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G O F F M A N ' S L E G A C Y T O P O L I T I C A L S O C I O L O G Y

WILLIAM A. GAMSON

Someone once asked Goffman, "What are your politics?" He seemed mo-

mentarily taken aback by the question. "My 'politics?' (pause) I don't think I

have any 'politics.' (Another pause.) If anything, anarchist." But his politics

were certainly not anarchist in the anarcho-syndicalist tradition. He clearly

had little interest in decentralization, or the distribution of authority between the state and other organizations - the kinds of issues addressed by this tradition of political thought. He was talking about something else.

I assume he used the term because it connoted something of the characteristic

moral stance that informs his work. In the eternal hunt, Goffman ran with

the hares. In spite of his success, he kept, as Bennett Berger put it, "the role

distance which is obliged for the deviantly successful out of loyalty to all the

beautiful losers who never made it. ''l

This is clearest in Asylums ( 1961) and Stigma (1963) where his theme is the

Herculean effort required to maintain human dignity under the most un-

promising of circumstances. John Lofland describes people who were

touched deeply by reading Stigma. "These people recognized themselves and others and saw that Goffman was articulating some of the most fundamental

and painful of human social experiences. He showed them suddenly that they

were not alone, that someone else understood what they knew and felt. He knew and expressed it beautifully, producing in them joy over pain under-

stood and appreciated, an inextricable mixture of happiness and sadness,

expressed in tears. ''2

Social institutions were another matter. His writing about the medical and other establishments was suffused by what Lofland calls his "cool, controlled

moral outrage. "3 He was at war with hypocrisy and smugness. But the exposure of sham and covert manipulation is inevitably subversive, inviting rebellion against the established order. When President Grayson Kirk

Department of Soctology, Boston College.

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entered his office at Columbia University after a student occupation in the

late 1960s had left it a shambles, he bewailed "My God, how could human beings do a thing like this?" Goffman's reaction shows scant sympathy for his plight.

The great socmlogical quest ion is, of course, not how could tt be that human beings would do

a thing hke this, but ra ther how it is that human be,ngs do this sort of thing so rarely How come persons m author i ty have been so overwhelmingly successful m connmg those beneath

them into keeping the hell out of their offices? 4

The contrast between the sentences is enlightening. The first merely observes the problematic nature of social order. But the second turns Kirk's moral

outrage on its head, for it implies that, in the longer view, he is the con and the students typically the mark or sucker.

The mischievous strain in the movements of the sixties gave Goffman's work

an unintended political resonance. The imp that led Abbie Hoffman to

shower dollar bills on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Jerry

Rubin to dress in a revolutionary war uniform before the House Unamerican

Activities Committee, and the Yippies to run a pig for president in 1968, was Goffman's imp. Goffman celebrated the "art of becoming a pain in the ass . . . .

the wonderfully disruptive power of systematic impoliteness. "5

But it would be seriously misleading to treat this moral stance as a political

one and to make of Goffman a sort of closet Saul Alinsky. With all his sympathy for the socially dispossessed, struggling to maintain their dignity in

the face of formidable obstacles, he had no interest in the political and social structures that limit their opportunities. The consciousness of social class

that informs Rubin's Worlds of Pain or Sennett and Cobb's The Hidden Injuries of Class is absent in Goffman even though the same sensibility informs his work. 6

Indeed, Goffman made a point of denying political intent, responding obliquely to critics such as Alvin Gouldner and others who took him to task

for his political insufficiencies: In his presidential address to the American Sociological Association, he disclaims "concern over the plight of disadvan- taged groups . . . . even the plight of those seeking work in our profession. ''8 And in his introduction to Frame Analysis, he acknowledges that his analysis

does not catch at the differences between the advantaged and d isadvantaged classes and can

be said to direct a t tent ion away from such matters . . . . I can only suggest that he who would combat false consciousness and awaken people to their true interests has much to do, because the sleep ts very deep. And ! do not intend here to p rowde a lul laby but merely to sneak m and watch the way the people snore. 9

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A modest claim indeed, but a bit disingenuous. To observe us publicly as we

sleep is to provide a wake-up call, not a strident alarm in Goffman's case but

a resonant knell that is hard to ignore. His final words to us suggest more

acceptance of this mission than he usually acknowledged. In a paean to

"unfettered, unsponsored inquiry," he concludes:

If one must have warrant addressed to social needs, let At be for unsponsored analyses of the socml arrangements enjoyed by those with msmutional authority priests, psychiatrists, school teachers, police, generals, government leaders, parents, males, whites, nationals, medm operators and all the other well-placed persons who are in a posit~on to give official imprint to verstons of reahty/~

One does not have to be political to leave a legacy for political sociology. The

offering is there to be taken up by those who see its utility for addressing

questions that were not necessarily on the donor 's agenda. Goffman was

concerned with the conditions under which people challenge existing rules of

interaction and he recognized the stake of authorities in maintaining such

rules. He was concerned with the conditions under which people become

aware of inequality and differences. In this sense, his agenda was implicitly

political. To see where his ideas have led, I will examine the two broad

sub-fields of political sociology where he has already had a demonstrable

impact: micromobilization and the shaping of political consciousness.

Micromobilization

Even a revolution depends on face-to-face interaction. No mobilization for

social change takes place without a myriad of interpersonal encounters. Of

course, this simple truth lacks interest until we can show that these interac-

tions strongly influence larger processes of mobilization and help to deter-

mine their success or failure. Micromobilization, then, is the study of how

face-to-face encounters affect long term efforts to bring about social change

through the mobilization of resources for collective action.

Goffman's work is the starting point for a theory of micromobilization.

Indeed, it seems especially useful to treat it as a series of encounters, using

Goffman's analytic concept to define the very unit of analysis. Goffman's

encounters are focused gatherings. They differ f rom other face-to-face inter-

action in having a single focus of attention. Because there is a single focus,

Goffman suggests, there is a heightened awareness of the mutual relevance of

each other's acts. j~

Goffman teaches us to think of encounters as a continuous bounded strip of focused activity. They have a definite beginning and end, usually marked by

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some ceremony or ritual expression. In the study of collective action, the beginning frequently involves some act that creates a common focus of

attention - for example, an arrest or physical confrontation. Ends of encoun-

ters are signaled by some act or gesture indicating a termination of the common focus.

Long-term mobilization efforts are composed of a series of encounters of

different types. To specify the macro, one must understand the micro. As

Randall Collins puts it, "Macrophenomena are made up of aggregations and

repetitions of many similar micro-events... [therefore,] sociological concepts

can be made fully empirical only by grounding them in a sample of the typical micro-events that make them up. "u

Different types of encounters highlight different processes. Recruitment meetings focus on the mobilization of support from a constituency. The challengers are trying to gain adherents plus the resources and energy they

can provide. Issues of political consciousness and symbolism are highlighted

in such encounters. What are the consequences, for example, of choosing a

symbol that emphasizes continuity with the past rather than a sharp break

with it? What solidarities are invoked through the political language used?

Internal meetings focus on which strategies of mobilization or influence

should be pursued. The participants are cadre and potential cadre of the movement organization. Issues of generating and maintaining commitment

are central in such encounters. Many movement organizations, for example, have ideological beliefs that support widespread member participation and

consensual decision-making. To be effective, they need to avoid interminable and enervating meetings that burn out their cadre, turn away active suppor-

ters, and accomplish nothing. The willingness of participants to come to meetings and work for the organization in the future will be affected by how this dilemma is handled.

Encounters with the media have the following dynamic. Representatives of a

movement organization are framing the challenge in a particular fashion by emphasizing certain features and denying others. By presenting themselves through the media, they hope to create and maintain a supportive climate for their efforts to mobilize their constituency and influence their target. Media representatives have their own agenda and operating norms. They have particular scenarios for treating movement organizations and are frequently skeptical or even hostile to a challenging group's effort to present itself.~3

Encounters with allies focus on coalition formation - the pooling of resour-

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ces in joint collective action. Potential allies must reach agreements on many

delicate matters. What kind of action will be taken and how much will each

party contribute? How will credit be shared? Issues of internal cohesion and

loyalty are highlighted in such encounters. They test a group's ability to hold on to its existing support and avoid factional splits.

Encounters with coun termovement groups focus on the strategy and tactics

of conflict. Challengers must consider how their strategies of waging political combat affect their own internal support. A move that discredits the opposi- tion is not an effective one if it succeeds in embarrassing and discrediting the

challenger as well. Issues of mobilization complicate an apparent two-party

conflict by forcing both sides to consider how their actions will be received by

their own supporters.

Encounters with authorities, though, are the most important type and here

Goffman is especially helpful. Such encounters are most likely to furnish a critical incident for long-term mobilization - that is, an occasion that leads to

sudden, discontinuous change in the capacity for collective action. They

provide the contending parties with opportunities for a variety of heroics and

confound them with difficult dilemmas that have no ready solution. Propo- nents of alternative lines of action joust and the results are immediately

apparent and influence those present in deciding their own course of action.

Reputations are won and lost in such encounters. As Goffman puts its,

"Every rally - especially ones involving collective confrontation with author-

ity - can have some long-standing effect upon the political orientation of the celebrants."~4

Sometimes such encounters are what Charles Tilly calls "contentious gather-

ings," in which a group of challengers gather in the same place to press some

claim against authorities.~5 Perhaps a group of striking workers block the

main gate of a plant to prevent substitute workers from entering, and police attempt to remove them. Or a collection of people, incensed by some incident

of injustice, gather at a common meeting place where authorities attempt to

disperse them.

Many other authority encounters do not start out as confrontations but have

the potential to produce rebellious collective action. The participants recog- nize at the outset that one party claims the right to regulate some aspects of the others' behavior - that is, there is some agent of authority present. As long as participants are fully comfortable with compliance and have no reason to resist, these encounters have little interest for students of micromo- bilization. But as soon as anyone has reason not to comply, the participants

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become potential challengers. The degree to which they actually submit to

regulation is problematic.

How does Goffman help us in understanding such encounters? Consider his

analysis of face-work. ~6 One needs this analysis to understand the subtle

bonds that keep us complying with authority even when no sanctions are

involved. His first lesson is that all face-to-face interactions operate to

restrain challenge.

Every social situation is built upon a working consensus among the partici-

pants. One of its chief premises is that once a definition of the situation has

been projected and agreed upon by participants, there shall be no challenge

to it. It is Goffman's special insight to recognize that disruption of the

working consensus has the character of moral transgression. Open challenge

is incompatible with polite exchange.

When an individual projects a defimtion of the situation and then makes an implicit or exphcit claim to be a person of a particular kind, he automatically exerts a moral demand upon the others, obhging them to value and treat him m the manner that persons of his kind have a right to expect, j7

To challenge authority, one must make a scene, which many people are

reluctant to do. The smooth flow of interaction will be disrupted and an

awkward and, perhaps angry, confrontation will result. Those who challenge

may appear boorish and rude. Frequently, the encounter may be fraught

with ambiguity and the next word or action may make a protest or refusal to

comply seem hasty and ill-considered. Fools rush in where angels fear to

tread.

These face-work problems are not insurmountable for potential challengers.

One can reduce the risk by easing in gradually, watching the reactions of

others. Potential challengers sometimes engage in a kind of verbal milling

about, checking the general mood before venturing out on a limb. Accusa-

tions may at first be implicit, coming in the form of apparently innocent

questions whose rebellious content can be denied. Once the ice is broken, the risk of embarrassment is reduced.

Furthermore, potential challengers can differentiate between the individual

and the role, offering agents of authority a graceful line of retreat. In effect,

the challengers invite the agents to establish what Goffman calls role dis-

tance. ~s By allowing the individual to disengage from the authority role, the

conflict is made less personal, thereby reducing the force of face-work considerations.

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Authorities, by their own behavior, can make the job of overcoming face- work considerations easier or more difficult for potential challengers. When

they behave with arrogance and contempt, few are likely to be much con- cerned with offering civility in return although their sanctions may still be feared. When agents of authority are civil and even friendly and affable, face-work considerations are most likely to play an important role in main- taining compliance.

Some Evidence

Milgram designed a fabrication to explore a number of fundamental issues underlying obedience to authority. 19 The paradigmatic situation that he created involves a subject who is asked to administer what he believes to be an increasingly painful and, perhaps, dangerous series of electric shocks to an innocent victim. The person doing the asking plays the role of a psychologist conducting experimental work on how punishment affects learning.

In Milgram's baseline condition, the authority is in the same room as the subject and non-compliance is visible and necessarily violates the interaction order. To refuse the experimenter's requests implies his incompetence or worse. Most subjects were unwilling to take this step. Almost two-thirds of them reached the highest possible shock level, complying to the end.

Milgram ran many variations but the one of most relevance here involves identical conditions except that the experimenter was not physically present in the room with the subject and communicated by phone instead of face-to- face. This simple change reduced the percentage who were fully compliant from 65 percent to 22 percent. Milgram observes that "Subjects seemed able to resist the experimenter far better when they did not have to confront him face to face. ''2~

Why such a dramatic change? There is still an interaction here and subjects do not openly challenge the experimenter's claims with greater frequency. But the lack of direct physical surveillance opens a possibility that was not previously present - evasion. For many people faced with a dilemma of compliance, evasion is the strategy of choice.

Participants acting evasively do not confront the authorities directly, but neither do they perform in the correct or desired manner. Like the Good Soldier Schweik, they are apparently compliant, but in practice, their per- formance is marred by error from the standpoint of authorities. A confronta- tion is avoided and any failure to comply is implicit and not openly acknow-

612

ledged. Evasion, of course, is less likely to provoke sanctions that open

resistance; it also avoids an unpleasant scene.

Gamson, Fireman, and Rytina also provide evidence for the relevance of

face-work considerations and the importance of evasion as a strategy for

handling dilemmas of compliance. 2~ The authors created a fabricated en-

counter with an unjust authority called the Manufacturer's Human Rela-

tions Consultants (MHRC). This organization hired people and tried to get

them to help it use unfair tactics to win a legal case. The authors ran

thirty-three iterations of their scenario and charted the relative success of

different groups in achieving the criterion of collective resistance to the

demands of the MHRC coordinator.

In this encounter, participants employed a wide array of evasion techniques

to avoid confronting the authority. Asked to misrepresent their views in a

way favorable to the MHRC's oil company client, for example, many

remained silent without giving any indication that they did not intend to

comply. But the coordinator challenged evasion as much as possible, forcing

them to choose between compliance or more open forms of rebellion.

The MHRC agent was distant and made no play for sympathy but he never

raised his voice or attacked participants. As he made repeated demands for

complicity in an apparent injustice, he sometimes became the target of

ridicule for his apparent moral obtuseness. Although he was following a

script, the other participants were not, and he sometimes became flustered.

The authors note that

face-work forces for compliance were strengthened when people began feeling sorry for the coordinator in his unfortunate job. If he was just a poor soul trying to do an unpleasant job, why not go along wtth what he asked to spare him further humiliation? 22

The authors found that personal attacks on the coordinator had a short term

negative affect on a group's rebellion career although no effect on its ultimate

success in collectively resisting authority. When personal attacks occurred,

they sparked an internal disagreement in almost half the cases. Some group

members responded by advocating compliance, apparently as a way of avoiding further scenes. The immediate result of violating the expressive

order in this way was increased conflict among potential challengers.

Ultimately, almost all groups confronting the M H RC coordinator were able

to break the bonds of authority in spite of face-work constraints. Again, Goffman is invaluable in helping us to see how they achieved this. Gamson,

Fireman, and Rytina employ the Goffman-derived concept of rim talk.

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Every strip of ongoing activity has a larger context in which it is embedded

that Goffman calls its r im. 23 When participants are engaged in the activity,

they take the rim for granted. Students participating in a classroom discus-

sion are focused not on the unspoken rules governing the classroom setting but on the content of the course. Perhaps the instructor is late in arriving, and

this event turns their attention to the rim. They may then discuss how long

one should wait for the instructor to come before leaving and whether a professor deserves more consideration than a mere teaching fellow. Rim talk

refers to such discussion of the setting of ongoing activity.

In encounters with authority, rim talk has a special meaning: it involves some

implicit or explicit questioning of the authorities' conduct. Potential chal-

lengers may argue with attempts at regulation and push the authorities to

justify their requests. They may attempt to set conditions, making their

cooperation a matter of negotiation rather than something taken for granted.

Gamson, Fireman, and Rytina found that rim talk was a major first step in a successful rebellion career. "It both undermines bonds of authority and

establishes an opportunity for developing a collective orientation and adop-

ting an injustice frame." Of special relevance for face-work, it "provides a

way of easing into more rebellious actions without risking much damage to one's own or the coordinator's face. "24

In the M H R C encounter, all thirty-three groups had some rim talk during its

course but the successful groups were earlier than the others. Of nineteen groups that had immediate rim talk, the first time they faced a dilemma of

compliance, 63 percent were successful in achieving collective resistance later

on. Of fourteen groups that let the first opportunity slip by, only 28 percent were ultimately successful. Rim talk, of course, is only a first step, but it

seems to offer a way of breaking the bonds of authority without clearly violating the interaction order.

Political Consciousness

We don't need Goffman to remind us of the general truth that the way our

political world is framed shapes our political consciousness and that con- sciousness, in turn, affects our willingness to be quiescent or to engage in collective action. Many who focus on political symbolism and ideology have made this point. Indeed, it transcends different perspectives on just how political consciousness is shaped, embraced alike by pluralists and cultural Marxists.

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There is, of course, a rich critical tradition that emphasizes the shaping of

political consciousness as part of a process of class or elite domination. It is

not by force or coercion that a regime maintains itself but through its ability

to shape our world view. As Murray Edelman puts it,

Government affects behavior chiefly by shaping the cogmtions of large numbers of people in ambiguous situations. It helps create their beliefs about what is proper; their perceptions of what is fact; and their expectations of what is to be done. 25

At the center of this critical tradition is Gramsci's concept of ideological

hegemony. Gramsci recognized that there is no automatic passage from

economic to political dominance. Consent must be created and actively

maintained. To understand the failure of the Italian workers movement, he

argued, one must understand the bourgeois dominat ion of common-sense

ways of thinking and assumptions about everyday life of the working class.

"The foundation of a [ruling] class," he writes, "is equivalent to the creation

of a Weltanschauung.-26

Gramsci 's approach argues against a mechanistic Marxism that reduces

political consciousness and ideology to mere epiphenomena. It emphasizes

the importance of consciousness as a battleground, providing a raison d'etre

for the Frankfort School, for cultural Marxists more generally, and for an

array of other critical analyses of how consent is produced and maintained.

Gramsci wrote under the most unpromising of circumstances - in a Fascist

prison, often in ill health, and subject to the censorship of prison authorities.

Not surprisingly, there are inconsistencies in his treatment of hegemony. 27

But his enduring contribution is to call our attention not only to explicit

beliefs but also to how the routine, taken-for-granted structures of everyday

thinking contribute to a structure of dominance. Gramsci urges us to expand

our notion of ideology to include the world of common sense. Creating

alternative consciousness requires a struggle to forge a "new common sense

and with it a new culture and new philosophy which will be rooted in the

popular consciousness with the same solidity and imperative quality as

traditional beliefs. "2s

The unravelling of such processes is an intellectual agenda, not an answer. As long as the mechanisms are left vague and unspecified, the analysis remains

excessively abstract. Hegemony becomes a label that substitutes for explana- tion rather than providing it. In many discussions, as Todd Gitlin puts it,

hegemony appears as

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a sort of ~mmutable fog that has settled over the whole pubhc life of capttahst societies to confound the truth of the proletarian telos. Thus to the question, "Why are radical ideas suppressed m the schools ~', "Why do workers oppose socmllsm ~" and so on, comes the single Delphtc answer, hegemony. "Hegemony" becomes the magtcal explanation of last resort. And as such it is useful neither as explanation nor as gutde to actton. If"hegemony" explains everything m the sphere of culture, it e~,plams nothing. 29

If Goffman ever read Gramsci , it is nowhere evident in his work. Never-

theless, he has much to contr ibute to the specification of the processes that

Gramsci and his successors are trying to understand. There are two specific

ways in which Goffman 's ideas are directly useful: (1) in unraveling the

micro-events that lead people to quest ion taken-for-granted, common-sense

assumpt ions abou t politics and (2) in unders tanding how the mass media

operate in f raming news events and defining political realities.

Both of these Goffman legacies rest on frame analysis. Although he was not

writ ing under the wary eye of fascist censors, Gof fman on frames yields little

in opaqueness to Gramsci on hegemony. His aim, he tells as, is "to isolate

some of the basic f rameworks of unders tanding avai lable in our society for

making sense of events and to analyze the special vulnerabilit ies to which

these frames of reference are subject." A frame "allows its user to locate,

perceive, identify, and label a seemingly infinite number of concrete occur-

rences defined in its terms." Frame analysis is a "slogan" for analyzing

experience in terms of "principles of organiza t ion which govern events . . .

and our subjective involvement in them. ''30

Crook and Taylor call a t tent ion to the most fundamenta l ambigui ty in

Goffman 's concept of frame: "between the passive and s t ructured on the one

hand, and the active and structuring on the other. Experiences are framed,

but I f rame my experience. TM Goffman warns us that "Organiza t ional

premises are involved, and those are something cogni t ion somehow arrives

at, not something cogni t ion creates or generates. "32 At the same time, he calls

a t tent ion to the fragili ty of frames in use and their vulnerabil i ty to tampering.

But perhaps this ambigui ty is a virtue. It increases the usefulness of f raming

as a br idging concept between two levels of analysis - between cognit ion and

culture. A cultural analysis tells us that our polit ical world is f ramed, that

repor ted events are pre-organized and do not come to us in raw form. But we

are active processors and however encoded our received reality, we may

decode it in different ways. The very vulnerabil i ty of the f raming process

makes it a locus of potent ia l struggle, not a leaden reali ty to which we all

inevitably must yield.

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Frame Transformation in Encounters

"We must start with the idea," Goffman wrote in 1961, "that a particular definition is in charge of the situation. ''33 In encounters with authority, for example, it is useful to think of an unstated legitimating frame that governs the encounter, generally insuring compliance. Those acting in authority roles assume the right to define the penumbra of social expectations that surround the primary framework. That the frame is implicit and participants unaware of it does not prevent them from acting in terms of it. On the contrary, the implicit nature helps insure this. Would-be challengers face the problem of overcoming a definition of the situation that they themselves may take as part of the natural order.

If an authority is acting in a normal, unexceptionable manner, the underly- ing legitimating frame is taken for granted. But, as Goffman reminds us, frames are vulnerable. Sometimes actions or events occur that break the hegemony of the legitimating frame. If participants are going to resist authority, they need to adopt an alternative mobilizing frame as a context for what is happening - a redefinition that questions compliance.

There are different kinds of mobilizing frames but the one of most relevance for macromobilization is an injustice frame. This alternative to the legitimat- ing frame supports the conclusion that the authority system is violating the shared moral principles of the participants. The adoption of an injustice frame is part of the process by which a group of potential challengers mobilize.

Turner and Killian suggest that "a movement is inconceivable apart from a vital sense that some established practice or mode of thought is wrong and ought to be replaced . . . . People express discontent, complain, and even engage in impulsive resistance to conditions. But the discovery that their complaints are really expressions of injustice requires that the new terms be formulated. TM Moore agrees: "Any political movement against oppression has to develop a new diagnosis and remedy for existing forms of suffering, a diagnosis and remedy by which this suffering stands morally condemned. These new moral standards of condemnation constitute the core identity of any oppositional movement. "35

The adoption of an injustice frame involves more than a series of individuals privately adopting a different interpretation of what is happening. For collective adoption of an injustice frame, it must be shared by the potential challengers in a public way. This allows the participants to realize not only

617

that they share the injustice frame, but that everyone in the group is aware that it is shared. The process takes time and is rarely compressed into a single

encounter.

A refraining act is any word or deed by a challenger that furthers the collective adoption of an injustice frame (or other mobilizing frame). Hei-

rich's account of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, for example, shows

great sensitivity to reframing acts - not unrelated to the fact that he was taking a seminar with Goffman on "Framing" at the time of writing. 36

Heirich suggests a useful distinction between two types of reframing acts.

A ttention-calling acts are words or deeds that point to something questionable in what the authority is doing or about to do in the encounter. They say to

other participants: "Look at what's happening here. Something that is not

normal and unexceptionable is occurring." Context-setting acts identify or define what is wrong by applying an injustice frame to the encounter.

Gamson, Fireman, and Rytina examined this process in their thirty-three iterations of a fabricated encounter with an unjust authority. They found

that the majority of participants in all groups had adopted the injustice frame

by the end but they did so at different rates and with important consequences for their ultimate success.

Early attention-calling acts did not have a statistically significant relation- ship to later success but context-setting acts did. Three-fourths of the groups

in which such acts occurred by the middle of the encounter achieved collec-

tive resistance compared to one-third of those that had had no context-set- ting by this point. In general, those groups that had the earliest and most

complete reframing acts were most successful. 37

The Framing of News Events

Goffman was an inveterate news clipper, his books dotted with media items

that had caught his fancy. He occasionally turned his analytic attention to advertising. 38 But he paid little attention to the framing involved in the daily reporting of news.

Nevertheless, students of how the mass media shape political consciousness have increasingly turned to the concept of frame. Gaye Tuchman, in particu- lar, draws on Goffman in developing her analysis of news as a social construction. 39 The process of news construction that she presents involves a search by reporters and editors for frames with which to organize the

618

happenings they daily confront. Raw happenings are unorganized and must

be plucked from the stream of ongoing activity and given order and meaning.

In the process of framing, as Tuchman points out, a happening is "trans-

formed into an event and an event is transformed into a news story. ''4~

Journalists are taught to look for a story line. Epstein describes Reuven Frank's instructions to his staff at N BC: "Every news story should, without

any sacrifice of probity or responsibility, display the attributes of fiction, of

drama. ''41 Events can be cast into conflict stories with a more or less standard

plot: Two opposing sides confront each other with rising action and tension

building to a climax, followed by apparent resolution or denouement.

News frames are almost entirely implicit and taken for granted. They do not

appear to either journalists or audience as social constructions but as pri-

mary attributes of events that reporters are merely reflecting. News frames

make the world look natural. They determine what is selected, what is

excluded, what is emphasized. In short, news presents a packaged world? 2

In an earlier era, media frames were incidental to the success or failure of

challenging groups but this is no longer true. Much of the impact of any

collective action today depends on whether and how it is treated in the media.

Most social movement organizations are media-conscious. They participate

in a kind of dance with the media in which both partners are simultaneously

attracted and wary. And with good reason. The partners in this uneasy dance

are by no means equal. The movement needs the media far more than the

reverse.

For the media, social movements make good copy. They provide drama,

conflict, and action but they are only one source of news among many. Repetition reduces drama, and the media may quickly turn its attention to

other partners - right in the middle of the dance.

The media don't really depend on opposition movements, but the reverse is

not true. For opposition movements, media publicity serves as a kind of validation that they are having an impact, that what they are doing matters. "The whole world is watching!" chanted the demonstrators in the streets of

Chicago during the Democratic convention of 1968, as television cameras

photographed images of police clubbing them. To be the focus of the whole

world is to be taken seriously; it says that what one is doing is important and

makes a difference.

The problem, of course, is that the frame used by the media may have little to

619

do with the goals of the challenger and may undercut them. Yet this frame

defines the movement and its goals for potential supporters and with the

larger public. The media frame can transform the movement in the process.

Gitlin studied the interaction between the New Left movement of the 1960s and the media : 3 He traces how the media both contributed to its rise and

importance and simultaneously reduced, transformed, and undermined it.

To see this subtle and complicated process in action, he examined the shifting

frame used by the media in presenting Students for a Democratic Society

(SDS) and the distorting effects of media publicity on the internal leadership

structure of the movement.

By 1965, SDS had been in existence for five years and had some 1500

members spread in a few dozen chapters on campuses throughout the country. The media had ignored it, and there was little or no awareness of its

existence among the general public. During 1965 its fortunes changed dra-

matically. The media discovered it, and within a year its membership had

tripled. It became the cutting edge of a national student movement and a

household word for the general public - although not necessarily a polite one

in many households.

From the beginning to the end of 1965, the news frame for SDS changed.

Gitlin focuses on the coverage by the New York Times and CBS News,

demonstrating a dramatic shift. At the beginning of the year, the news frame expressed a certain amount of respect and detached sympathy. On 15 March

1965, the Times ran a long background piece, under the headline: "The Student Left Spurring Reform: New Activist Intelligentsia Is Rising on

Campuses." The story continued on page 26 under the headline, "The New Student Left: Movement Represents Serious Activists in Drive for Change."

The headlines suggest a frame: this is a movement of serious people, worthy

of respect. The article that followed suggested the same frame, using the movement's own preferred labels and language to express their goals. Gitlin

points to the subtle way in which frame is conveyed in the following passage

from this article:

They are mindful that their numbers are tiny in comparison w~th the total in the nation's colleges. Now. as before, the great majority of their fellow students are primarily interested m marriage, a home, and a job. 44

The words the)' are mindful are critical in the above passage, suggesting that these students are self-aware and realistic. Omit them, and the passage would suggest only that they were marginal and insignificant.

620

During the course of the year, the frame for SDS changed. Increasingly, discrediting themes began to emerge, until by the end of the year the

dominant news frame presented SDS as a group of dangerous extremists with questionable loyalty to the United States. The media were prompted by

officials in making this shift but they were not passive players in this drama.

Indeed, Gitlin's analysis suggests that officials were responding to the me- dia's news frame rather than the reverse.

Gitlin does not argue that the media invented the facts used to suggest the

unfavorable frame. But the technique is well illustrated by the Times' descrip-

tion in October 1965 of the SDS office in Chicago: "Civil rights and Left- wing posters adorn the walls along with some modern painting. One of the

posters, designed by Picasso, has a Communist hammer and sickle; it is signed by the Italian Communist Party. ''4~

The poster was indeed there. The description is accurate, but it suggests the

misleading news frame of Communist influence in SDS. In fact, the SDS

leadership had no sympathy with the Soviet Union, which was engaged in

conflict with the Italian Communist Party over the independent, nationalist

course being taken by the latter. As Gitlin puts it, "For SDS, hanging the Italian Picasso poster meant, in large part, expressing solidarity with the

dissidence boiling up within World Communism. ''46 Taken out of context, it

suggested instead that SDS operated under the symbol of the hammer and sickle, signifying a foreign-led, disloyal, extremist group.

SDS leaders made various efforts to influence their news frame, but with

limited success. Faced with a loose, decentralized organization that exercised

little control over its members, journalists could choose the people and the statements that fitted their preferred frame and ignore those that did not fit.

Conclusion

I don't claim that Goffman addressed the questions that animate political

sociologists. He was not interested in analyzing interaction to learn how it contributed to mobilization for collective action aimed at social change. He was not interested in changing political consciousness or in how the mass media and other social institutions make such change so difficult. But for those who are interested in such questions, he is worth heeding. His is an unanticipated bequest - from the cranky uncle who we always thought had no great love or admiration for our line of work.

I have tried to show how Goffman's arguments about the nature of the

621

i n t e r a c t i o n o r d e r a n d f l a m e ana lys i s c a n be app l i ed to inc rease o u r u n d e r -

s t a n d i n g o f m i c r o m o b i l i z a t i o n a n d pol i t ica l consc iousnes s . T h e he lp here is

c o n c r e t e a n d e m p i r i c a l , a i d i n g us in i n t e r p r e t i n g h i s to r i ca l cases a n d g u i d i n g

us in sys t ema t i c research .

But p e r h a p s G o f f m a n ' s m o s t e n d u r i n g legacy is in the m o r a l s t ance t h a t

p e r v a d e s his o b s e r v a t i o n s a b o u t soc ia l i n s t i t u t i ons . It goes b e y o n d ideo logy ,

to the sp i r i t of o u r i n t e l l ec tua l pu r su i t s . It is e l o q u e n t l y c a p t u r e d in w o r d s

wr i t t en a f t e r G o f f m a n ' s d e a t h by the poet , J o s e p h B r o d s k y

The surest defense against Evil is extreme ,ndtvidualism, ortgmahty of thmkmg, whimsl- cahty, even if you w,II - eccentrtclty. That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated, somethmg even a seasoned impostor couldn't be happy with .... Evil is a sucker for sohdity It always goes for big numbers, for confident granite, for ideological purity, for drilled armies and balanced sheets. 47

F o r G o f f m a n , it was a lesson he k n e w a n d lived.

NOTES

I Bennett M. Berger, "A Fan Letter on Erving Goffman," Dissent (Summer 1973), 361. 2 John Lofland, "Early Goffman: Style, Structure, Substance, Soul," in The Vtewfrom

Goffman. ed. Jason Ditton (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980), 47. 3 Ibtd. 4. Ervmg Goffman, Relattons m Pubhc: Mtcrostudtes of the Public Order (New York" Basic

Books, 1971), 288. 5 Erving Goffman, "'The Interaction Order," American Sociological Review 48 (February

1983), 1-17 Th,s presidential address to the American Sociological Association was wrttten a few months before his death.

6. L,llian Breslow Rubin, Worlds of Pain (New York: Basic Books, 1976), and Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb, The Hidden Injuries of Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1973)

7. See especially, Alvin Gouldner, The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, (New York: Avon Books, 1970), 378-90.

8. Goffman, "The Interaction Order," 2. 9. Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Orgamzation of Experience (New

York Harper and Row, 1974), 14. 10. Goffman, "Interaction Order," 17. 1 I. Erving Goffman, Encounters. Two Studtes m the Soctology oflnteractton (Indianapolis:

Bobbs-Merrill, 1961). 12. Randall Collins, "On the M,crofoundatlons of Macrosociology," American Journal of

Soctology 86 (March, 1981): 984 1013. 13. For analyses of this intricate dance, see Todd Gitlin, "Spotlights and Shadows: Television

and the Culture of Pohtlcs," College English (April, 1977), and The Whole Worm Is l#'at~ hmg (Berkeley: Univers,ty of California Press, 1980), and Harvey Molotch, "Media and Movements," in The Dynamics of Social Movements, eds. Mayer N Zald and John D. McCarthy (Cambridge, Mass: Winthrop, 1979)

14. Goffman, "Interaction Order," 10. 15. Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolutton(Reading, Mass' Addison-Wesley, 1978). 16. This is a continuing thread in Goffman's work, beginning with his classic article "On

Face-Work. An Analysis of Ritual Elements m Social Interaction," Psychlatrr 18 (August 1955): 213 31.

17. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Seif m Everyday Life (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1959), 185.

18. See especially his essay by this name, developing the concept, in Encounters. 19 Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority (New York: Harper and Row, 1974). For

Goffman's analysis of the nature of fabrications and experimental hoaxes see his Frame Analysis.

622

20. Ibid., 62. By way of contrast, Milgram ran a varmtton wtthout the trappings ot presug~ous Yale Umvers~ty. He created a fictitious organization called Research Associates of Brtdge- port, which conducted the experiment m rented offices m a commercial building m the downtown shoppmg area of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Milgram found that, wtthout the legitimacy of Yale University, the compliance rate dropped to 48 percent, stdl considerably higher than the rate at Yale when the experimenter wasn't present in the same room.

21 William A. Gamson, Bruce Fireman, and Steven Rytina, Encounters with Unjust A uthor- tt),(Homewood, Ill.: The Dorsey Press, 1982). Much of the earher dLscussion of micromo- bilization draws on this book.

22. lbtd., 119. 23. See Frame Analysts. 24. Gamson, Fireman, and Rytma, Encounters, 116. 25. Murray Edelman, Polittcs as Symbolic Action (Chicago: Markham, 1971), 7. 26. Antomo Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, eds. Quintln Hoare and Geof-

frey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 381. 27. For a useful analysis of Gramscfs text, see Perry Anderson, "The Antmomtes of Antomo

Gramsci" New Left Review 100 (November, 1976-January, 1977), 5 78. 28. Gramsci, Prtson Notebooks, 424. 29. Todd Gitlin, "Prime Time Ideology: The Hegemontc Process m Television Entertain-

ment," Socml Problems 26 (February, 1979), 252. 30. Goffman, Frame Analysis, 21 and 10- I I. 31. Steve Crook and Laurie Taylor, "Goffman's Version of Reality," m Ditton Vtewfrom

Goffman, 246. 32. Goffman, Frame Ana#'sts, 247. 33. Goffman, Encounters, 133. 34. Ralph Turner and Lewis Killian, Collecttve Behavtor (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-

Hall, 1972), 259 and 265. 35. Barrmgton Moore, Jr. lnjusttce: The Soctal Bases of Obedtence and Revolt (White Plains,

N.Y.: Sharpe, 1978), 88. 36. Max Heirich, The Spiral of ConflJct: Berkeley, 1964 (New York: Columbta University

Press, 1971). 37. Encounters, Chapter 10: "Adopting an Injustice Frame." 38. See especially Erving Goffman, Gender Adverttsements (New York: Harper and Row,

1979). 39. Gaye Tuchman, Making News: A Study m the Construction of Reahty (New York: The

Free Press, 1978) 40. Ibid., 193. 41. Edward J. Epstein, News from Nowhere (New York: Random House, 1973), 241. 42. The argument here grows out of my current research on the role of the mass media in the

framing of specific issues: affirmative action, troubled industry, nuclear power, and Arab-lsraeli conflict. It is presented in more detail in William A. Gamson, WHA 7"S NEWS: A Game Stmulatton of TV News, (New York: The Free Press, 1984), particularly Chapter Seven. "Media Frames," and m William A. Gamson and Kathryn Lasch, "The Pohtical Culture of Social Welfare Policy," in Evaluating the Welfare State: Social and Political Perspectives, eds. Shimon E. Spiro and Ephraim Yuchtman-Yaar (New York. Academic Press, 1983): 397 415.

43. Gltlin, The Whole World Is Watching (see footnote 13). 44. Ibid., 36. 45. Ibid, 102. 46. Ibid., 103. 47 Joseph Brodsky, "A Commencement Address," New York Review of Books, 16 August

1984, 7.

Theory and Society 14 (1985) 605-622 0304-2421/85/$03.30 �9 1985 Elsevier Science Publishers B V.