Social life is performed for audiences, with distinct front-stage and back-stage conduct.
Goffman's 1959 dramaturgy. The back stage is where the performance is prepared and where its performers can drop it — which is why open-plan offices and always-on recording change behaviour so much.
In practice
- A team behaves quite differently in a client workshop and in the debrief afterwards, and neither performance is insincere.
- A shop's staffroom conversation and its counter conversation are both genuine, and the counter one is the product.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Sociology & Culture
- Essay
- How societies hold together, sort people, and change