dependence of the results of our activities on poor health.

In the book offered to the reader in this edition, Hoffmann further narrowed and clarified his main research problem. He focused on the “dramatic” or “theatrical” problems of a participant in a microinteraction presenting his activity to others. At the same time, the specific content of this activity or its role functions in a working social system are not considered. In order to better understand Hoffmann's formulation of the problem, we can compare it with similar ideas of M. M. Bakhtin's “philosophy of the act”. Bakhtin considered a human act as a kind of potential text, the meaning of which can only be understood in the context of his time. Hoffmann temporarily puts this context out of the brackets. But continuing his thought, Bakhtin says that even the physical action of a person must be understood as an act, but an act cannot be understood outside of its possible symbolic expression. It is this symbolic equipment, the symbolic toolkit of activity presented to others, that interests Hoffmann the most.

With an expanded perspective, the same task is formulated as the task of studying social micro-formations, organizations, institutions - in short, any isolated social spaces in which a certain kind of activity is carried out, from the point of view of managing the impressions created there and defining the situation. A description of the methods of managing impressions developed in a given relatively closed microsystem, the difficulties in this matter, its main performers and executive teams organized on this basis, etc., etc. - all this Hoffman singles out as a special dramatic approach. According to his plan, it should complement the traditional perspectives of sociological analysis of social formations: technical (from the point of view of organizing activities in them to achieve certain goals); political (in terms of asymmetric social control over the distribution of activity resources and the use of power); structural (clarifying the set of horizontal and vertical relations between operating units); cultural (in terms of moral and other general cultural values ​​that affect the nature of activity in a given social space).

• * For example, in the only monograph about Hoffmann known to us in Russian (Kravchenko E.I. Ervin Hoffman. Sociology of acting. M.: MSU, 1997), where Hoffmann’s “self” is sometimes interpreted in a dubious way as “deep self”.

The dramatic approach must have its own special, “situational” system of concepts due to the internal dialectic of the development of forms of social life face-to-face and the special status of time in these forms. The relatively short duration in time and space of their constituent events allows people to follow the course of these events from beginning to end with their own eyes. Due to visual visibility, such forms are easier to assimilate and repeat by people (in this development, the role of “empathy” is great - getting used to the world of subjective feelings of partners), and because of the transience of these forms, participants who are heterogeneous in many respects are forced to quickly reach a working mutual understanding.

All of them enter the current social situation with some kind of life experience of communicating with different categories of people and with a mass of cultural prerequisites, presumably shared by all. In fact, in any microsystem of face-to-face interaction, people enter into culturally conditioned cognitive relationships with other directly present participants, without which it would be impossible to streamline joint activities either in verbal or behavioral forms. The main situational term for the analysis of human activity in Hoffmann's social dramaturgy is performance(performance) - denotes all manifestations of the activity of an individual or a “team” of individuals during their continuous presence in front of specific viewers (some kind of everyday “audience”) - Initially, all these manifestations of activity, covered by the term “performance”, are focused on the implementation of purely working tasks. But then the dialectic of any social interaction begins to operate, eventually leading to a partial or complete transformation of “normal” work activity into representative activity, oriented towards the tasks of communication and the most effective self-expression.

Entering into an unfamiliar situation with many participants, a person usually seeks to reveal its real character as fully as possible in order to competently meet the expectations of those present. But information about their true feelings towards him, about their past social experience, etc. is usually not enough. And then, in order to foresee the development of the situation, one has to use substitutes: random remarks, slips of the tongue, and slips of the tongue, as in psychoanalysis, status symbols, material signs of social position, etc. perception, the more attention should be paid to external manifestations, appearances, impressions that other participants create during interaction about their past and future course of action.

In this mutual process of production of impressions (and thus “self-expression” of the participants), Hoffmann distinguishes two different types of communication (sign activity): free expression, which people give information about yourself in generally valid symbols, and spontaneous expression, which they issue themselves (for example, they accidentally give out with some gesture their upbringing, which is not sufficient for the declared claims to a certain social status). The second type of communication - usually unintentional, non-verbal and more theatrical - interests Hoffmann in the first place. But when using both channels of communication, there are objective restrictions on direct interaction between people (the need to stick out some facts and hide others, idealization, etc.). These restrictions affect its participants and transform the ordinary manifestations of their activities into theatrical performances. At the same time, instead of simply performing a work task and freely expressing feelings, people begin to intensively depict the process of their activity and convey their feelings to others in a deliberate, but acceptable form for others.

That is why the language of theatrical performance, the performance, is used. Hoffmann speaks of the “front” of a performance as that part of it that regularly appears in a stable form, defining the situation for those who watch this performance. He speaks about the “settings”, “decorations” of the performance, the spatial arrangement of the participants in the interaction, about the division of the stage space of everyday games into the back (behind the scenes) zone, where an impeccable performance of everyday routine actions is prepared, and the front zone, where this performance is presented to others. Hoffman also introduces an analogue of a theater troupe - the concept of a team of performers who combine their efforts for the duration of the existence of a given microsystem of interaction in order to present their definition of the situation to those present (audience). “Team” is another “situational” concept used by Hoffmann instead of the usual “structural” concept of “social group”. A team is also a grouping, but not in the context of historically long-term and stable relations of a social structure or organization, but in the context of the next staging of some routine everyday interaction or a series of such interactions, where it is necessary to plant and hold the necessary definition of the situation. This definition includes a working agreement (consensus, agreement) about the necessary "command ethos", which must be supported by tacitly accepted rules of courtesy and decency. The main task of the team is to control the performance experience, in particular by guarding access to its backstage areas in order to prevent outsiders from seeing the secrets of the performance not intended for them. These secrets from the public (audience), which could expose and disrupt the worldly performance, are known to all the performers in the team and are guarded by them together. Therefore, in the relations of team members, a special solidarity and friendly familiarity of initiates usually develop.

But, as Hoffmann emphasizes more than once in his book, the language of the theatrical stage is not an end in itself and not yet another illustration of the Shakespearean metaphor that has turned into a banality “the whole world is a theater, and people are just actors on the stage.” Pedaling stage analogies, by Hoffmann's own admission, was for him to a large extent a rhetorical ploy and a tactical maneuver. In fact, he was not interested in the elements of the theater that penetrate into everyday life and are abundantly presented in his books. His research task is to reveal the structure of social contacts, direct interactions between people and, more broadly, the structure of the phenomena of social life, which occurs every time any persons are physically co-present in the limited space of their interaction. The key factor in this structure is the maintenance of some definition of the situation, which must be sustained to the end in spite of the many potential dangers that threaten to undermine it from all sides. As we already know, Hoffmann gives the system of relations characterized by this desired structure a conditional abbreviated generalized name “interaction order”.

This “order” that takes shape in life is by no means a theater, although it has in common with it that ordinary people drawn into a life situation, in order to withstand its initially chosen definition, actually use the same technical methods and means of self-expression that are at the disposal of professional actors. But Hoffmann's analysis of the "order of interaction" is not reduced to revealing the forms and rituals of its theatricalization and representational deception. Communication acts, even if performed with the aim of embellishing one's activities, imply a certain moral relationship with the audience. The impressions made by the participants in the communication, all their inadvertent grimaces, involuntary gestures and "verbal gestures" (Mead's expression) are interpreted as hidden promises or claims. And this is material for moral judgments. The performers and the audience they are working for act as if there is a tacit obligation between them to maintain a certain balance of opposition and agreement. This balance rests on an often unconscious moral cognitive agreement not to mislead each other too much, for impressions made by people are sometimes the only way to know the other, his intentions and activities.

In general, the structure of the "order of interaction" is formed under the influence of opposing forces acting on the performers. On the one hand, their daily life is entangled with moral restrictions, so that they subjectively and objectively reside in the sphere of moral relations. On the other hand, every person in the cycle of everyday affairs sooner or later faces a situation where, for

For the benefit of the case, it is necessary to concentrate and slightly correct the impressions (that is, resort to manipulating them) produced by its actions on others. Business actions then essentially turn into “gestures” addressed to the audience. The life practice of a person is theatricalized. And here he is primarily interested in the inherently immoral problem of creating an appearance, a convincing impression for others, that all norms of morality and legality are observed in his actions. That is why everyday life often turns ordinary people into sophisticated experts in theatrics.

All of the above once again confirms the validity of Hoffmann's selection of the "order of interaction" as an independent field of sociological research. In principle, the main thing he wants to know about this “order” is the question of what kind of impressions from the realities and accidents of any direct social interaction are capable of destroying the impressions carefully planted and educated in ordinary performances of everyday life. Hoffmann's attention is mainly focused on the ways and causes of undermining the mutual trust of people in the impressions they receive in the course of joint activities, and not on the problem of the nature of social reality as such. Therefore, he devotes so much space and time to disguised false ideas and techniques of misinforming communication, all sorts of ambiguities and omissions that allow you to create an advantageous illusion, without at the same time descending to a direct lie, very vulnerable to exposure. In the same way, he analyzes sophisticated defensive techniques that protect the chosen line of behavior and the “dark secrets” of team and individual performances from such revelations. The success of these techniques is again possible with a certain moral discipline of the performers, which Hoffmann characterizes with the phrases “dramatic fidelity”, “dramatic prudence”, etc.

It has already been said that Hoffmann's awareness of the specifics of the "order of interaction" as an independent field of research required the development of a special apparatus of "situational" concepts for his analysis. To the previously mentioned terms, one can add such detailing and analytically dismembering the basic concept of “performance” terms, such as contact(any event in the zone of possible direct response of another); almost synonymous with contact single interaction(all manifestations of interaction in a separate episode); party, routine and others. In principle, it is possible to connect these situational terms with structural terms generally accepted in sociology. Thus, if a “social role” is a set of rights and obligations associated with a certain status, then one social role may include more than one party, understood as a routine pattern of action that is played out before audiences of the same type. However, the general problem of finding points of contact between Hoffmann's "interaction order" and the elements of social organization traditionally singled out by sociology is extremely complex and hardly touched upon by Hoffmann in his various works. His descriptions of the direct influences of "situational effects" and certain characteristics of the "interaction order" on macroworlds outside the sphere of the latter concern relatively minor phenomena. For example, in the presidential address mentioned earlier, he attempts to establish some links between the order of direct interpersonal interaction and the main status-determining characteristics of individuals in the “big” social structure: age, gender, social class and race. All these are very limited attempts.

On the whole, Hoffmann seems to be of the opinion that the social microsystem of face-to-face interaction cannot be a direct reflection of macrosociological structures and laws, so that it is difficult to judge the latter on the basis of the laws of microsociology. It seems that Hoffmann's experience undermines the hope of fulfilling the cherished dream of sociological theorists - to build a bridge between observations and generalizations at the level of everyday everyday situations and historical generalizations of macrosociology, and build not in the form of intuitive insights and superficial metaphors, but in the form of a ladder of strict concepts included in general theoretical framework. It seems that from reading Hoffmann one should conclude that it is better to study these different worlds, that is, micro-interactions (“the stage setting” of which he analyzed so well) and macrostructural processes, to study separately. This does not prevent us from appreciating the subtlest “artistic” observations, capturing the interpenetration of the two worlds, scattered in abundance in Hoffmann's books.

Presenting yourself to others in everyday life

“Masks are frozen expressions and superb echoes of feeling, at the same time truthful, restrained and exaggerated. Living organisms, in contact with the external environment, are forced to acquire some kind of protective shell, and no one protests against such shells on the grounds that they are supposedly not their main parts. However, some philosophers seem to be annoyed that images are not things, and words are not feelings. Words and images are like shells, as integral to nature as the substances they cover, but more to the eye and more open to observation. By this I do not mean to say that substance exists for the sake of appearance, face for the sake of masks, passion for the sake of poetry and manifestations of virtue. Nothing arises in nature for the sake of something else: all such phases and works are equally included in the circle of being...”

J. Santayana Santayana G. Soliloquies in England and later soliloquies. L.: Constable, 1922.

Foreword

This book seems to me to be something like a textbook, which deals in detail with one of the possible sociological approaches to the study of social life, especially that kind of it that is organized within the clear material boundaries of a building or institution. It describes many techniques that together form a methodological framework that can be applied to the study of any particular social order, whether family, industrial or commercial.

The approach developed in this work is the approach of theatrical performance, and the principles that follow from it are dramaturgical principles. It examines the ways in which the individual presents himself and his activities [p. 29] to other people in the most common work situations, the ways in which he directs and controls the formation of their impressions of himself, as well as patterns of what he can and cannot do. do while presenting yourself in front of them. In applying this model, I will try not to neglect its obvious insufficiency. The scene presents the viewer with events that are plausibly imagined; life supposedly presents us with events that are real and usually unrehearsed. Even more important, perhaps, is the fact that on the stage the actor plays in the mask of a certain character, in accordance with the masks portrayed by other actors. There is also a third participant in the performance - the public (or audience), a very important participant, and yet one that would not be there if the stage performance suddenly became a reality. In real life, these three participants are compressed into two: the role played by one adapts to the roles played by others present, and these others also constitute the audience. Other inconsistencies of the theatrical approach to real circumstances will be discussed later.

The illustrative materials used in this study are of a mixed nature: some are taken from quite respectable works, where competent generalizations are made about reliably established regularities; some are borrowed from unofficial memoirs written by various colorful personalities; many belong to some intermediate region. In addition, material from my own study of a local subsistence farming community in one of the Shetland Islands* was often used. The justification for this approach (and, it seems to me, related to the approach of G. Simmel) is that these illustrations, taken together, are built into a fairly coherent system of concepts that combines scraps of experience that the reader already has and provides the student with a kind of guide worthy of verification in mono-research of the institutional foundations of social life.[p.30]

This system of concepts unfolds logically. The introduction is necessarily abstract and can be omitted.

This book is the result of a scientific study of human interaction undertaken on behalf of the Department of Social Anthropology and the Social Science Research Committee at the University of Edinburgh, and a study of social stratification carried out with the support of the Ford Foundation, led by Professor E. A. Shils of the University of Chicago. I am very grateful to these organizations for their initiative and support. In addition, I would also like to express my gratitude to my teachers: C. W. M. Hart, W. L. Warner and E. C. Hugh. I also thank Elizabeth Bot, J. Littlejohn, and E. Banfield, who helped me in the beginning of the study, and colleagues at the University of Chicago, who helped me later. Without the cooperation and help of my wife, Angelika Hoffman, this work would never have been written.

• *Taught in part in an unpublished doctoral dissertation: Goffman E . Communication conduct in an island community (Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, 1953). [p.31]

Introduction

When a person is present where others are present, these others usually seek to obtain fresh information about him or to use already existing information. As a rule, they will be interested in his general socio-economic position, his concept of himself, his attitudes towards them, his competence in some matters, his reliability, etc. Although sometimes the search for individual information, apparently, become an end in itself, there are usually quite practical reasons for collecting such information about a person. Information about this individual helps to define the situation, allowing others to know in advance what he expects from them and what they can expect from him. With this information, others know how best to proceed in order to get the desired response from this individual.

There are many sources of information at the disposal of the others present, and many media (or "symbolic means of expression") for its transmission. Even if observers are not familiar with a person, they are able to pick up some clues from his behavior and appearance that will allow them to apply to him their previous experience of communicating with approximately similar people or, more importantly, to use stereotypes that have not yet been tested. On the basis of past experience, they may also assume that in a given social setting, only certain sorts of people are likely to be encountered. Observers may rely either on what a person says about himself or on documentary evidence of who and what he really is. If observers know the individual himself or have information about him from the experience of a previous interaction [p. 32]-

Viya, they can rely on assumptions about a certain constancy and general direction of his psychological properties as a means of predicting his present and future behavior.

However, during the time of the individual's direct presence in the society of other people, too few events may occur that can immediately provide these others with the convincing information they need if they intend to act prudently. Many decisive facts and indications are outside the time and place of direct interaction or are hidden in it. For example, the “true” or “real” attitudes, beliefs and feelings of an individual can only be clarified indirectly, thanks to his confessions or involuntary manifestations in behavior. Similarly, when an individual offers a certain product or service to others, it often happens that during the entire duration of direct contact, others are not given the opportunity to "see through" this person. Then they are forced to accept some moments of interaction as conventional or natural signs of something that is not directly accessible to the senses. In the terminology of G. Ichheiser 1 , the individual will have to act in such a way that, intentionally or unintentionally, express yourself and others, in turn, must receive impression about him.

The ability of the individual to "self-express" (and thus his ability to impress others) seems to contain two completely different types of sign activity: the arbitrary self-expression by which he gives information about himself, and involuntary self-expression, which he issues myself. The first includes verbal symbols, or substitutes for them, used commonly and individually to convey information that the individual and others are known to associate with the given symbols. This is “communication” in the traditional and narrow sense. The second includes a broad area of ​​human action which others may regard as symptomatology of the actor himself, when there is reason to expect that the action was taken for reasons other than the mere conveyance of information in this manner. As we shall see, this distinction is only initially significant, for, rest assured, an individual can convey intentional misinformation using both of these types of communication: the first is outright deception, the second is pretense.

• 1 Ichheiser G . Misunderstanding in human relations // The American Journal of sociology. Supplement Lv. September. 1949.P. 6-7.[p.33]

Understanding communication both in a narrow and in a broad sense, one can come to the conclusion that when an individual finds himself in the direct presence of others, his activity will have the character of a certain promise. In all likelihood, others will feel that they must accept this individual on faith, offering him a reasonable equivalent in return (while he is “present” before them) in exchange for something whose true value can be established after his departure. (Of course, others use hypothetical inferences in their contacts with the physical world, but it is only in the world of social interactions that the objects inferred about can purposefully facilitate or inhibit this process.) The reliability of the conclusions being tested about the individual will, of course, vary depending on such factors as the amount of information others already have about him, but no amount of past knowledge can apparently completely eliminate the need to act on the basis of conjectural inferences. As William Thomas insisted:

It is also very important for us to understand that in everyday life we ​​do not actually conduct our business, make decisions, and achieve goals statistically or scientifically. We live by guesswork. Let's say I'm your guest. You cannot know and determine scientifically whether I will steal your money or your spoons. But presumably I still won't steal, and also presumably you are hosting me as a guest.

Let us now turn from the position of others to the point of view of the individual who presents himself to them.

• 2 Quot. by: Social behavior and personality (Contributions of W. I. Thomas to theory and social research) / Ed. by E.H. Volkart. N. Y.: Social Science Research Council, 1951. P. 5.

Perhaps he wants to give them a high opinion of himself, or to make them think that he has a high opinion of them, or so that they understand what his real feelings are towards them, or so that they do not get any definite impression. The individual may also want to have enough harmonious relationships with others to maintain interaction with them, or want to get rid of them, deceive, confuse, confuse, antagonize, or harm them. Regardless of the specific goal present in the mind of the individual, and from the motives for setting this goal, it is in his interests to control the behavior of others, especially their response to his actions 3 . This control is achieved mainly by influencing the definition of the situation at the beginning of its formulation by others, and this definition can be influenced by the individual by expressing himself in such a way as to give others the impression that induces them to act voluntarily, but according to his own plans. Therefore, when an individual finds himself in the company of others, he usually also has reasons to become active in order to make such an impression on them that it is in his interests to inspire. For example, if girlfriends in a student dormitory judge girl popularity by the number of calls to the phone, it is quite possible to suspect that some girls will begin to deliberately arrange such calls for themselves, and therefore Willard Waller's finding is predictable in advance: to the phone in a student dormitory, often taking time to give all her friends enough to hear her name called out several times 4 .

Of the two types of communication - the processes of voluntary and involuntary self-expression - the book primarily focuses on the second, more theatrical and context-dependent, non-verbal and probably unintentional (whether in the case of purposefully organized communication or not). As an example of what we should try to investigate, let us quote from a long fictional episode in which one Pridi, an Englishman on holiday, is described as furnishing his first appearance on the beach of a summer hotel in Spain: It goes without saying that one must try not to make eye contact with anyone. First of all, he must make it clear to those possible companions that he is not at all interested in them. To look through them, past them, over them - a sort of look into space. It's like the beach is empty. If the ball accidentally falls in his path, he must look taken by surprise. Then a smile of joyful amazement will light up his face (Good-natured, Kind Come!), As he begins to look around, amazed that on the beach it turns out, There is people, and throws the ball back to them, lightly laughing at himself, and not over people- and then he casually resumes his careless survey of space.

• 3 In understanding this issue, I owe a lot to an unpublished article by T. Burns from the University of Edinburgh, in which he argued that the hidden nerve of any interaction is the desire of each of its participants to control and manage the reactions of others present. A similar argument was recently developed by J. Haley in an unpublished article, but in connection with a special kind of control aimed at determining the nature of the relationship between the persons involved and the interaction of the persons.
• 4 Waller W. The rating and dating complex // American Sociological Review. II. p . 730.

But the time will come to arrange a small parade of the virtues of the Ideal Come. Coincidentally, he'll give anyone who wants a chance to catch a glimpse of the title of the book in his hands (the Spanish translation of Homer is a classic reading, but not provocative, and also cosmopolitan), and then he'll leisurely fold his beach cover up and bag neatly protected from the sand. in a bunch (Methodical and Practical Come), stretch out at ease to his full gigantic height (Big Cat Come) and kick off his sandals with relief (finally, Carefree Come!).

And marriage Come and the sea! In this case - their rituals. Firstly, the procession along the beach, suddenly turning into a run with a jump into the water, and immediately after emerging, smoothly, with a powerful silent crawl there - beyond the horizon. Well, of course, not necessarily beyond the horizon. He could suddenly roll over on his back and violently kick up the white foam (no one doubts that he could swim further if he wanted to), and then suddenly jump half a body out of the water standing up so that everyone could see who it was.

The other move was simpler: it didn't require a cold water test and the risk of appearing overly spiritual. The whole point is to look so accustomed to the sea, to the Mediterranean and to this beach, that such a person, at his own discretion, could sit at least in the sea, at least not in the sea without harm to his reputation. Such a pastime allowed for a slow [p.36] walk down the water's edge (he does not even notice how the water wets his feet, he does not care what water is like earth!) eyes are turned to the sky and sternly seek out signs of future weather invisible to others (Local fisherman Come!) 5 .

The novelist wants to show us that Comee does not adequately interpret the vague impressions that his purely bodily actions, as he thinks, produce on those around him. We can continue to make fun of Comee, believing that he is acting in order to create a special impression of himself and a false impression, while others present either do not notice him at all, or even worse, the impression of himself that Comee passionately wants to make them accept. , turns out to be a purely private biased impression. But the only thing that matters to us in this is that the kind of impression that Pridi thinks he makes is the real kind of impression that others in their midst rightly or wrongly receive from someone.

As said above, when an individual appears in front of others, his actions begin to influence the definition of the situation that they began to form before his appearance. Sometimes this individual will act completely calculated, expressing himself in this way, in order to produce on others the very Impression that is most likely to evoke in them the response he desires. Often, being prudent in his activities, he may be relatively weakly aware of this. At times he will intentionally and consciously express himself in a certain way, but mainly because such expressions are caused by the tradition of his group or his social status, and not by any specific reaction (other than vague acceptance or approval), probably expected from people who are under the impression of this self-expression. Finally, from time to time, the very traditions of one of the roles of the individual allow him to create a harmonious impression of a certain kind, although he may not have intended to give such an impression either consciously or unconsciously. Others, in turn, may either get the impression simply from the individual's efforts to convey something, or misunderstand the situation and come to conclusions that are not justified by either the intentions of this individual or the facts. Anyway, since others act like this, as if the individual was conveying a particular impression, one can take a functional or pragmatic approach, assuming that the individual "effectively" implemented the given definition of the situation and "effectively" implemented the understanding of what the given state of affairs implies.

• 5 Sansam W . A contest of ladies. L.: Hogarth, 1956. P. 230 - 232.

There is one point in the reaction of others which requires special comment here. Knowing that the individual is likely to present himself in a favorable light, others may divide what they observe into two parts: a part that is relatively easy for the individual to manipulate at will, since it consists primarily of his verbal statements; and a part consisting predominantly of manifestations of involuntary self-expression of the individual, which he apparently has little or no control over. In such a case, others may use what are believed to be the unguided elements of his expressive behavior to test the validity of what is conveyed by the managed elements. This shows a fundamental asymmetry inherent in the process of communication: the individual is supposedly aware of communication only through one of his channels, while observers perceive messages both through this channel and through some other. For example, the wife of a Shetland farmer, serving local island dishes to a guest from the “mainland” (the main island of Great Britain), listened with a polite smile to his polite praise of what he ate, and at the same time noticed the speed with which the guest brought a spoon or fork to his mouth, greed with which he swallowed food, expression of pleasure when chewing, using these signs to test the expressed feelings of the eater. The same woman to reveal that one of her acquaintances A“actually” thinks of another friend B, waiting for the moment when B in the presence of L found himself involved in a conversation with someone else IN. Then she secretly watched the change of expressions on her face. A, the observer [p.38] who gave B c conversation with IN. Without participating in the conversation with B and without fear of his direct observation, A sometimes relaxed, lost his usual restraint, feigned tact, and freely expressed his “real” feelings towards B. In short, this Shetland woman observed an observer not observed by anyone else.

Further, given that others are likely to compare more controllable elements of a person's behavior with less controllable ones, one might expect that sometimes an individual will try to capitalize on this very probability by directing the impressions of his behavior in such a way that they are perceived as informationally reliable. 6. For example, when admitted into a tight social circle, a participating observer may not only maintain an acceptable appearance while listening to an informant, but also try to maintain the same appearance when observing an informant talking to others. Then it will not be so easy for observers of the observer to reveal what his real position is. A concrete illustration of this can be found in life in the Shetland Islands. When a neighbor looks in on a local resident for a cup of tea, the latter, passing through the door of the house, usually depicts on his face at least a semblance of a warm expected smile. In the absence of physical obstacles outside the house and the lack of light inside it, it is usually possible to observe a guest approaching the house without being noticed. Often the islanders allowed themselves the pleasure of admiring how a guest drives off in front of the door. face the former expression and replaces it with a secular-sociable. However, some visitors, anticipating this neighborly examination, automatically assumed a secular appearance at a far distance from home, thereby ensuring the constancy of the image shown to others.

This kind of control over part of the individual restores the symmetry of the communication process and sets the stage for a kind of information game - a potentially endless cycle of concealments, false revelations, discoveries and rediscoveries. To this it must be added that, since others are likely to be rather careless about the uncontrollable elements in the behavior of the individual, this latter, by controlling them, will be able to gain a lot. Others, of course, may feel that he is manipulating the supposedly spontaneous aspects of his behavior, and see in this very act of manipulation some shadow element in his behavior that he has not been able to control. This gives us yet another test of the individual's behavior, this time of his supposedly uncalculated behavior, thus restoring once again the asymmetry of the communication process. Note in passing that the art of penetrating other people's pranks with "calculated indiscretion" seems to be more developed than our ability to manipulate our own behavior, so that no matter how many steps are taken in the information game, the spectator will probably always have an advantage over the actor, and the initial asymmetry of the communication process seems to be preserved.

• 6 Stephen Potter's well-known and highly respected writings, in particular, discuss signs that can be rigged to give the astute observer the supposedly random clues he needs to discover hidden virtues that the manipulator does not really possess.

Assuming that the individual plans the definition of the situation when he appears before others, we must also see that these others, no matter how passive their role may seem, will themselves successfully direct the definition of the situation through their responses to the actions of the individual and all kinds of undertakings opening up to him. new ways of action. Usually, the definitions of the situation projected by several different participants are sufficiently consonant with each other that open contradictions rarely occur. This does not mean that when each participant candidly expresses what he really feels and honestly agrees with the expressed feelings of others present, there will certainly be some kind of consensus. This kind of harmony is an optimistic ideal and is not at all necessary for the well-coordinated work of society. Rather, each participant in the interaction is expected to suppress his immediate heartfelt feelings so that he conveys only that [p. 40] view of the situation that he feels others will be able to accept, at least temporarily. Maintaining this superficial agreement, this semblance of consensus, is helped by the concealment by each participant of his own desires behind a stream of statements asserting values, to which everyone present feels obliged to swear allegiance, even if only in words. In addition, one usually has to reckon with a peculiar division of labor in determining the situation. Each participant is allowed to establish tentative authorized rules for dealing with subjects that are vital to him but do not directly affect others, such as rational explanations and justifications for his past activities. In exchange for this polite tolerance, he keeps quiet or avoids topics that are important to others but not so important to him. In this case, we have a kind of modus vivendi * in interaction. The participants jointly form the only common definition of the situation, which implies not so much a real agreement on the status quo, but a real agreement on whose claims and on what issues will temporarily be recognized by all. There must also be real agreement on the desirability of avoiding open conflict between different definitions of the situation 7 . This level of agreement can be called “working consensus”. It must be understood that a working consensus that has been established in one environment of interaction will be completely different in content from a working consensus that has developed in a different situation. Thus, between two friends at dinner, a mutual demonstration of affection, respect and interest in each other is maintained. In another case, for example, in the service sector, an employee of the institution can also maintain the image of disinterested enthusiasm for the problem of the client, to which the client responds by demonstrating respect for the competence and decency of the specialist serving him. But regardless of such differences in content, the general form of these working devices is the same.

• 7 Of course, the interaction can be specifically designed to find a time and place for expressing differences of opinion, but in such cases, the participants must agree that they will not quarrel over a certain tone of voice, vocabulary and level of seriousness of the argument, and also agree about mutual respect, which the disputing participants are obliged to carefully observe in relation to each other. This debatable or academic definition of the situation can be resorted to both urgently and in a leisurely-reasonable manner as a way of translating a serious conflict of views into one that can be managed within acceptable limits for all those present.
• * Conditions of existence (lat.).

Given the tendency of the individual participant to accept requests for definition of the situation made by others present, one can appreciate the key importance of the information that the individual originally possesses or acquires about his accomplices, because it is on the basis of this initial information that the individual begins to determine the situation and build his own line of response. The original projection of the individual makes him follow who he thinks he is and give up all pretense of being someone else. As the interaction of participants develops, additions and modifications are, of course, made to this initial informational state, but it is essential that these later changes correlate without contradiction with the initial positions (and even build on them) of individual participants. It seems that at the beginning of the meeting it is easier for the individual to make a choice as to which line of treatment to extend to other people present and which one to demand from them than to change the line once accepted when the interaction is already in full swing.

In everyday life, too, of course, there is a clear understanding of the importance of first impressions. Thus, the work proficiency of those employed in the service sector often depends on the ability to seize and maintain the initiative in customer service relationships - an ability that requires subtle aggressive tactics on the part of service personnel if their socioeconomic status is lower than that of the client. W. White explains this with the example of the behavior of a waitress:

The first thing that catches the eye is the fact that the waitress, who works under intense pressure from all sides, does not just passively respond to the demands of her customers. She skillfully [p.42] acts to control their behavior. The first question that comes to mind when we see her relationship with the clientele is: “Will the waitress restrain the client, or will the client suppress the waitress?” A qualified waitress understands the crucial importance of this question...

A skillful waitress stops the client confidentially, but without hesitation. For example, she may find that a new customer has sat down at the table himself before she has had time to clear the dirty plates and change the tablecloth. At the moment he is leaning on the table, teaching the menu. She greets him, says, “Please let me change the tablecloth,” then, without waiting for an answer, takes the menu from him, forcing him to move away from the table, and does her job. The relationship with the client is politely but firmly on track, and there is no question of who is in charge 8 .

When an interaction initiated under the influence of “first impressions” is itself the first in a vast series of interactions with the same participants, we speak of a “good start” and feel the decisive importance of this beginning. Thus, some teachers in their relations with students adhere to the following views:

Never let them get the better of you - or you're lost. That's why I always start hard. On the very first day, entering a new class, I let them know who is the boss here ... You just have to start hard, so that later you can loosen the reins. If you start with indulgence, then when you try to be firm, they will just look at you and laugh.

In the same way, ministers in psychiatric hospitals often feel that if a new patient on the first day of his stay in the ward is sharply laid down and shown to him who is the boss, this will prevent many future troubles 10 .

Recognizing that the individual is capable of successfully projecting the definition of the situation when meeting others, one can also assume that within the framework of this interaction, events are quite possible that will contradict, discredit or otherwise call into question this projection. When such disruptive events happen to her, the interaction itself can stop in confusion and embarrassment. Some of the assumptions on which the participants' reactions were based turn out to be untenable, and they find themselves drawn into an interaction for which the situation was poorly defined and then not defined at all. At such moments, the individual whose self-image to the microsociety is compromised may experience shame, while others present may feel hostility, and all participants may feel painful awkwardness, confusion, loss of self-control, embarrassment, and a kind of anomalous situation as a consequence of the collapse of the social microsystem of face-to-face interaction. -face.

• 8 Whyte, W. F. (ed.). industry and society. Ch. 7. When workers and customers meet. N.Y.: McGraw-Hill. 1946. P. 132 - 133.
• 9 Becker H. S. Social class variations in the teacher-pupil relationship // Journal of Educational Sociology. Vol. 25. P. 459.
• 10 Taxel H. Authority structure in a Mental Hospital Ward / Unpublished Muster's thesis. Department of Sociology . University of Chicago . 1953. [p. 43]

In emphasizing the fact that the initial definition of the situation projected by the individual tends to become a plan for subsequent joint activity, that is, considering everything primarily from the point of view of this action itself, one cannot lose sight of the decisive fact that any projected definition of the situation has also clearly expressed moral character. And it is on this moral character of projections that the scientific interest of this study is predominantly focused. Society is organized on the principle that any individual who possesses certain social characteristics has a moral right to expect others to be treated and appreciated accordingly. A second principle is also connected with this principle, namely, that an individual who secretly or explicitly signals to others that he has certain social characteristics must, in fact, be what he proclaims himself to be. As a result, when an individual projects a definition of a situation and thereby implicitly or explicitly claims to be a person of a certain kind, he automatically imposes on others a certain moral requirement to evaluate him and treat him in the way people of his category have the right to expect. He also implicitly waives all claims to represent himself as [p.44]

He is not really 11 , and therefore waives the claim to be treated as such. Then others will agree to admit that the individual informed them both about what is in reality and about what they must see as this "is". It is impossible to judge the importance of breakdowns in the process of determining the situation by the frequency with which they occur, for it is obvious that they would occur even more often if constant precautions were not observed. I think that in order to avoid these disruptions, preventive practices are constantly applied, as well as corrective actions to repair the damage from malicious incidents that could not be avoided. When an individual uses these strategies and tactics to defend his own projections, these actions are called "defensive practice"; when one participant uses them to salvage the definition of the situation projected by another, this is referred to as "in patronizing practice" or "tact". presence in front of others.To this, although it is relatively easy for people to see that without the use of defensive practices no initial impression would survive, it is probably much more difficult for them to understand that very few impressions could survive if the recipients of these impressions did not observe tact in their perception.

In addition to the fact that precautions are taken to prevent disturbances in projected definitions of the situation, it can also be noted that increased attention to such disturbances plays an essential role in the social life of the group. Crude social mystifications and jokes are played there, where uncomfortable, embarrassing situations are purposefully adjusted, which should be taken lightly 12 . Fantasies are concocted in which dizzying revelations take place. Anecdotes are told and retold from the past (real, embellished or fictional), describing in detail the former or almost former difficulties that they managed to brilliantly cope with. There seems to be no variety of group that does not have a ready stock of such games, fantasies, and edifying stories, a stock to be used as a source of humor, anxiety relievers, and sanctions to encourage individuals to be modest in their pretensions and prudent. in anticipation. A person can also reveal himself in stories about imaginary getting into awkward situations. Families like to talk about the case of a guest who mixed up dates and arrived when neither the house nor the people in it were ready to receive him. Journalists talk about cases when a typographical error so significant and understandable to everyone was made that the feigned objectivity of the newspaper and the decorum it observed were humorously exposed. Public service workers tell of clients who, in a very amusing way, misunderstood the questions on the questionnaires they filled out and gave answers that implied highly unexpected and bizarre definitions of the situation 13 . Sailors, whose “family” is all-male away from home, tell stories of a sailor on vacation who, at his home table, casually asked his mother to pass him “such-and-such butter*14. Diplomats retell the tale of the short-sighted queen asking the Republican ambassador about the health of his king, 15 etc.

• 11 This role of witnesses in limiting the possibilities of self-expression of the Individual was especially emphasized by existentialists, who saw this as the main threat to individual freedom. See: Sartre J.-P. Being and nothingness. L.: Methuen, 1957.

Let's sum up now. I admit that when an individual appears before others, they have many motives for trying to control the impression they get from observing the situation. This book explores some of the common techniques people use to maintain such impressions, and some of the common uses for these techniques. The specific content of any activity of an individual participant, or the role that it plays in the interdependent activities of a working social system, is not discussed in it. I am only interested in the dramatic problems of the participant presenting his activity to others. The problems that stagecraft and stage direction solve are sometimes trivial, but very common. Stage tasks appear to be encountered at every turn in social life, thus providing a clear guiding thread for formal sociological analysis.

• 12 Goffman E. Communication conduct in an island community. P. 319-327.
• 13 Blau P. Dynamics of bureaucracy / Ph.D. dissertation. Department of Sociology. Columbia University. University of Chicago Press, 1955. P. 127 129.
• 14 Beattie W. M. (jr.). The merchant seaman / Unpubliaahed M-A. report. Department of Sociology. University of Chicago, 1950, p. 35.
• 15 Ponsonby F. Recollections of three reigns. L.: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1951.

It is appropriate to end this introduction with a few definitions that were implied in the previous and will be needed in the future presentation. For the purposes of this study, an approximate general definition of interaction (more precisely, face-to-face interaction) as the mutual influence of individuals on each other's actions in the conditions of the direct physical presence of all participants is sufficient. Single interaction can be defined as all manifestations of interaction in any one episode, during which a given set of individuals was continuously in the presence of each other. The term "contact". “Performance”(or “performance”) can be defined as all the activities of a given participant in a given episode that in any way affect any other participants in the interaction. By taking one particular participant and his performance as a reference point, other categories of performers can be defined as audience, audience, observers, or contributors. A predetermined pattern of action, which is revealed in the course of some performance and which can be performed or played in other cases, can [p. 47] be designated by the terms “party” or “routine” 16 . These situational terms are easy to associate with generally accepted structural ones. When an individual or "performer" in different circumstances plays the same part to the same audience, then it probably makes sense to speak of the emergence of a "social relation." Having defined a “social role” as a set of rights and obligations associated with a given status, it can be argued that one social role can include more than one party and that each of these different parties can be presented by the performer in a number of cases to the same types of audience or audience. consisting of the same persons.

• 16 See comments in Neumann and Morgenstern's book on the importance of distinguishing between a routine of interactions and any particular instance in which that routine is specifically enacted: Neumann J . von, Morgenstern O. The theory of games and economic behavior. Princeton University Press, 1947. P. 49.

For sociology, this book is a textbook in which a certain social approach to the study of social life is analyzed in detail. The dramatic approach focuses on the principles of theatrical performance, i.e. on how exactly the individual presents himself and his activity to others, controls in these people the formation of a certain impression of himself and what he can do and what not during this presentation. This book explores precisely this theatrical presentation by the individual of himself to others.

Hoffman distinguishes two forms of expression:
- arbitrary (a way of expression in which an individual gives others some information about himself)
- involuntary (a way of expression in which the individual impersonates)
Those. if we are talking about the first method, then the individual transmits some information through verbal symbols (conversation, communication), and the second method is that the individual can give some information about himself involuntarily with the help of a certain manner of communication, with the help of his distinctive qualities, different actions, etc. Communication for Hoffmann is the process of transmitting information, which includes various generalized symbols and symptoms of individual individuals.

Assumptions allow a person to start interacting with another, to construct the initial course of his actions, to build initial conclusions about him. Through subsequent communication with the other, some conclusions will be refuted, some on the contrary will be strengthened, perhaps the course of action in relation to the other will be reconstructed.