Abstract
Giddens’ concepts of the duality of structure, distanciation, structure and agency, sociohistoricity, and the necessary role of interaction in instantiating structure and creating social order are key concepts that can be usefully incorporated into our approaches to organizing and organizing. Communicative processes have always been central in his theory of structuration. For example, Giddens (1981, 1984) noted that writing enabled a shift from an oral to a traditional culture, and, in the form of recorded documents, enables centralized administration and control in societies and in organizations. More recently, advances in communication and transportation have enabled the development of modern and postmodern societies.
While communication is central to Giddens’ structuration theory, this aspect of his theory is relatively undeveloped. Giddens (1988), in fact, cited Goffman as central to his model of communication but did not fully articulate this connection. In the theory of structurational interaction (SI) I have developed (Haslett, 2012), Giddens’ structuration is fully synthesized with Goffman’s interaction order, a micro-level model of human interaction. As Giddens (1984) noted, “The study of interaction in circumstances of co-presence is one basic component of the ‘bracketing’ of time-space that is both condition and outcome of human social association” (p. 36). Linking their work in SI enables an enriched perspective on context, on agent’s knowledge, and on the connection between social practices and institutional contexts.
Structuration and the interaction order can be fused at multiple levels. Both theorists are focused on social order: Giddens on the level of social systems and societies, and Goffman on the micro level of interaction. For both, interaction makes social order and social relations possible. As Giddens (1984) noted, Social relations are certainly involved in the structuring of interaction but are also the main “building blocks” around which institutions are articulated in system integration . . . Social relations concern the “positioning” of individuals within a “social space” of symbolic categories and ties. (p. 89)
Social positioning may refer not only to placement of the body but also to placement of the self in terms of roles and identities. Giddens (1984) argued that Every individual is at once positioned in the flow of day-to-day life; in the life-span which is the duration of his or her existence; and in the duration of “institutional time,” the “supra-individual” structuration of social institutions. Finally, each person is positioned, in a “multiple” way, within social relations conferred by specific social identities. (pp. xxiv-xxv)
Throughout a life span, the self moves through various social positions, incorporating personal and organizational identities.
Both men use similar constructs, such as opening and closing rituals, frames and reframing, turn taking, schemas of knowledge, social practices and routines, knowledgeable agents, and so forth, to conceptualize the communicative process. For Giddens and Goffman, “The meanings which are deployed through talk are organized and specified by the whole range of subtleties of management of face, voice, or gesture and positions of body brought into play in circumstances of co-presence generally” (Giddens, 1988, p. 266). And Goffman’s work (1959, 1967) focused on the presentation of the self, the authenticity of presentation, identity, and status, among other communicative issues. Participants reflexively monitor their interactions via bodily cues, texts, and others’ responses to their behaviors.
Agents’ knowledgeability draws not only upon structural resources and schemas of action and interpretation (frames) but also upon practical consciousness—the ability to get on in situations, yet being unable to articulate this discursively. As such, both men emphasize the importance of tacit, taken-for-granted knowledge. People know a substantial amount about various social systems and in order to “bring off” the interaction, the participants make use of their knowledge of the institutional order in which they are involved in such a way as to render their interchange “meaningful” . . . there is no other way for participants in interaction to render what they do intelligible and coherent to one another. (Giddens, 1984, p. 331)
As he concluded, The continuous, minute, and amazingly complicated way in which we “bring off” social life with others at the same time depends fundamentally upon shared forms of tacit knowledge that can in no sense be reduced to the specific actions of individuals. (Giddens, 1984, p. 292)
This knowledgeability permits not only smooth interactions but, when needed, allows effective repairs to be carried out. For Giddens (1981), the resources of a society (the structural properties of social systems—domination, signification, and legitimation) are constitutive of human interaction. An important aspect of this knowledgeability includes the understanding of and use of available resources in an encounter: Such resources represent sources of power and influence reflected in various social relationships, such as relationships between the government and private enterprise or relationships between employers and their employees. The structural significance of such institutions is instantiated through interaction, and interactants (agents) can maintain or alter those influences. “The vast bulk of what frames situations . . . is invisible—it consists of institutions, both taken for granted, but also drawn upon, by the parties to the interaction” (Giddens, 2009, p. 293).
For both, social practices or routines are essential for interaction and for social order. Goffman’s emphasis on ritual corresponds to Giddens’ emphasis on social practices. As Giddens (2000) remarked, Social institutions are formed and reformed via the recursiveness of social activity. The techniques, strategies, and modes of behavior followed by actors in circumstances of co-presence, even in the most seemingly trivial aspects of their day-to-day life, are fundamental to the continuity of institutions across time and space. (p. 172, italics added)
Interactants rely upon tacit, commonsense knowledge that incorporates social practices followed in given settings, used in particular social relationships, and influenced by institutional settings. “The regular or routine features of encounters, in time as well as in space, represent institutionalized features of social systems” (Giddens 2000, p. 87). Routines, social practices, and social contexts are layered and vary in their scope.
Interaction occurs in situated contexts. For Goffman (1967), contexts are bounded environments in which participants are physically copresent and thus multimodal cues (such as eye gaze, touch, distance, and material resources such as physical props and the use of space) are available as interpretive tools. These encounters are fragile, shared, intersubjective worlds and Goffman problematizes how such worlds can be created and sustained. Giddens (2009) noted that it is “Goffman’s achievement to have shown that the grand institutions of society both operate through, presume, yet at the same time structure, the rituals that people follow when they are together in public places” (p. 291).
In SI, communicative contexts may be stretched across time and space, and across participants who may not be physically copresent. Moving beyond immediate copresent contexts, Giddens characterized differing locales (contexts) as modes that vary in their duration, their span in space, their physical and symbolic boundaries, and in their interaction with larger institutional patterns. Through SI, the scope and depth of communicative contexts is enlarged and may include copresent participants to participants removed in time and space from one another. Goffman emphasized that interactants must be accessible to one another, so his views would incorporate virtual as well as copresent accessibility. Both theorists viewed contexts as multilayered and framed in varied ways.
A crucial consequence of structure and agency being instantiated in interaction is the fusion of the macro- and micro levels of analysis, or the tension between structure and voluntarism—both men argue that these dichotomies are false and misleading. Structure and agency are fused in interaction and are part of interactants’ knowledgeability. Through interaction, we enact social structures and produce actions (agency).
Goffman and Giddens argued that trust is a fundamental component of interaction. In immediate, copresent settings, this trust may be visibly and immediately demonstrated. As Giddens (1984) has demonstrated, we extend trust through distanciation and the disembedding and reembedding of social structures and practices. However, trust becomes more problematic when dealing with distanciated relationships—those relationships developed across time and space—as we have seen in financial crises, contaminated foods from other areas and countries, and so forth. Increased concern for trust and risk are hallmarks of the modern era.
To summarize, SI represents a unique, meaningful synthesis of Giddens’ and Goffman’s work. This synthesis highlights their shared view of communicative processes and their importance in social life and social order. Communication is at the heart of social organization and order, and provides the means for social activity. In SI, communicating and organizing are intertwined and integrated with one another, without privileging one process over the other. SI argues for a multilayered view of context that incorporates immediate physical and social contexts to distanciated contexts stretched over time and space. The importance of social positioning and sociohistoric context is also highlighted and facilitate our understanding of current and unfolding power dynamics within and across societies. As such, SI provides a very useful platform for exploring significant organizing and communicating processes.
In addition, SI provides insights into some major organizational communication issues, and I would like to explore two such issues in the remainder of this essay. One important issue is that of culture, globalization, and their interrelationships with organizing/communicating, and the other significant issue is that of social presence.
Culture, Globalization, and Organizing/Communicating
The definition of culture itself has been evolving. While the nation-state is still an important source of identification for people, globalization, immigration, migration, and telecommunications have been blurring the linkage of cultural identity to nation-states and scholars are exploring identification with a variety of groups. Scholars need to explore how people characterize themselves culturally and how strong those identifications are.
Giddens’ view of societies may be taken as his view of culture. Giddens (1984) suggested that societies need to share a system of communication, to share a way of life and values, to control a territory(ies) and its resources, and to have group members identify with that society. Goffman (1967) argued that culture operates as a permeable web that contextualizes social routines and face. In the modern era, these group (cultural) ties are becoming more uncertain and subject to risk: exposure to other ways of life and information challenge one’s beliefs and identities. One may identify with universal social categories, such as being female or elderly, as well as racial or ethnic groups found in a given locale. These identities vary in scope, relevance, and strength over one’s life span and may conflict with one another.
Economic interdependencies and greater information availability via the Internet are important components of globalization. The forces of industrialism, capitalism, militarism, and surveillance are fueling this globalization (Giddens, 1985). Giddens (2003) suggested that cultural separation (divergence) as well as cultural integration (convergence) are occurring, and thus organizing and communicating have become more complex. Transnational organizations operate in multiple cultural contexts: How are they to organize and to communicate in these contexts? How does management shape its leadership, organizational structure, and tasks across varied cultural contexts? How do we communicate effectively with people whose cultural identifications may contradict and compete with those of others? Giddens’ perspective enhances our understanding of the processes and challenges of globalization in a broad sociohistoric context, while Goffman’s (1967, 1974) model of communication and his work on face and facework help us understand the complexities of copresent interaction. The etic sense of face—treating all with basic dignity—is one component of universal, cooperative, respectful interaction. The emic sense of face suggests that facework is culturally specific and that communicating and organizing can be adapted to differing cultural contexts.
Thus, cultural and globalization issues are complex processes for which SI provides some interesting insights and approaches. The fusion of Goffman and Giddens in SI spans the wide range of contexts and sociohistoric forces influencing organizations while also providing the capacity to explore the interaction order in depth. Through SI, the complexities and challenges of globalization can be illuminated in important ways.
Another significant, related issue is that of social presence, both in organizing and communicating, that results from modern mediated systems of communication. How do we experience the presence of distant others while communicating with them? Mediated communication systems have not only made globalization possible but also created interesting alternative ways of interacting. SI offers interesting possibilities for facilitating our understanding of the communicative challenges of mediated and virtual communication networks.
Social Presence
Modern communication systems, such as the Internet, Web 2.0, and systems of computer mediated communication, allow many ways to interact over time and space. Understanding how we experience of the other (social presence) and the affordances of varied forms of mediated communication present some of the major communicative and organizational challenges we face. As Giddens (2000) noted, What is interesting and important here is not just the relation between co-presence and “transcontextual” interaction, but the relation between presence and absence in the structuring of social life. “Presence” by definition of course exhausts the limits of our direct experience. “Co-presence” is not really some sort of subcategory of presence in general. It is rather a form of experience which may be assumed to be characteristic of large parts of most people’s day-to-day lives, in which others are directly “available,” and in which the individual makes him or herself “available” . . . it is a mistake to see these [online and offline interaction] as two opposed forms of social connection. On the contrary, each interlaces with the other in a multiplicity of ways. (pp. 172-173)
However, “the modalities of co-presence, mediated directly by the sensory properties of the body, are clearly different from social ties and forms of social interaction established with others absent in time or in space” (Giddens, 1984, p. xxv). Using insights from Goffman’s interaction order and Giddens’ distanciation and time–space relationships, SI provides a useful theoretical perspective to help understand these differences and their interrelationships. For example, one could explore how establishing trust, authenticity, and identity may vary across different modes of communication.
The communicative challenges of globalization and of social presence (and the affordances of varied forms of mediated communication) represent significant communicative and organizational challenges. SI offers an integrated, wholistic perspective from which to explore such issues over a wide range of contexts, including interactions that are entirely virtual. SI also focuses on social practices, grounded in time and space and in a particular sociohistoric context. Hopefully, the synthesis of Giddens and Goffman in SI will raise new questions as well as provide new insights into the processes of organizing and communicating.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.