| 234 |
11. ConclusionFor the most part, the daily round of human activity is a consequential round. Much of what happens is expected to count, to be assessable and assessed when evaluations are made. The order of activity that comprises the daily round is typically one in which practical problems must be treated as moral responsibilities, for in many instances what is done today can be expected to have, implications for tomorrow. The foreseeable future in this way exerts a particular kind of control over the immediate present, constraining and restraining the actor here and now lest problems be encountered there and later.Those who are cavalier about the future may, of course, absolve themselves from any show of concern about the present as well. But for the less temerarious, everyday life is in many ways a sagaciously pursued endeavor. When courses of action are in effect interwoven into a more or less continuous yarn, where the threads at one point are or can be traced back to the threads at an earlier point, the prudent cannot afford to treat the present with indifference. The events of the moment characteristically require attending to what can be anticipated in the future as well; and the proprieties governing conduct are often oriented not only to the occasion at hand, but also to prospective occasions. The ritual of formality generally encountered in serious life and usually employed by serious people thus provides a means not only of managing possible consequences but also of expressing awareness of them. |
|
| 235 | But there are times and places within the course of the daily round
when the consequentiality of everyday life may be conventionally suspended
and the ensuing activity granted a special status of "not really counting."
Such times and places are designated as "unserious" occasions, the term
"unserious" connoting an anticipated discontinuity between the immediate
present and the foreseeable future. The characteristic feature of these
unserious times and places is that they grant the right to be indifferent
about matters that would otherwise obligate concern by absolving them of
the consequences they would otherwise be expected to have. They establish,
as it were, a time-out period when the constraint and respect the social
world ordinarily requires is no longer demanded and, hence, they permit
even for the ordinarily prudent what would otherwise be considered social
licentiousness.
The relationship of social class and public drinking place behavior provides a case in point. Like the Protestants described by Max Weber, American middle-class people are classically depicted as concerned with assuring their future outcomes by conscientiously and methodically attending to the events of the present. At least, as middle-class people are contrasted with those below them in the social hierarchy, they are typically characterized as having a very prudent interest in the daily round. Thus, one would expect them to be less likely to take liberties with the proprieties that ordinarily govern the daily round. When public drinking places are categorized into those establishments typically frequented by middle-class or by lower-class patrons, we might predict a noticeable difference in the patterns of behavior found in the respective bars. Specifically, one would predict that middle-class bar behavior would be, in Goffman's term, more "tightly" defined [155] than lower-class bar behavior. However, at least with respect to those aspects of behavior |
|
| 236 | that were of particular interest in the present study, such differences
were negligible. The patrons of what might be considered to be middle-class
public drinking places were no less mutually open to one another than were
the patrons of lower-class bars; nor were encounters in one type of establishment
any more or less circumscribed in time and place than they were in the
other. Similarly, the latitude of behavior found in lower-class establishments
was no broader than that found in middle-class bars. Quarrels of varying
intensity, displays of affection, the prefabrication and embroidering of
biographies, and activity typically characterized as the effects of overindulgence
(loss of motor control, excessive depression or elation) were found in
both with the same general absence of disapprobation on the part of witnesses.
Moreover, although the nightspot use of the public drinking place was somewhat
more likely to characterize middle-class than lower-class establishments,
it was not exclusive to the former, just as the convenience, marketplace
and home territory uses were not exclusive to the latter.
Thus, if the public behavior of the middle class is ordinarily expected to be characterized by constraint and respect, in the time-out atmosphere of the bar a display of social licentiousness is apparently just as appropriate for the middle class as it is for those below them in the social hierarchy. Although my concern in the present study has been with a particular setting. there are in American society a variety of times and places where time out is called. Like the public drinking place, holidays, carnivals, social parties, vacations, conventions, resorts, beaches, parks, picnics, and the like are typically expected to be unserious occasions and settings and, like bars, they are typically associated with a characteristic informality of behavior that sets them apart from the more serious occasions of everyday life. Thus, to take but one example, if flirtatious sociability is a regular and routine feature of social parties, vacations, conventions, resorts, and beaches, |
|
| 237 | it may well be-as in public drinking places-that these occasions and
settings make such dalliance less imprudent by absolving the participants
of the consequences that the activity might otherwise engender.
However, if time out absolves the immediate present from the foreseeable future, the absolution is still embedded in and hence related to the broader framework of social life. In the first place, time out typically has a particular relationship to the temporal ordering of daily life, often being scheduled as a periodic respite and frequently being restricted in its duration. Vacations, for example, are generally annual affairs lasting between one and three weeks; similarly, social parties are usually announced in advance for a specified date, and those who are to be present are usually told when the event is to begin and, not infrequently, when it is to end. Time out can, of course, be less methodical. While an employer may specify when coffee breaks and the lunch hour are to begin and end, employees may upon occasion unofficially call time out during what is officially designated as their working hours. [156] When time out is unofficially called, its inception and duration may be contingent upon the probability of its discovery, since unofficial time out in many situations constitutes a sanction able breach of the ongoing order of activity, subjecting those who take it to a penalty of one sort or another. Even official times out may be penalized if they extend too long or occur too frequently or somehow impair the abilities of those involved to properly resume their consequential activities. Thus we find that the rules governing official time-out periods often control such risks in advance of their occurrence. Vacations usually must be taken as two consecutive weeks rather than on fourteen intermittent days, conventions are |
|
| 238 | usually expected to last no more than three or four days, and social
parties are usually planned for the weekend rather,than during the work
week. In this way, the precarious moral status of the public drinking place
may reflect in part the kind of reputation attributed to a time-out setting
which, by being available in most places and most of the time, is a little
too available. Thus while time out may properly suspend the consequentiality
of the present moment, the rules governing time out may have important
implications about where, when and how consequentiality may be suspended
properly. Just as there are circumstances in which joking may constitute
an impropriety in and of itself, so, too, there are circumstances in which
calling time-out may constitute an impropriety.
However, the expectation that consequentiality is to be suspended during time-out is one thing; actual suspension may be another. Consequentiality and the kind of propriety it en-genders may be held by some as the only possible social order, any modifications being denied legitimacy and hence any claims of immunity under the rules of suspended consequentiality being discounted. Those who take license with the proprieties that are required on serious occasions, on the assumption that their activity has been granted a special status of "not really counting," may find that others have defined the occasion in other terms and who, on the basis of that definition, claim the right to pass judgment. The momentary silence that often prevails when police enter a public drinking place on a routine check may in this sense be a momentary reminder of the possibility that life can quickly change from inconsequential to consequential. Even when an occasion is commonly defined as one where consequentiality is to be held in abeyance, the daily round itself may be ultimately read as a testimony of character. The very fact that time is frequently spent unseriously may be taken to attest to the individual's inability or unwillingness to subject himself to the more consequential aspects of social life, |
|
| 239 | and this imputation may become a matter about which the individual
cannot be indifferent. Thus, while there is a derisive nomenclature for
those who take too little time-out (prig, prude, old maid) [157]
there is also a derisive nomenclature for those who take too much (playboy,
beach bum, barfly). For the latter, the inconsequentiality of the present
may, in fact, have its consequential implications in the future.
Similarly, there may be some who are prepared to exploit others' expectations that their behavior will not count, and although those who have been betrayed in this way may have grounds for moral indignation, they may also find that indifference is no longer possible. If a wife who takes her husband's bar conduct as evidence for a divorce is guilty of breaching what was assumed by him to be a mutually shared understanding that it was not serious, her guilt will not alter his present predicament. If one assumes that social life is problematic, not only for the sociologist but for those who populate the social world as well, then a number of questions can be raised. One such question is how those who populate the social world go about making that world less problematic, e.g., by the establishment of more or less precise rules about behavior which are enforceable and enforced, the creation of a working consensus by which those involved agree to temporarily at least honor certain claims or certain definitions, or the self-fulfilling prophecy by which the anticipation of consequences of action results mi the production of those consequences. However, to the extent to which people are not governed by rules, expectations and agreements, but rather may or may not elect to act with respect to those rules, expectations and agreements, then man's very effort to make his World an orderly place of familiar scenes may itself generate new prob- |
|
| 240 | lems. The issue is quite similar to that raised by Becker in his discussion
of the effects generated by the activities of the moral entrepeneur. [158]
Out of what might be his humanitarian interest in bettering the lot of
others, the moral entrepeneur actively works at establishing rules which
in effect may make the lot of others worse in one way or another. If the
efforts of the moral entrepeneur have served to increase the probability
of one kind of order, loosely speaking, they may have also created a new
kind of disorder.
Thus to say that the suspension of consequentiality within the bar makes certain courses of action open possibilities, or at least inexpensive ones, is to address only part of the problem. The other part is found when by virtue of acting with respect to the anticipated inconsequentiality of the setting, rather than producing a self-fulfilling prophecy, the bar patron discovers that the inconsequentiality which he anticipated was not, so to speak, constitutionally guaranteed as an inalienable right. An example of the problem might be as follows: I have suggested that to the extent that the patron anticipates that the courses of action which he undertakes in the bar will not generate consequences outside the bar, he may, if he so desires, play fast and loose with the identity that he may actively work at establishing in other more serious settings. Thus ego (a homosexual who may put a good deal of effort and energy into maintaining a straight image at work) may, as they say, "let his hair down" in the gay bar, insofar as he anticipates that his behavior will be circumscribed in time and place and will not count outside the bar. Were ego to anticipate otherwise, he might be less likely to undertake the same course of action. Now suppose alter, ego's co-worker, enters the bar, reads the setting for what it is, and furthermore, by virtue of |
|
| 241 | the course of action ego is engaged in, reads ego for what he is. In
addition, to provide "reasonable grounds" for alter's subsequent actions,
suppose both alter and ego (with his straight identity thus far undoubted)
are both likely candidates for a promotion at work. In such a situation
it might be naive to expect alter to act upon what might be considered
his moral obligation to respect the unserious definition of the bar and
hence studiously to ignore the information about ego's identity which he
now has. Trouble is frequently caused by some who for expediency, personal
advantage, vindictiveness, or a different code of morality, breach the
expectations of others, as well as by some who may breach the expectations
of others inadvertently or out of ignorance.
The implications of the example are obvious. Had ego not anticipated that his activity would not count, he might not have provided the kind of information about himself that alter could use. But insofar as ego does anticipate that his activity will not count, he might well provide alter with information which in the end does count. Thus, since what is expected to take place in social life and what actually can take place need not be identical, the very expectation that unserious settings are to be without consequences may generate a particular kind of problem for the participants - a problem created by the discovery that what occurred actually counted after all. |
|
|
[155] See Erving Goffman, Behavior in Public Places (New York: The Free Press, 1963), pp. 198-215. [156] An example can be found in Donald F. Roy "'Banana Time': Job Satisfaction and informal lnteraction," Human organization 18 (1959-60), PP. 158-168. [157] Similarly, those who attend to business during what is officially defined as their "coffee break" may be accorded the derisive label of "organization man" by their co-workers. [158] Howard S. Becker, Outsiders (New York: The Free Press, 1963), pp. 145-163. |
