Sociology and Social Order

Goffman examines the rituals of trust and tact in everyday lives, which provide the parameters of daily social interactions, through control of bodily gesture, the face and the gaze, and the use of language. For instance, a person encountering another on the street shows with a controlled sort of glance that the other person is worthy of respect and, by adjusting the gaze, that he or she is not a threat to the other, while the other person does the same. These ‘strangers’ meeting on the street exchange a number of codes of ‘civil indifference’ as an implicit contract by which they acknowledge each other and the rules which protect their encounter. This contract is drawn up by individuals participating in a public setting of modern social life, like a street. Yet street interaction is often of an unfocused kind because individuals, although in one another’s visual and aural range, go about their respective businesses unconnected in their attention, despite sharing one same contract. Think of yourself walking in a busy city centre. Going about on a street, you meet other people but you do not wear the expressions you are expected to wear when purposefully meeting someone else. In these public situations you are often not conscious of being a social participant in an interaction. Yet, not only do you participate in a social context but most often you are bound by a set of rules of conduct. These are part of the invisible social order. Still on a street, or perhaps in other social contexts, gazes may be misinterpreted,

According to Foucault, power works in subtle ways through discourse – what can be talked about – to shape popular attitudes. These discoursesChapter 7 Making social order
Chapter 4 of this book also talked about
‘discourses’ in relation to questions of identity.
Here the focus is the connections between discourse and power. can be used, and are used, as a powerful tool to normalise behaviour.
Discourses provide the