Goffman's concept of total institutions and their characteristics

¶ … Total Institutions

The week 8 readings, Goffman's "Asylums" denotes some of the basic characteristics of what is referred to as total institutions. Total institutions are places where individuals live and work, and have minimal (if any) contact with the outside world due to a "barrier to the outside world." For the most part, the author simply explicates some of the basic traits of such institutions, those that pertain to the institutions themselves and to the people that are found within them. In the introduction the author contextualizes total institutions within the overall context of society, and that these are unique places because the limits they provide for external contact. The author also provides examples of five different types of total institutions that operate as a basic framework for this concept. These include group homes or those for "the blind, the aged, the orphaned, and the indigent," prisons, mental institutions, military institutions, and monasteries. The author then spends the rest of the document providing some basic generalities that apply across these various types of institutions.

The three main characteristics of such institutions are the facts that virtually all of the activities of those within them are rigorously scheduled, there is minimal privacy, and there is a definite sense of authority evinced due to the fact that all actions take place in one centralized place. More importantly, however, there is a pervasive sense of bureaucracy existent -- there is virtually no spontaneity and probably even less autonomy. As such, there is a constant level of surveillance provided by the fact that there is a great dichotomy in the relative small minority of staff and the large majority of inmates in these institutions. That dichotomy is magnified by the sense of dislike for one another that manifests, in which the staff believes it is innately better than the inmates, who view the staff as intolerable authoritarians. The author believes that these differences are best characterized by a lack of social mobility and an expanse of social distance between the two groups. Quite simply, it is virtually impossible for inmates to work their way up to the positions of staff members. Similarly, it is highly unlikely that staff members would somehow become inmates or, perhaps more importantly, even want to do so. These differences are reinforced by the fact that staff typically control the patterns of communication between inmates (certainly as it applies to the outside world), which merely underscores the differences between these two types of people that dwell in total institutions. More importantly, the means of communication between these two groups is circumscribed as well, with the staff again in control.