Total Institutions Total Insitutions

A total institution according to Goffman is a place of residence and work where a number of like individuals (with similar character orientation), cut off from the larger society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life. Examples include prisons, mental hospitals and many more.

In this regard every particular institution be it prison, monastery, mental institution captures something of the time and interest of its members and gives or rather provides something of a world to them that is to say every institution has an encompassing tendency. In this the encompassing is characterized or symbolized by a barrier to social intercourse with the outside world characterized by the physical plant, for instance locked doors, high walls and barbed wires and so forth.

The following are the different groupings in which total institutions of our society can be linked to:

First are the institutions established to care for persons felt to be both incapable and harmless; these include the homes for the blind, the aged, and the orphaned.

Second, the institutions established to care for individuals felt by society that they are incapable of looking after themselves and are threat to the community if not catered for, albeit an unintended one, these includes among others; TB sanitaria, mental hospitals, and leprosaria.

Third category of total institutions is made up in such a manner to protect the community against what it feels to be intentional dangers to it, with the welfare of the persons thereby sequestered but not the immediate issue this includes institutions like; jails, penitentiaries, and concentratsion camps.

Fourth, there are institutions established purposefully for people to pursue some work like tasks and justifying themselves only on these instrumental grounds, these institutions are army barracks, ships, boarding schools, work camps, colonial compounds among others

Finally,...

A significant number of former members from total institutions have reported having their entire day dictated to them.
In another incident, a story is told by Layton of a woman who worked hard to develop a recipe for good tasting nutritious jam using only the available foods at the compound. Jones reprimanded the woman when she offered one to him; she was publicly rebuked for wasting the valuable resources of the people on a self seeking pursuit.

The woman in this case had seen herself being a good cook, but her efforts at continuing in this part of her identity only caused her to be despised by the very person with whom she sought to be seen great. In the end result the people become drones with no other use other than to perform duties assigned to them as they were told, no creativity was encouraged as this was seen as selfish (Layton, 1998). This is just a prototypical case that serves to indicate the lack of industriousness and creativity among the many total institutions, which only serve to destroy the persons admitted rather than aiding them in their quest for an all round life.

Programming and identity trimming

Goffman asserts to a referencing that classifies the individual into "an object that can be fed into the administrative machinery of the establishment." As the individuals arrive at the institutional premises, every one had all of his or her belongings searched, and told the basic rules of what is allowed and expected at the institution. Here individuals are assigned a place to sleep, as…