ABSTRACT
In Goffman's world, and by extension rearward to Parsons and Durkheim, the major delict in a collective setting was behavioral 'impropriety'. Situation occasions, gatherings and the like may be regarded as particular configurations of technical acts in conjunction with particular status-power relations between the actors. 'Society', 'group', 'social organization' and 'social system' bid for sociological legitimacy. In sum, occasion, gathering and so on but the dominant status-power parties are the makers of the rules. Bogged down with Durkheimian-Parsonian social system baggage, Goffman did not recognize what was in plain sight. The fact is that when the actor appeals in the name of the group to fitness or decorum, it is a mystification. Though the rules may be stated as the rules of situations, they are morally binding not on the abstract collectivity a reified entity in Goffman's work but on individual actors. This chapter concludes by a certain kind of relational realism to Goffman's reading of the social evidence.
