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situation. In such places, the
inmates can create new
currencies—for example, bargaining
with tobacco or sweets—or develop
particular ways of communicating
through a creative use of language.
Some may try to maintain a
defiant feeling of independence by
discreetly urinating on a radiator,
which will evaporate any signs
of misbehavior, rather than ask
for permission to go to the toilet.
Institutions will often turn a blind
eye to such relatively minor
indiscretions in the knowledge
that these keep the inmate
tractable for the most part.
Not everyone is successfully
socialized into the norms of “total
institutions.” Although Goffman
does not focus in detail on this,
some inmates may retain a spirit of
resistance and rebel by sabotaging
the plumbing, organizing mass
refusal of particular foods, riots,
or even arranging for a member
of staff to have “an accident.”
Self-serving institutions
Despite writing in a cool, detached
tone, Goffman has been accused by
some of over-identifying with the
patients he observed. Others, such
as the US sociologist and
criminologist John Irwin, have
suggested Goffman’s study was a
little narrow in its focus and was
limited by only observing inmates
while in the institution.
Nevertheless, in seeing “total
institutions” as places that, rather
than operating in the best interest
of inmates, effectively dehumanize
them, Goffman’s work has been
cited as precipitating changes
in the treatment of mental health
patients. He lays bare the ways
in which “total institutions” are
self-legitimatizing organizations—
through defining their goals they
legitimate their activity, which
in turn legitimates the measures
they take to meet those goals.
His work is also important for
the sociology of identity because of
his claims that names, possessions,
and clothes are symbols imbued
with meaning and importance for
identity formation. He highlights
the clear gap between officially
imposed definitions of the self
and the self that the individual
seeks to present.
Goffman’s studies remain of
social relevance. Despite the fact
that, in Britain, many mental healthTHE ROLE OF INSTITUTIONS
facilities have been closed from the
1960s onward as part of a process
of deinstitutionalization in favor
of domiciled (“in the community”)
care, a significant proportion of
people will still end their days in an
institution. An aging population
means that many citizens may be
unable to live independent lives
and therefore have to spend time
in nursing or care homes, which
can exhibit some of the negative
hallmarks of “total institutions.” ■A crisis of incarceration
John Keith Irwin had a different
kind of first-hand experience of a
“total institution” than Goffman:
in 1952, he served five years in
prison for robbery. He used that
time to study and later gained a
PhD in sociology, becoming an
expert in the US prison system
and the forms of social control
demanded by society.
Based on his own insight and
interviews with prisoners, Irwin
wrote The Jail: Managing the
Underclass in American Society
(1985), which he dedicated toErving Goffman. He argued that
city jails, which confine those
arrested but not yet charged
or convicted, degrade and
dehumanize people. Rather than
controlling the disreputable,
they indoctrinate inmates into
particular ways of behaving.
He claims that these jails
are designed to manage the
“underclass,” or “rabble,” who
are seen as threatening middle-
class values. The jails are
perceived to be holding-tanks
for petty thieves, addicts, and
sexual nonconformists, which
confirms their outsider status.US city jails confine those arrested
but not yet charged or convicted. It
is argued such institutions expose
normal citizens to inmate culture.One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,
a novel by Ken Kesey, is set in an
asylum. It deals with patients adopting
coping strategies, and how institutions
crush challenges to their authority.