Boundaries in the Making: Transformations in Erving Goffman’s Total Institution through the Case of a Female Benedictine Monastery

Sociology ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 003803852110115
Author(s):  
Anna Clot-Garrell
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Total Institution ◽  
Erving Goffman ◽  
Seminal Work ◽  
Total Institutions ◽  
Late Modern

Total institutions have undergone profound changes since Erving Goffman published his seminal work Asylums in 1961. This article explores the persistence and transformation of total institutions under late-modern conditions. Based upon empirical research conducted in a female Benedictine monastery, I analyse changes in the physically bounded structure of a total institution. Specifically, I address the trend towards greater permeability and flexibility of enclosed total spaces. Inspired by Georg Simmel’s spatial insights, I examine how boundaries are historically reshaped through changing relations of distance and proximity to wider society, and how these shifts alter the material expression and configuration of power that originally characterised the monastery’s totality. This article claims the ongoing relevance of Goffman’s conceptualisation to accommodate such modifications and illustrates how, in certain cases, adaptations of total institutions to contemporary conditions can be understood as involving the reconfiguration, rather than the dismantling, of totality.

scholarly journals Anti-establishment Armed Groups as Total Institutions: Exploring Transformations of the Self

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-86
Author(s):  
Maritza Felices-Luna
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
The Self ◽  
Total Institution ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
Armed Struggle ◽  
Self And Identity ◽  
Total Institutions

Based on an empirical research on the Irish and Peruvian conflicts, this article uses Goffman’s concept of total institution to analyse women’s involvement in the armed struggle. It contends that organisations presenting themselves as the legitimate army of an embryonic state are in fact total institutions attempting to produce a particular self and identity on its members through the use of the physical environment and the framing of all social interactions that take place within their purview. However, members demonstrate agency and self efficacy by mobilizing the same physical space and framed interactions in order to either facilitate their own transformation or resist it, which results in the emergence of an alternative self and identity.

scholarly journals ‘We have become prisoners of our own age’: from a continuing care retirement community to a total institution in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liat Ayalon ◽  
Sharon Avidor
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Retirement Community ◽  
Retirement Communities ◽  
Continuing Care ◽  
Total Institution ◽  
Continuing Care Retirement Communities ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Total Institutions ◽  
Design And Methods ◽  
Depth Interviews

Abstract Background and objectives during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic in Israel, people residing in continuing care retirement communities (CCRC) found themselves under strict instructions to self-isolate, imposed by the CCRC managements before, during and after the nationwide lockdown. The present study explored the personal experiences of CCRC residents during the lockdown. Research design and methods in-depth interviews were conducted with 24 CCRC residents from 13 different CCRCs. Authors performed a thematic analysis of interview transcripts, using constant comparisons and contrasts. Results three major themes were identified: (i) ‘Us vs. them: Others are worse off’. Older residents engaged in constant attempts to compare their situation to that of others. The overall message behind these downward comparisons was that the situation is not so bad, as others are in a worse predicament; (ii) ‘Us vs. them: Power imbalance’. This comparison emphasised the unbalanced power-relations between older adults and the staff and management in the setting and (iii) ‘We have become prisoners of our own age’. Interviewees described strong emotions of despair, depression and anger, which were intensified when the rest of society returned back to a new routine, whilst they were still under lockdown. Discussion and implications the measures imposed on residents by managements of CCRCs during the lockdown, and the emotional responses of distress among some of the residents, revealed that CCRCs have components of total institutions, not normally evident. This underscores the hidden emotional costs of the lockdown among those whose autonomy was compromised.

scholarly journals The politics of monastic life: opportunities for exit and voice in a voluntary total institution

2020 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-127
Author(s):  
Mikaela Sundberg
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Total Institution ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
Cistercian Order ◽  
Total Institutions ◽  
Monastic Communities ◽  
Exit Option ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Initial Entry

AbstractTotal institutions are by definition totalitarian, but not necessarily authoritarian. Voluntary total institutions consist of members who have chosen to enter, but what opportunities do they have to leave? This article addresses opportunities for exit and voice in Catholic monasteries within the Cistercian Order of Strict Observance. Monasteries have institutionalized important democratic processes regarding membership and leadership. Members are involved in decision-making through community bodies and discussions, but in many practical concerns, superiors may wrest control by neglecting to ask the community for alternative opinions. The superior’s decision-making style therefore crucially affects the range of democratic decision-making in individual monastic communities. Complete exits are common during the initial entry process. The cost of leaving is higher for full members, and the internal exit option to other monastic communities in the Order is therefore of great importance. It means that monastic communities cease to operate as monopolies.

scholarly journals Szpital psychiatryczny jako przykład instytucji totalnej

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-248
Author(s):  
Wioletta Jedlecka
Keyword(s):  
Psychiatric Hospital ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Total Institution ◽  
Erving Goffman ◽  
Full Control ◽  
Special Place

The aim of this article is attempting to answer the question whether the psychiatric hospital can still be considered as a total institution. The concept of a psychiatric hospital as a total institution was formulated by Erving Goffman. In this type of facility, the personnel has full control over the patient, their time, private life, and mobility. However, a psychiatric hospital is also a special place. Is this type of hospital still a total institution? Is it not better now to call it a quasi-total institution?

Total Institutions

2018 ◽  
pp. 668-688
Author(s):  
Jay Mechling
Keyword(s):  
Nursing Homes ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Summer Camps ◽  
Total Institution ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Basic Training ◽  
Folk Traditions ◽  
Total Institutions ◽  
Military Basic Training

In his 1961 book, Asylums, Goffman introduces the concept of the “total institution,” a formal institution in which the staff has near-total control of the lives of the “inmates,” including where and when they sleep, eat, and socialize. Typical total institutions in American culture include hospitals (mental and otherwise), prisons, military basic training camps, other isolated military settings (e.g., onboard ships), boarding schools, summer camps, nursing homes, and cloistered religious institutions. The fact that the control is “near-total” rather than total opens the possibility that the “inmates” or “residents” will create their own folk traditions, including oral, material, and customary folklore. The folk cultures of residents serve their psychological and social needs, and the folklore often centers on resistance against the regime of control and surveillance by the staff.

scholarly journals Institutional Work in Total Institutions and the Perspective of the Persons that Have Lived in Residential Treatment Institutions

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitja Krajnčan ◽  
Boštjan Bajželj
Keyword(s):  
Residential Treatment ◽  
Goal Orientation ◽  
Post Treatment ◽  
Total Institution ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Institutional Work ◽  
Total Institutions ◽  
Living Environments ◽  
The Many ◽  
Specific Learning

Institutional work includes all kinds of psychosocial assistance that offers, to people that need them, living environments and immediate environments adapted to their age, problems, disorders, and state. The diversity and dilemmas of institutional work represent the central theoretical discourse that the authors are researching in the explanations of the total institution, the exact answers regarding the help the youth that involuntarily find themselves in such institutions receive. The continued development of the discourse logically proceeds into deinstitutionalisation. Semi-structured interviews of adults that have spent their youth in such institutions represent the empirical part of the research. Extreme psychosocial pressures make the youth deviate away from goal orientation and the purpose of the institutions’ operations. So, additionally, the authors have gathered a collection of good and bad experiences to bring attention to the many imperfections that should not be self-evident. The key problems that people that have stayed in such institutions a decade ago would like to give light to are the non-existence of logic and specific learning and practical competences that would benefit them in the life outside of the institution. They also stressed the lack of using the quality relations that had been established in the institution as support in post-treatment.

scholarly journals Residential Care Institutions for People with Disabilities in Russia: Questioning Totality

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 453-464
Author(s):  
Анна Александровна Клепикова
Keyword(s):  
Participant Observation ◽  
People With Disabilities ◽  
Special Care ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Inner Life ◽  
Erving Goffman ◽  
Daily Routines ◽  
Residential Care Institutions ◽  
Total Institutions ◽  
People With Intellectual Disabilities

This paper applies the concept of total institutions, introduced by Erving Goffman, to the case of special care institutions for people with intellectual disabilities in present-day Russia. These institutions represent a classic type of organization that could be studied through the lenses of the total institutions theory and demonstrate the typical features of such institutions, among them the crowded conditions in which the inmates live, a lack of privacy, universal scheduling of daily routines, strict hierarchy, a system of punishments and privileges as an instrument of control, and exploitation of inmate labour for the benefit of the institution. Drawing upon data generated by participant observation and implementing the analytical frame of symbolic interactionism at the level of routine interactions, this paper questions the 'totality' of the control mechanisms, power relations, and standardization processes found within the special care institutions for people with disabilities. One conclusion is that, although inner life in a total institution is to a certain extent subject to strict official rules, it is not limited to them. This 'total' character is manifested at the level of the structural organization of the institutions, institutional logic, and the staff’s discourses, but not at the level of routine interactions. One factor challenging the totality of these institutions is the emergence of new attitudes to people with disabilities manifested by NGO volunteers, who confront the dominant patriarchal approach. In their practice they implement principles of 'normalization' ideology that helps to enhance the agency of the inmates. This enhanced agency plays an important role in managing the 'totality' in everyday interactions with the staff.

scholarly journals Detencja cudzoziemców jako temat badawczy i wyzwanie metodologiczne

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (2 (176)) ◽  
pp. 91-106
Author(s):  
Jacek Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Research Topic ◽  
Total Institution ◽  
Methodological Challenge ◽  
Research Strategies ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Group Research ◽  
Total Institutions ◽  
One Year ◽  
Client Relations ◽  
Pioneer Research

Detention of Foreigners as a Research Topic and Methodological Challenge The paper presents the conceptual and methodological assumptions (research strategies) regarding the project “Space organisation in Polish detention centres for foreigners”. This pioneer research project studies detention centres as a total institution, which so far was outside the area of academic interest. An interdisciplinary, one-year group research project in all six guarded centres for foreigners in Poland involved an original, eclectic concept of studying the organisational culture of total institutions. This concept referred to various theoretical inspirations, such as proxemics, kinesics, symbolic interactionism, morphogenesis theory, the model of patron-client relations, the concept of morality economics, etc. Keywords: total institutions, detention of foreigners, research strategies, interdisciplinarity Streszczenie Tekst zawiera prezentację koncepcji i założeń metodologicznych (strategii badawczych) projektu „Organizacja przestrzeni w polskich ośrodkach detencyjnych dla cudzoziemców”. Jest to pionierskie przedsięwzięcie badawcze realizowane w instytucji totalnej, która do tej pory pozostawała poza oglądem przedstawicieli nauk społecznych. Roczne badania zespołowe, które przeprowadzono we wszystkich sześciu strzeżonych ośrodków dla cudzoziemców w Polsce miały charakter interdyscyplinarny, wymagały opracowania autorskiej, a zarazem eklektycznej koncepcji badania kultury organizacyjnej instytucji totalnej, odwołującej się do różnych inspiracji teoretycznych (proksemika, kinezyka, interakcjonizm symboliczny, teoria morfogenezy, koncepcja „patron-klient”, koncepcja ekonomii moralności i in.).

scholarly journals Ethical Problems in Study of Total Institutions

2013 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 14-18
Author(s):  
Andrzej Borowski
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Ethical Problem ◽  
Total Institution ◽  
Objective Data ◽  
Environmental Concentration ◽  
Ethical Problems ◽  
Total Institutions ◽  
Staff Behavior

Occurrence of ethical problem is forced them in research of total institutions by character. It belongs to biggest ethical problems in case of total institution in the course of research: - protection privacy respondent and at publication of result in accordance with staff; - behavior neutrality equal as well as subordinates; - disclosure secret environmental. Concentration on variable, which limit subjectivism of collected data has in research of total institutions in forceful winning objective data about functioning in accordance with society of reality ethical dilemmas meaning this exclusive not increasing simultaneously.

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