ABSTRACT
Goffman viewed social life as a form of interaction order that is constructed out of ritualised performances based upon dramaturgical practices. The chapter identifies two interconnected conceptions of the stranger present in Goffman’s work. First, the stranger is a person with whom we are co-present but who we are not intimate with and have no knowledge of their personal biography; as such we treat this person with a degree of ‘civil inattention’. Civil inattention allows people to remain unknown to each other and maintain legitimate anonymity. The second conception of the stranger in Goffman’s work is the individual whose presence is not fully regarded as legitimate. The Other breaks the definition of the situation and co-participants and categorises the individual as a form or type of stranger. The definition of the situation is formed out of the situated activities of individual human agents and is the concept that Goffman uses to define practice as the link between agency and structure. The stranger is seen as stigmatised, a category of unwanted, surplus and expendable ‘Other’. Through this process of examining, the individual: ‘is thus reduced in our minds from a whole and usual person to a tainted, discounted one’ (Goffman 1963: 12).
