Strategies of Dismissal: Ways and Means of Avoiding Personal Abuse

This paper describes the mechanisms by which individuals "dismiss" or render ineffective the symbolic attacks to which they are subjected. Among the strategies useful to this protection of the self are those which focus on the situation of the attack, the nature of the self, and the nature of the attacker. Characteristic of many of these individual approaches to defense is an underlying concept of the "real self, " a symbolic identity, the manifestation of which the individual can influence, if not control. The implications of this discussion of "dismissal strategies" are threefold: (1) structures of dismissal are differentiated by use and consequence with reference to the characteristic features of social organization; (2) contemporary social problems and the "legitimation crisis" of social welfare institutions can be seen as one expression of dismissal strategies; and (3) the importance of strategies of dismissals to ongoing social life suggests that social order is made possible by selective disengagement as much as by engagement.