Any group of persons – prisoners, primitives, pilots, or patients – develop a life of their own that becomes meaningful, reasonable and normal once you get close to it.
Erving GoffmanRead
Approved attributes and their relation to face make every man his own jailer; this is a fundamental social constraint even though each man may like his cell.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Societal norms can restrict individual freedom, yet some may find comfort within these constraints.
In this quote, Erving Goffman emphasizes how societal expectations and approved attributes can serve as self-imposed limitations, akin to being a jailer to oneself. While these constraints may be universally applicable, individuals might also find solace and identity within their 'cells,' suggesting a complex relationship between societal norms and personal comfort.
Themes
SocietyFreedomConstraintsIdentityNorms
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about personal growth, one might say, 'As Goffman suggests, we are all our own jailers, conditioned by society, yet we can choose to redefine our cells.'
More from Erving Goffman
All quotes →And to the degree that the individual maintains a show before others that he himself does not believe, he can come to experience a special kind of alienation from self and a special kind of wariness of others.
Erving GoffmanRead
When a stranger comes into our presence, then, first appearances are likely to enable us to anticipate his category and attributes, his 'social identity' - to use a term that is better than 'social status' because personal attributes such as 'honesty' are involved, as well as structural ones, like 'occupation.'
Erving GoffmanRead
I assume that the proper study of interaction is not the individual and his psychology, but rather the syntactical relations among the acts of different persons mutually present to another.
Erving GoffmanRead
By definition, of course, we believe the person with a stigma is not quite human. On this assumption we exercise varieties of discrimination, through which we effectively, if often unthinkingly, reduce his life chances.
Erving GoffmanRead
Our sense of being a person can come from being drawn into a wide social unit; our sense of selfhood can arise through the little ways in which we resist the pull. Our status is backed by the solid buildings of the world, while our sense of personal identity often resides in the cracks
Erving GoffmanRead
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