Social Interaction
and
Everyday Life
Why study daily life?
1. Our day-to-day routines, with their almost
constant interactions with others, give structure
and form to what we do; we can learn a great
deal about ourselves as social beings, and about
social life itself, from studying them.
2. The study of everyday life reveals to us how
humans can act creatively to shape reality.
3. Studying social interaction in everyday life sheds
light on larger social systems and institutions.
CIVIL INATTENTION
Erving Goffman (1967, 1971):
Civil inattention
• Civil inatention ≠ Ignoring another person
• Each individual indicates recognition of the
other person's presence, but avoids any
gesture that might be taken as too intrusive.
• When civil inattention occurs among passing
strangers, an individual implies to another
person that she has no reason to suspect his
intentions, be hostile to him or in any other
way specifically avoid him.
NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION
The human face,
gestures and emotions
• Norbert Elias (1897-1990) argued that studying
the face shows how human beings, like all other
species, have naturally evolved over a long period
of time, but also that this biological basis has
been overlain with cultural features in the
process of social development.
• We use facial expressions and bodily gestures of
other people to add to what they communicate
verbally and to check how far they are sincere in
what they say and whether we can trust them.
Gender and the body
• Because interaction are shaped by the larger
social context, it is not surprising that both
verbal and nonverbal communication may be
perceived and expressed differently by men
and women.
• Understandings of gender and gender roles
are greatly influenced by social factors and are
related broadly to issues of power and status
in society.
Embodiment and identities
• Gender identity is both socially created and
'embodied'.
• Richard Jenkins (1996) says that identity is, 'our
understanding of who we are and of who other
people are', and of course this also includes their
understanding of themselves and of us too.
• Primary and secondary identities
• Identities mark out similarities and differences in
social interactions.
THE SOCIAL RULES OF INTERACTION
• Shared understandings
• Interactional vandalism
• Response cries
FACE, BODY AND SPEECH IN
INTERACTION
Encounters
• Unfocused interaction
• Focused interaction
Impression management
• Roles are socially defined expectations that a
person in a given status, or social position,
follows.
• A person has many statuses at the same time.
Sociologists refer to the group of statuses that
you occupy as a status set.
Ascribed and achieve status
• An ascribed status is one that you are
'assigned' based on biological factors such as
race, sex or age. Thus, your ascribed statuses
could be 'white', 'female' and 'teenager'.
• An achieved status is one that is earned
through an individual's own effort. Your
achieved statuses could be 'graduate',
'athlete' or 'employee'.
Personal space
•
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•
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Intimate distance
Personal distance
Social distance
Public distance
INTERACTION IN TIME AND
SPACE
Clock time
• In modern societies, the zoning of our activities is
strongly influenced by clock time.
• Without clocks and the precise timing of
activities, and thereby their coordination across
space, industrialized societies could not exist.
• The measuring of time by clocks is today
standardized across the globe, making possible
the complex international transport systems and
communications we now depend on.
The ordering of space and time
• The Internet is example of how closely forms of
social life are bound up with our control of space
and time.
• The Internet makes it possible for us to interact
with people we never see or meet, in any corner
of the world.
• Such technological change 'rearranges' space - we
can interact with anyone without moving from
our chair. It also alters our experience of time,
because communication on the electronic
highway is almost immediate.
Literature
• Giddens, Anthony (2009). Sociology.
Cambridge, Police Network, pp. 248-279.