Week 8 Presentation

Here are the slide from the group presentation done by Claire and Myself

Repost of last week

I've reposted my comment on Jess' blog, since it didn't work last time!
Looks like it worked, follow the link:
http://jesspyers.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/dramaturgy.html

Dramatugy and Performance

Dramaturgy
This week I read through some of the blogs and after reading Jess' blog it got me thinking.
I commented on her post here:
http://jesspyers.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/dramaturgy.html

Ethnomethodology

Ethnomethodology, to put it simply, is the methods used in the study of people. 

Not so big and scary after all.

The basic ideas that led to Garfinkel coming up with this term was one question;

“How do social actors come to know, and know in common, what they are doing and the circumstances in which they are doing it?” (Heritage, p.76)

Through his breaching experiments, Garfinkel concluded that when a person is faced with an interaction or something that is out of the ordinary, they try to normalise their behaviour in an attempt to gain control over the situation to gain a better understanding of it.

In everyday life, these instances occur more often than we think.

There are many examples of these experiments that could be used. Here’s a link to a site that gives a few examples (I’m hoping nobody beat me to it in their blog!)

http://sniggle.net/breaching.php

After reading through these examples it occurred to me that things like this could happen and do more frequently than I first thought. I guess the difference is that these are instances where it happens on purpose, rather than being honestly mistaken, the one I’m talking about is mistaking customers in restaurants for people who actually work there. This has happened to me if I go somewhere in my work uniform, as I’m sure it has with others too.

So, from Garfinkel's breaching experiments we can see how society has come to maintain an order within itself, and this order forms the basis for many, if not all our social interactions that we have throughout our lives.

Deference and Demenour

It’s incredible how after these five weeks I am so much more aware of how we all conduct ourselves in a manner that seems to conform with Goffmans ideas about deference and demenour . After reading the assigned chapter for the week by Goffman, especially after looking at how long it was and dreading it, I actually found it to be rather interesting.

There are many ideas thrown around in the chapter, ‘deference’, ‘demenour’, ‘symmetrical’, ‘asymmetrical’, and so on and so on.

Obviously the whole point of the reading relates to deference and demenour and the place each of these ideas has in society. To begin with lets take a look at ‘rules of conduct’.

Goffman defines rules of conduct as “a guide for action, recommended not because it is pleasant, cheap or effective, but because it is suitable or just.” (pg.48)

These rules are applied to many aspects of our daily lives, in the form of written and unwritten rules, laws and common understandings. From my understanding Goffman is speaking about those ‘rules’ that are unwritten and informal.

Goffman goes on to separate this idea into obligations and expectations. Obligations are the way we are expected to act ourselves and expectations are how others are to act in respect to us.

For example in a certain situation, when walking past an old friend we often feel obliged to wave and say “hello”, and we expect the same in return.

The basis of the whole chapter reflects around deference and demenour, and the place each of these concepts have in society.

My understanding of deference is the way we interact and conduct ourselves in relation to others, and demenour being the way we conduct or ‘present’ our own self.

So, deference is displayed right here on my blog. I am interacting with others and there is a ‘code’ that governs the way I do so. But in doing this, I am also using (not sure if that’s the right term, but anyway) demenour, which in a way tells me how I should be acting and presenting myself to others.

Deference and demenour can be applied in just about every social setting, whether that be on the phone, the internet, at the shop, at work, the list is endless….

Hey Everyone!
I'm new to this whole blog thing, so this is all pretty confusing to me.
Just thought i'd post this to say hi (and to check it worked!)
So here goes....