Comments on Huizinga (#2)

Huizinga (p. 19) quotes Plato:

Life must be lived as a play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods, and defend himself against his enemies and win in the contest.

Reading this quote in an essay on "The Play-Element in Culture" instantly reminded me of Goffman's work on frame analysis and his extension of Mead's symbolic interactionism by likening social relations to dramaturgy. Thus in explaining Goffman's thesis, Keesing (1974) sounded much like Plato when he wrote that culture consists not only of what individuals know and think and feel, but also each person's

theory of what his fellows know, believe, and mean, his theory of the code being followed, the game being played, in the society into which he was born. . . . It is this theory to which a native actor refers in interpreting the unfamiliar or the ambiguous, in interacting with strangers (or supernaturals) . . . and with which he creates the stage on which the games of life are played (p. 89).

In a paper (Ward, 2008) that I just had published for the Summer 2008 issue of the Journal of Holocaust Studies, I applied symbolic interactionism and frame analysis as a framework for explaining the willingness of ordinary Germans (and their non-German collaborators) to be conscripted for duty in the machinery of genocide:

Mead, who is accounted along with Dewey and Peirce as a leading early twentieth-century pragmatist, wrote prolifically but never published any systematic treatise of his ideas. After his death, students assembled his notes and published them as Mind, Self and Society (1934). The term "symbolic interactionism" was coined posthumously in 1937 by Blumer. According to Blumer (1969, p. 2), symbolic interactionism has three core concepts that revolve around meaning, language, and thought: (1) "Human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that the things have for them." (2) "The meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with one's fellows." (3) "These meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretative process used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters."

From these three principles arise Mead's (1934, pp. xxiii-xxvi) view of the self and of the community. A consciousness of self cannot exist without community since talk is the precondition for the development a self-concept. The self, then, is a function of language. Mead regarded as unique the human ability to take the role of the other, so that symbolic interactionists believe individuals socially construct their identities by imagining how they must appear to others. In symbolic interactionist terminology this is the looking-glass self. Mead believed that construction of the self is ongoing as the "I," which represents spontaneity and creativity, symbolically (i.e., via language) interacts with the "me" of the looking-glass self. Individuals also make composite mental images of their communities—called the generalized other—in order to align their choices with the expectations of their societies.

Goffman’s writings extend the concepts of Mead's symbolic interactionism by proposing the metaphor of social interaction as a dramaturgical performance. "The perspective . . . is that of the theatrical performance; the principles derived are dramaturgical ones" so that Goffman (1971, p. xi) studied the ways in which an individual "presents himself and his activity to others, the ways in which he guides and controls the impressions they form of him, and the kinds of things he may and may not do while sustaining his performance before them." Thus, in his analysis, "the part one individual plays is tailored to the parts played by the others present, and yet these others also constitute the audience." Emerson (1994) explains how, for example, embarrasment at a gynecological examination is overcome as the participants enact their respective roles—an illustration that carries ominous import for comprehending the Nazi euthanasia program and death camp "selections."

Perhaps Goffman's (see especially 1974) best known contribution to social psychology is his concept of frame analysis—a process by which (1) social actors confront situations, (2) make (metaphorical) connections to recognisable experiences, and (3) build layered structures called keys that comprise sets of conventions by which actors can (4) stage their responses and thereby negotiate their identities with others. Thus the activity of flirting, as the primary framework for an interaction, becomes a social construction that is layered on the frame space of a dance performance, which itself is layered on the kinds of music that might be played. "Framing permeates the level of ordinary social action. We live in a world of social relationships, in which roles are acted out, with various keyings and deceptions played upon them. This is the core of practical activities and occupations, of power and stratification" (Collins, 1988, p. 61).

What does my crossing of Huizinga with Mead and Goffman suggest for our study of serious games this semester? In my view:

1. Mead's concepts of the "I" and the "me," and of "taking the role of the (generalized) other" to construct a "looking-glass self," may provide a theory for understanding how inhabitants of virtual worlds construct their virtual identities

2. Goffman's theory of frame analysis may offer an approach to understanding how gamers, well, "play the game" at the level of virtual interaction.

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References

Blumer, H. (1937). Social psychology. In E. P. Schmidt (Ed.), Man and society: A substantive introduction to the social science. New York: Prentice-Hall, pp. 144-198.

Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic interactionism: Perspective and method. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Collins, R. Theoretical continuities in Goffman's work. In P. Drew and A. Wootton (Eds.), Erving Goffman: Exploring the interaction order. Boston: Northeastern University Press.

Emerson, J. P. (1994). Behavior in private places: Sustaining definitions of reality in gynecological examinations. In J. Brien & P. Kollock (Eds.), The production of reality. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge, pp. 189-202.

Goffman, E. (1971). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday. Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. New York: Harper & Row.

Keesing, R. M. (1974). Theories of Culture. Annual Review of Anthropology, 3, 73-97.

Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Ward, M., Sr. (2008). The banality of culture? Reassessing the social science of the Goldhagen Thesis on its own terms. Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History, 14(1), 1-34.