Interactionism - Performance of Gender

An important influence on the interpretative research methods used in the current study is symbolic interactionist theory, concerned with how human interaction is mediated by the use of symbols and signification, by interpretation, or by ascertaining the meaning of actions during social interaction. The founding work of Mead in symbolic interactionism concerning identity formation was developed as a sociological methodology by among others Goffman (1959), Blumer (1969), Plummer (1995), and Ekins (1997). The influence includes the awareness that the notion of the self emerges through social interaction, the practice requires the researcher to ‘catch the process of interpretation through which actors construct their actions’ (Blumer, 1962:188). The methods of analysis are rooted in the awareness that the individual is continually interpreting the symbolic meaning of the environment and the actions of others, human action is based on this imputed meaning derived from social interaction and modified

Constructing identities, reclaiming subjectivities, reconstructing selves: an interpretative study of transgender practices Scotland

60 through an interpretative process, and the position of the researcher is to decode the process of interpretation through which actors construct their actions (Blumer 1969:17).

Symbolic interactionist theory can be distilled into three premises. First the basis for human action is the attribution of meaning, produced out of social interaction, negotiated through the interpretative process of symbolic language. Second the framing of the concept of self through social interaction is a creative process and not merely the replay of socialised roles. Third human identity is self-reflexive, individuals can be the object of their own attention, monitor their own action, and strategically take the possible actions of others into account when choosing how to act. In interaction theory, society is viewed as networks of interaction, created and altered through the action of individuals in social groups, and the social process as a complex pattern of socially constructed meanings. To describe these as ‘structures’ is to reify and distort the importance of individual action (Blumer,1969). Nevertheless, the current study does not advocate the total abandonment of structural explanations for social phenomena.

The work of Erving Goffman (1959) built on symbolic interaction theory but added a new dimension with the idea that individuals attempt to control or manipulate the image others have of them. Using an approach he labelled ‘dramaturgical’, Goffman posited a connection between daily human actions and theatrical performances, arguing that in social interaction there is a front stage where positive aspects of the self and desired impressions are displayed; and there is a back stage where individuals can be themselves and discard their role or identity in society. The actor's aim is to sustain coherence, stick to scripts, adjust to different settings, and present a convincing dramatic performance, or in social situations, a convincing image which he termed ‘the social presentation of the self’ (Goffman, 1959).

Goffman’s theories were developed out of empirical observation of the implicit social rules governing individuals and their self-presentation in face-to-face interaction.

Although he emphasised the analysis of social structure as the business of sociology, his research interest was chiefly in the microsocial world and the realities of impression management, thus particularly useful for the analysis of qualitative data. His sociological studies of social institutions from a dramaturgical perspective examined how the acting of roles and social performances successfully promote social survival.

Constructing identities, reclaiming subjectivities, reconstructing selves: an interpretative study of transgender practices Scotland

61 Goffman used the models of theatre, game, and ritual throughout his work to examine how individuals construct their sense of ‘self’ - which is a product of performances staged in social life, both constrained by ritual but open to agency in the sense it can be an impression manipulated by the performers. The self is a dramatic effect (not a cause) of a series of facades erected before different audiences, arising from collaborative interaction with other actors on the social stage. In the final analysis the self is a social construction, and the fundamental issue for Goffman is whether the performance of self will be ‘credited or discredited’ and by whom. The locus classicus of Goffman’s concept of ‘self-as-character’ (the socialized self) is defined in the following quote:

A correctly staged and performed character leads the audience to impute a self to a performed character, but this imputation – this self- is a product of a scene that comes off, and is not a cause of it. The self, then, as a performed character, is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, mature, and to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented, and the characteristic issue, the crucial concern, is whether it will be credited or discredited (Goffman, 1959:252-254).

Most significant in Goffman’s development of interactionist theory is that he transforms the concept of the self from a cause to a product of action. Personal and social identities are not so much determined by socialisation, as the means by which individuals produce and identify themselves to others through performance. And the success of the production is reliant on the willing participation of the audience, and whether they believe the performance or not (Goffman, 1959:252). Interaction involves a continuous and reciprocal negotiation over the definition of a situation which becomes a joint construction, where the prevailing views are those of the most powerful within any given field. For example in the area of sex and gender attribution, or those who determine the employment opportunities of gender-variant people.

Goffman’s theory of the self as produced through presentation and performance during social interaction, must have influenced Judith Butler’s later development of the theory of the ongoing reiterated constitution of the gendered subject through performativity. A theory of gender as a production of collective performance is presented by Goffman in two journal articles specifically dedicated to theorising gender: ‘Gender Displays’

(1976) and ‘The Arrangement Between the Sexes’ (1977). Predating Butler’s work on gender performativity, he argued that, rather than being a product of human ‘essential sexual nature’ that can be interpreted as ‘natural signs given off’ of masculinity or

Constructing identities, reclaiming subjectivities, reconstructing selves: an interpretative study of transgender practices Scotland

62 femininity, gender is something that is ‘done’, a performance produced for an audience.

It is an interactional portrayal of what individuals want to convey to others, using the human ability to produce and recognize masculine and feminine ‘gender displays’

(Goffman, 1976: 76). Goffman formulates his concept of gender display as follows: ‘If gender be defined as the culturally established correlates of sex (whether in consequence of biology or learning), then gender display refers to conventionalized portrayals of these correlates’ (Goffman, 1976: 69). For Goffman ‘gender is a socially scripted dramatization of the culture's idealization of feminine and masculine natures, played for an audience that is well schooled in the presentational idiom’ (West &

Zimmerman, 1987:130).