Goffman's View Of A Closed Institution

Sociology, being the study of society and the people who constitute that society, makes definitions varied and complex. What one would describe as a family, for instance, might differ from someone else’s point of view. In this essay, we will try to give our own understanding of a total institution. By analyzing Goffman’s point of view and description of a total institution, we will focus on three main types of institutions, namely jails, army barracks and monasteries. Moreover, this essay will try to criticize the open and closed institutions, whereby they, more often than not, overlap. There is a fine line between open institutions and closed institutions.

Goffman, in his attempt to describe a total institution suggests that prisons are

Open institutions would be schools, universities, hospitals or work. Closed institutions would be families, mental hospitals or prisons. However, as this essay will attempt to argue, some institutions have some characteristics of closed institutions, yet they are more open that closed. Open institutions consist of establishments where one can choose whether they want to be part of it or not. One applies to be admitted to a specific school, university or hospital. As opposed to open institutions, closed institutions offer no choice. We are born into a family, whereby we do not choose who our parents, our siblings or other members of our family would be. The same thing happens within a mental hospital. Once we are admitted into a mental hospital, we are cut out from the world and we have no choice of leaving or staying. The fact that one would be mentally disable to make a choice would also play an important role in defining whether the institution would be an open or a closed one. However, a fine line exists in the definition of a closed or an open institution. That would depend on how one would describe the specific institution. Let us take the family as an example to elaborate the idea that the institutions overlap. We are born and raised into a family which we have not chosen. Yet, as we

He gives several examples to illustrate his point. He describes procedures upon admission, which he prefers to refer to as ‘trimming’ or ‘programming’. These procedures, as the sociologist explicitly lists, are: “taking a life history, photographing, weighing, fingerprinting, assigning numbers, searching, listing personal possessions for storage, undressing bathing, disinfecting, haircutting, issuing institutional clothing, instructing as to rules, and assigning to quarters.” (Goffman 1961:26). Although those might be seen as mere admission procedures, in order to maintain order among the inmates and keeping track of their behavior, these petty actions is in fact a disguise to creating a demeaning nature of the action. By doing so, the inmate is stripped off from his own identity and is compelled to fit in the programming of the establishment, in order to conform to all the rules which are applied. He or she no longer has their own identity. The inmates all belong together, they are all similar, without a sense of individuality. Further in his writings, Goffman gives another example of how the inmates are shaped into behaving in specific ways. Individuals are forced to perform certain actions which would make them lose their sense of self. He describes how, “in military prisons, inmates may be required to stand at attention whenever an officer enters the compound.” (Goffman