andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2010 andrew_gelman_stats-2010-415 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: In response to my most recent post expressing bafflement over the Erving Goffman mystique, several commenters helped out by suggesting classic Goffman articles for me to read. Naturally, I followed the reference that had a link attached–it was for an article called Cooling the Mark Out, which analogized the frustrations of laid-off and set-aside white-collar workers to the reactions to suckers after being bilked by con artists. Goffman’s article was fascinating, but I was bothered by a tone of smugness. Here’s a quote from Cooling the Mark Out that starts on the cute side but is basically ok: In organizations patterned after a bureaucratic model, it is customary for personnel to expect rewards of a specified kind upon fulfilling requirements of a specified nature. Personnel come to define their career line in terms of a sequence of legitimate expectations and to base their self-conceptions on the assumption that in due course they will be what the institution allows persons t
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1 In response to my most recent post expressing bafflement over the Erving Goffman mystique, several commenters helped out by suggesting classic Goffman articles for me to read. [sent-1, score-0.128]
2 Naturally, I followed the reference that had a link attached–it was for an article called Cooling the Mark Out, which analogized the frustrations of laid-off and set-aside white-collar workers to the reactions to suckers after being bilked by con artists. [sent-2, score-0.246]
3 Here’s a quote from Cooling the Mark Out that starts on the cute side but is basically ok: In organizations patterned after a bureaucratic model, it is customary for personnel to expect rewards of a specified kind upon fulfilling requirements of a specified nature. [sent-4, score-0.905]
4 Personnel come to define their career line in terms of a sequence of legitimate expectations and to base their self-conceptions on the assumption that in due course they will be what the institution allows persons to become. [sent-5, score-0.149]
5 This seemed naive at best and obnoxious at worst. [sent-8, score-0.08]
6 As if, whenever someone is not promoted, it’s either because he can’t do the job or he can’t play the game. [sent-9, score-0.135]
7 Unless you want to define this completely circularly (with “playing the game” retrospectively equaling whatever it takes to do to keep the job), this just seems wrong. [sent-10, score-0.188]
8 In corporate and academic settings alike, lots of people get shoved aside either for reasons entirely beyond their control (e. [sent-11, score-0.086]
9 Goffman was a successful organization man and couldn’t resist taking a swipe at the losers in the promotion game. [sent-14, score-0.201]
10 It wasn’t enough for him to say that some people don’t ascend the ladder; he had to attribute that to not fulfilling the “less codified [requirements] having to do with the proper handling of social relationships at work. [sent-15, score-0.662]
11 In this instance, Goffman seems like the classic case of a successful person who things that, hey, everybody could be a success where they blessed with his talent and social skills. [sent-18, score-0.247]
12 King wrote: People in sociology are mixed on their feelings about Goffman’s scholarship. [sent-20, score-0.074]
13 I think that one of the problems is that you’re thinking of this as a proportion of variance problem, in which case I think you’re right that “how you play the game” explains a lot less variance in job attainment than structural factors. [sent-23, score-0.375]
14 His style was to focus on a kind of social interaction and then try to explain the strategies or roles that people use in those interactions to engage in impression management. [sent-25, score-0.252]
15 So, for him, a corporate workplace was interesting for the same reason an asylum is – they’re both places where role expectations shape the way people interact and try to influence the perceptions that others have of them. [sent-26, score-0.297]
16 It’s a very different style of scholarship, but nevertheless it’s had a huge influence in sociology’s version of social psych. [sent-27, score-0.241]
17 The kind of work that is done in this area is highly qualitative, often ethnographic. [sent-28, score-0.074]
18 How much does “playing the game” really matter when the economy is collapsing and companies are laying off thousands of employees? [sent-30, score-0.123]
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Introduction: In response to my most recent post expressing bafflement over the Erving Goffman mystique, several commenters helped out by suggesting classic Goffman articles for me to read. Naturally, I followed the reference that had a link attached–it was for an article called Cooling the Mark Out, which analogized the frustrations of laid-off and set-aside white-collar workers to the reactions to suckers after being bilked by con artists. Goffman’s article was fascinating, but I was bothered by a tone of smugness. Here’s a quote from Cooling the Mark Out that starts on the cute side but is basically ok: In organizations patterned after a bureaucratic model, it is customary for personnel to expect rewards of a specified kind upon fulfilling requirements of a specified nature. Personnel come to define their career line in terms of a sequence of legitimate expectations and to base their self-conceptions on the assumption that in due course they will be what the institution allows persons t
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