Sumblog #9

We talked about several different concepts in class Tuesday that I want to discuss in this blog. It mainly had to do with out presentation of self. I learned that there's a difference between status and role; status bbeing a particular social position such as a professor, your age, or class, and a role is the expected behavior of a particular status. I thought of the different social positions I hold as a student, friend, sister, and daughter, just to name a few, and how much my roles vary within each position. The people you are around in each status expect different roles from you, and in my life at least, affects how I may act in each position. This leads me to mention the power of audience, and how their reactions can dictate how we act. It's called a self-label when you have an identity that you present to others in an attempt to manage their impression of him or her. You have the power to present yourself how you want to. In saying this, we are kind of relating life and the world to a stage and acting. This refers to the concept of dramaturgy, where we put on many different plays or dramas in our life. We can say that almost every interaction is a new stage, what we say is the script, what we wear are our costumes, and we have different props within each setting. Role distance plays a part in this, because there must be a relationship between the self label and role. It all needs to align to be happy or normal. One thing we talked about that can get in the way from a self label to a role is a stigma. A stigma is an inferiority of a person or group etc. It can be a physical defect, a character defect, or an "unacceptable group."

I thought this was an interesting way to look at the self and relationships with others. I've read about dramaturgy before and think in some ways it's accurate, but I also think looking at the world as a sort of stage is almost too simplistic. I don't see myself as always "acting" depending on who I'm around. I take different things into account but stay typically as true to myself as possible, just possibly with a few extra manners thrown in here and there depending on who I'm talking to. I still understand the concept though and how in some ways it makes sense. The concept of a stigma is a bit frustrating to me because it seems wrong to label people as inferior and can't understand who has the power to determine what those inferior qualities might be. It just shows the true power of your "audience" and the people around you and the impact they might have on others.

Below is a youtube clip describing dramaturgical theory and Goffmann which explains the concepts easily and completely. Further down is an image of what different labels and stigmas may be in our society that the audience can put on people. Negative ones such as this can strongly affect a person in negative ways.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iubtmGFJOV0