So far in this chapter I have positioned myself as epistemologically a social constructionist interested in the consequences of the negotiation of meaning around emotion in the workplace for parliamentarians as workers. What is important from a sociological position is the meaning that language and social interaction brings to that
world (Crossley, 1998), and how the meanings given to the world are negotiated through language as a cultural resource of understandings. Epistemological, ontological and theoretical perspectives all influence research decisions, making each a necessary consideration for the sociologist (Crotty, 1998, p. 3). My theoretical perspective is informed by symbolic interactionism. The epistemological perspective I take in this thesis is in keeping with the central tenets of social constructionism as outlined by Burr (2003). Ontologically, I acknowledge the ‘lived’ experience of emotion (Bendelow & Williams, 1998), at the same time as I employ a constructionist perspective to understanding how it is that parliamentarians as social actors negotiate the meaning of emotion in their workplace. As such, the emphasis in this thesis falls upon the social construction of meaning. This is an interest shared by those who research emotion from a critical realist perspective.
Symbolic interactionism’s position on the self was informed by and developed through the work of Mead (1934), Cooley (1964), and Goffman (1959) all of whom conceptualised the self as inherently a social ‘phenomenon’. In this part of the chapter, I outline key characteristics of symbolic interactionism and its perspective on how the self is understood. I then introduce the concepts of identity and role that have been of interest to symbolic interactionism before concluding this section with a discussion of work on socialisation to occupational identities that has significance for this thesis.
Symbolic interaction
In common with other social constructionist perspectives, symbolic interaction takes a contingent perspective on language, culture and the self. Symbolic interactionism understands meaning as negotiated through social interaction, a process known as ‘the definition of the situation’ (Blumer, 1986, p. 2). The definition of a situation, or the labelling of an action as deviant, is negotiable and contestable rather than related to inherent nature. One of the concepts that developed from the notion that the definition of the situation was a social production was labelling theory. Labelling theory holds that deviance was not within the nature of the act nor even in the transgression of societal norms; rather, deviance was whatever could be so defined and defended (Becker, 1963). Social acceptance of a particular definition of a situation imbued the definition with its power. The significance of labelling theory is that if we apply it to emotion the suggestion is that no emotion, in and of itself, is necessarily good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, unless its definition is culturally and linguistically negotiated to
give it that meaning. The extension of labelling theory’s proposition could be used to explain differences between cultures in the ascription of meaning to what are ostensibly similar ‘emotions’ (Lutz,1982; Lutz & Abu-Lughod,1990).
The interactionist interest in the social processes through which meaning is negotiated has lead to an understanding of the observation of human interaction as an important aspect of sociological research. Instead of using quantitative methods to analyse something called ‘attitudes’ or ‘beliefs’, symbolic interactionism was interested in qualitative methods for exploring participants’ meaning-making in everyday social life. A key proponent of the approach asserted that
the term ‘symbolic interaction refers … to the peculiar and distinctive character of interaction as it takes place between human beings. The peculiarity consists in the fact that human beings interpret or ‘define’ each other’s actions instead of merely reacting to each other’s actions. Their ‘response’ is not made directly to the actions of one another but instead is based on the meaning which they attach to such actions. Thus human interaction is mediated by the use of symbols, by interpretation, or by ascertaining the meaning of another’s actions (Blumer, 1986, p. 79).
Blumer thus highlighted the importance of the social negotiation to definitions and interpretations of social actions.
The symbolic interactionist perspective not only shares the central tenets of social constructionism but also some of the tenets of postmodernism. It shares with the postmodernist perspective the position that knowledge is relative, language is situated and that language shapes rather than reflects (Hewitt, 2003, p. 26-27). However, an important difference between the symbolic interactionist and postmodern theoretical perspectives is the vision of the subject or self. Postmodernism constitutes the self as a product of discourse. In contrast to postmodernist perspectives, symbolic interactionism
argues that the self is an acting subject …[as well as] an active and creative constructor of discourse (italics in original) (Hewitt, 2003, p. 27).
This understanding of an active agent that is not only produced through discourse but is also an active agent in the generation of discourse establishes symbolic interactionism as a theoretical perspective that takes the self to be something constituted through social interaction as well as being a self that has agency.
The socially negotiated self
The symbolic interactionist perspective rests on a model of the social actor informed by the work of Mead (1934), Cooley (1964) and Goffman (1959). Each of these theorists contributes to the theoretical approach I take to understanding the social interactions of parliamentarian workers. However, it is Goffman’s notion that a central aspect of all social interaction is the presentation of self that most significantly informs my analysis of parliamentarians’ workplace activities (Goffman, 1959). While Cooley highlights the importance of the self as a product of ‘imaginative thought’ (Cooley, 1964) and Mead establishes the importance of reflexivity to the self, it is Goffman’s work on understanding self as a social performance that provides the over-arching conceptual framework through which parliamentarians’ actions are analysed.
Taking first the work of Cooley, the symbolic interactionist perspective contributes to an understanding of emotion and the self because of the significant connection he was able to draw between the two (Cooley, 1964). Cooley’s concept of the self rejects modernist or objectivist approaches to research on the self.
I do not see how any one can hold that we know persons directly except as imaginative ideas in the mind … I conclude, therefore, that the imaginations which people have of one another are the solid facts of society and that to observe and interpret these must be a chief aim of sociology (Cooley, 1964, p. 119).
Cooley’s conceptualisation of the ‘looking glass self’, or what he calls the ‘self-idea’ involves
the imagination of our appearance to the other person; the imagination of his judgement of that appearance, and some sort of self-feeling, such as pride or mortification (Cooley, 1964, p. 184).
The second element of this self-idea is crucial to Cooley’s theory. It is the self’s imagination of its appearance in the mind of the other that evokes self-feeling.
The thing that moves us to pride or shame is not the mere mechanical reflection of ourselves, but an imputed sentiment, the imagined effect of this reflection upon another’s mind (Cooley, 1964, p. 184).
Thus, Cooley drew attention to the need to study self (and through their interconnection, also the feelings of self) through the understandings that were a part of people’s ‘imaginations’ and thoughts.
Like Cooley, Mead’s concept of the self involved conceptualising the self as something that was understood through language and meaning. Where Cooley focused on the way that feeling lent a person a sense of self, Mead developed understanding of the way the self was a social product, created through interactions with others beginning in childhood socialisation (Mead, 1934). Mead argued for an understanding of the self based on his observation that an infant did not appear to be born with a sense of ‘self’ but to learn in time that it was not coterminous with its caregivers. Initially, the infant was only an ‘I’. When a child was able to recognise itself as an object, the child developed a ‘Me’. Put another way, the ‘I’ is an acting person; the ‘Me’ is a reflection of the self from the perspective of another.
Mead emphasised the importance of children’s socialisation experiences at play (Mead, 1934). By learning to be ‘mother’ and ‘father’ or ‘doctor’ and ‘patient’, a child learns about the adoption of roles9
9 The term role was employed by Cooley (1964) and Mead (1934), but I do not use the term in relation to
my own research. The reason for this will be made explicit later in this chapter.
(Cooley, 1964; Mead, 1934). Through games, children extend their understanding of taking a role to understanding the indeterminacy of role. That is, they may be one thing one moment but they must be able to imagine who they are from another’s point of view as well as be prepared to take up being another thing in another moment (Mead, 1934, p. 159). Mead used the child playing a game of ball as an example. The child without the ball must first recognise herself as the ‘catcher’ and the other as the ‘thrower’. Once she holds the ball, the roles reverse. Mead used the notions of role play and game play to explain the process through which children learn to be a self that will later be able to reflect back on itself by internalising the view of themselves from the role of the ‘generalised other’, or society. In order for social interaction to be enacted in a coordinated way, each person is required to have the capability of seeing themselves from the position of another and to imagine how that other could potentially interpret a given action and how the other self might then be expected to respond to that action (Mead, 1934).
Both Mead and Cooley had a conception of the self as something that required a reflective process, but Cooley paid explicit attention to the role of feeling in perceptions of the self (Cooley, 1964, pp. 170-176). Cooley argued that feeling was not inherently more important than other aspects of self but that feeling was what actors understood as a ‘decisive sign’ or ‘proof’ of their own existence (Cooley, 1964, p. 170).
‘I’ does not only refer “to the body of the person speaking. It refers chiefly [though not solely] to opinions, purposes, desires, claims, and the like” (Cooley, 1964, p. 176).
Cooley’s notion of the self therefore takes more explicit notice of the part feeling plays in understandings of the self, while Mead’s notion of the generalised other explains the need for an internalised notion of the other that can only be acquired through socialisation. Both theorists’ works are therefore important to the thesis argument that parliamentarians acquire a sense of self through learning to ‘feel’ the way a parliamentarian ‘ought’ to feel, but that this learning process necessarily involves their interpretation of the generalised other, or ‘society’s’, expectations.
Goffman’s theorising on the self
Goffman’s concept of the dramaturgical self relied on the stage as a metaphor for life where selves as actors engaged in the “enactment of rights and duties attached to … status” (Goffman, 1959, p. 16). An actor’s performance involved the presentation of a particular self that was dependent on the context and relationships that the actor at any one time might find themselves acting within. In analysing parliamentarians’ emotional labour at work, I focus in the data chapters on the means available to the parliamentarian to present a particular self, one that is dependent on the immediate context, through the management of emotion. Goffman described social presentations where a person was conscious of the performative quality of their behaviour as ‘front stage’ behaviour as opposed to the preparations for the performance that occurred in a ‘back stage’ region. Back stage was a place where the performance was assembled “where the suppressed facts [kept discrete from the front stage region] make an appearance” (Goffman, 1959, p. 114). The important point here is that all presentations of self are dependent on the context in which they are made and involve both front and back stage regions.
The performance given in face to face interaction is not only for the benefit of the audience but also for the benefit of the self (Goffman, 1959, p. 17). During social interaction, Goffman argued that actors seek out information on selves in order to know how to define the situations they find themselves in, as well as to understand the other selves who are party to the situation. Definitions of situations are not automatic and need to be achieved through social interaction. Definitions require knowing what roles are being played and by whom. Without a shared definition of the situation, social
interaction is too complex and confusing and would require much in the way of negotiation.
Given the vastness of the potential social exchange in the world, actors tend to respond to one another on the basis of information gleaned in the social interaction about another’s status and their identity memberships (Goffman, 1959). Goffman argued that this tendency to respond to people based on their identification as a particular ‘type’ of person (e.g., gender, age, ethnicity, status, etc.) involved some assumptions.
… Any projected definition of the situation also has a distinctive moral character … Society is organised on the principles that an individual who possesses certain social characteristics has a moral right to expect that others will value and treat him in an appropriate way … [and] an individual who implicitly or explicitly signifies that he has certain social characteristics ought in fact to be what he claims he is (Goffman, 1959, p. 24).
Goffman argued that it was through this sense of entitlement to a particular performance that identity develops a ‘moral’ aspect to its performance.
Using the psychiatric hospital as an exemplar, Goffman’s original study of the total institution focused on institutional culture and its consequences for a person’s experience of the self (Goffman, 1961, p. 11). Goffman argued that a total institution is one where the culture of the place demands a transformation of self from those who enter as ‘inmates’. On entry to the institution, the old self is necessarily displaced as the entrant takes up the practices, beliefs and understandings common to the new social group they find themselves in. This environment restricts the person’s access to situations where prior identities were practiced and the institutional identity comes to define the self in a singular and encompassing manner (Goffman, 1961).
Through the process of admission to the institution, and the mortification, or loss, of the old self, the institutional ‘inmate’ comes to understand themselves and their relations with others in markedly different ways (Lee & Newby, 1983, pp. 334-336). Adaptation to the new expectations for a self, now defined through membership in the institution, precedes possible release from the presentation demands, although for the groups Goffman focused on, release was not to be assumed.10
10 Consideration of Goffman’s theorising on the effects of institutional membership on the self will be
further elaborated in Chapter Five. In that chapter, I demonstrate that Goffman’s theorising on institutionalised experiences of self helps to explain what happens when parliamentarians enter their
the present discussion is that Goffman argued group membership has an effect on the ‘type’ of self that is negotiated. Group membership is understood to indicate some shared characteristics amongst group members and leads to social expectations for group members to act similarly in certain respects.
In each case, Mead (1934), Cooley (1964) and Goffman (1959) conceptualise the self as something other than the result of particular, innate personality characteristics. In each case, the self is constituted through social interaction. In Cooley’s case that interaction takes place through the imagination of self and other’s opinions of that self, while in Mead’s case the self is acquired through a socialisation process that teaches people they are an ‘individual’ and that like other ‘individuals’ they are required to carry out a variety of different roles in order to facilitate social interaction. Where Goffman differs from symbolic interactionism’s embrace of the self of Mead and Cooley is in his greater emphasis on the immediate encounter as the key to understanding the self (Allan, 2006, p. 75). For Mead and Cooley, the reflexive process that the interaction initiates in the individual is the important aspect of self constitution whereas Goffman is interested in the conditions of the encounter and the possibility that these conditions create for understandings of self (Allan, 2006, p.75).
The concepts of identity, self and role are related but different ways of talking about social actors. Hewitt has argued that an interactionist approach to role emphasises the negotiable nature of role, and that role can only be understood by attending to its social location (Hewitt, 2003, p. 65). Rather than being a “fixed list of duties”, Hewitt has argued that a symbolic interactionist approach to role allows for an understanding of role as
…a set of more general ideas about how [actors] are related to one another in various situations in which they interact … role can be thought of as a resource” (italics in original) (Hewitt, 2003, p. 65).
Although Hewitt has argued that the concept of role is not inherently deterministic, he has conceded that it has been associated with some functionalist and deterministic approaches to understandings of the self (Hewitt, 2003, p. 64-68). I do not employ the term role to talk about parliamentarians in this thesis because of the objectivist connotations that have at times been associated with the concept. I find the concepts of
workplace, albeit with some differences to do with the institutional particularities of parliament as a workplace.
identity and self to be sufficient for understanding parliamentarians’ workplace experiences and occupational identities.
Concerns over the use of the concepts of identity, self and role were at the centre of symbolic interactionism before they became topics of interest for postmodern theorists (Hewitt, 2003, p. 25-28). In this thesis, I use the term self to refer to the understanding an actor has of themselves that is negotiated through social interaction (Goffman, 1959). I use the term identity to refer to the various and different situated aspects that may comprise a person’s sense of self (Hewitt, 2003, p. 98-105). Thus I understand the self as constituted through these various identities which are made relevant by the situation.
Subsequent to Goffman’s theorisation of the dramaturgical self, he continued to argue for the plurality of identity (Goffman, 1961). Rather than having ‘an’ identity, the self is comprised of various identities which are of three different types: social identities; personal identities; and ego identities (Goffman, 1961). Social identity is given to a person by virtue of their group associations, such as ethnicity, gender, and occupation (Allan, 2006, p. 78). Personal identity is what is shared between people in close, long term relationships, where presentations of self have taken place in a variety of different contexts over time. The repetition of similar performances over time and context lead