Total Institutions and Reinvented Identities (Identity Studies in the Social Sciences)

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Identity Studies in the Social Sciences Series Editors: Margaret Wetherell, Open University; Valerie Hey, Sussex University; Stephen Reicher, St Andrews University Editorial Board: Marta Augoustinos, University of Adelaide, Australia; Wendy Brown, University of California, Berkeley, USA; David McCrone, University of Edinburgh, UK; Angela McRobbie, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK; Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Syracuse University, USA; Harriet B. Nielsen, University of Oslo, Norway; Ann Phoenix, Institute of Education, University of London, UK; Mike Savage, University of Manchester, UK

Titles include: Will Atkinson CLASS, INDIVIDUALIZATION AND LATE MODERNITY In Search of the Reflexive Worker John Kirk and Christine Wall WORK AND IDENTITY Historical and Cultural Contexts Ben Rogaly and Becky Taylor MOVING HISTORIES OF CLASS AND COMMUNITY Identity, Place and Belonging in Contemporary England Susie Scott TOTAL INSTITUTIONS AND REINVENTED IDENTITIES Margaret Wetherell (editor) IDENTITY IN THE 21ST CENTURY New Trends in Changing Times Margaret Wetherell (editor) THEORIZING IDENTITIES AND SOCIAL ACTION

Identity Studies in Social Sciences Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–230–20500–0 (Hardback) 978–0–230–20501–7 (Paperback) (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and one of the ISBNs quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

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Total Institutions and Reinvented Identities Susie Scott University of Sussex, UK

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© Susie Scott 2011 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries ISBN 978-0-230-23201-3

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This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 20

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Contents List of Abbreviations

vi

Acknowledgements

viii

Chapter 1

Introduction

1

Chapter 2

Totally Committed

8

Chapter 3

Reinventive Institutions

30

Chapter 4

Religious and Spiritual Communities

54

Chapter 5

Military Camps

88

Chapter 6

Secret Societies and Fraternities

116

Chapter 7

Therapeutic Clinics

142

Chapter 8

Education and Enrichment

174

Chapter 9

Virtual Institutions

207

Chapter 10 Conclusion

234

Bibliography

246

Index

273

v

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List of Abbreviations AA ASBOs BGLOs CBT CMC DoH ED-NOS FREECOG FTM FWBO GA GPA HEIs HMIP IBS INFORM IRC ISKCON KKK LAMDA LGBTQ MAOIs MCCs MIT MUDs NHS NOT NRMs NSS PRW RADA RAE REF RI SSRIs SST

Alcoholics Anonymous Anti-Social Behaviour Orders Black Greek Letter Organisations Cognitive Behaviour Therapy Computer Mediated Communication Department of Health Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified Free the Children of God female-to-male The Friends of the Western Buddhist Order Gamblers Anonymous Grade Point Average Higher Education Institutions Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons Irritable Bowel Syndrome Information Network Focus on Religious Movements Internet Relay Chat The International Society of Krishna Consciousness Ku Klux Klan London Academy of Music And Dramatic Arts lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors Metropolitan Community Churches Massachusetts Institute of Technology Multi-User Domain National Health Service Negotiated Order Theory New Religious Movements The National Student Survey Project Rehabilitate Women The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts Research Assessment Exercise Research Excellence Framework Reinventive Institution Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors Social Skills Training vi

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List of Abbreviations vii

TA TCs TI TM UGC YMCA YOIs

Territorial Army Therapeutic Communities Total Institution Transcendental Meditation User-Generated Content Young Men’s Christian Association Young Offender Institutions

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Acknowledgements The idea for this book came about through a re-reading of Erving Goffman’s Asylums, which, like everything this dazzling maverick produced, delighted and inspired me. John Scott discussed some initial ideas with me and made helpful suggestions for reading. I am grateful to Philippa Grand at Palgrave for encouraging me to develop the proposal, and for her support throughout the writing of the book. I also appreciate the series editors’ enthusiastic comments, and their willingness to incorporate this volume into their Identity series. An earlier version of some of the arguments presented here were included in articles I wrote for Sociology (44, 2), Symbolic Interaction (32, 2) and Body & Society (16, 2) in 2009–2010. My colleagues at the University of Sussex have continued to be a fantastic support, especially Alison, Ruth, Ben and Gill. I also enjoyed talking over ideas with colleagues across the pond at the SSSI conference, where I presented a paper in 2009 and received some helpful comments, from Dennis Waskul and Phillip Vannini in particular. Finally, I want to thank those who have supported me just by being there and showing an interest: Mum, Dad and the rest of my family, and my friends Lily, Michelle, Alison, Sarah, Vuokko, Ben, Matt and Paul. Thank you all for the many great chats, cups of tea and constant encouragement. Special thanks must go to Robin, for talking over ideas, sharing much laughter and introducing me to the Twittens of Brighton. I hope you all enjoy the book.

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1 Introduction

Entering the total institution People join institutions for many different reasons. Career advancement, political allegiance, social networking and community building are just some of the factors that motivate individuals to fit themselves into systems of rules and to follow routines with unquestioning obedience. Institutions are sociologically interesting as abstract organisational structures that are reproduced through the everyday lives of their members: ‘micro’ level routines, practices and interactions form the glue of ‘macro’ level social forms. The focus of this book, however, is on a particular type, the total institution: one in which members are immersed and enclosed – physically or symbolically – for a long period of time, to the exclusion of other attachments, and which aims fundamentally to change their identities. The total institution exacts ‘greedy’ demands on its members (Coser 1974), pervading their entire being and demanding absolute commitment. Why do people choose to enter and stay in such institutions, and how does the experience affect them? The concept of the total institution (TI) was introduced in Erving Goffman’s book Asylums (1961a), an ethnographic report of life in a psychiatric hospital. This polemical text formed part of the anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960s–1970s, which challenged western notions of mental illness as individual pathology, pointing instead to the labelling of social deviance as a form of social control (Szasz 1961; Scheff 1966; Laing 1967). Goffman’s aim was to present the asylum as an exemplar of the TI, using it as a vehicle to illustrate the main features of this model. A central theme of the book was power, understood as a force embedded in hierarchical relations, authoritarian roles and coercive practices. Working in the Symbolic Interactionist tradition, 1

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2 Total Institutions and Reinvented Identities

Goffman employed his unique dramaturgical perspective to reveal how micro-level processes of social control were performatively enacted and mediated by the routine interactions that took place within institutional walls. Goffman’s concern was with the effects that being institutionalised had upon the self-identities of patients, or, as he called them, inmates. Emphasising the closed, impermeable structure of the asylum and its insular local world, he argued that TIs created totally encompassing environments that disempowered their inhabitants: in the absence of external challenge or critique, staff had the power to erase inmates’ previous social identities and replace them with others. The TI’s coercive treatment procedures, living arrangements and institutional practices therefore had moral implications insofar as they were used to (re-)define the identity of the inmate, often against his or her will. Throughout Asylums, Goffman points to the divisions between staff and inmates, who struggled to exercise control over the latter’s fate. This negotiation context (Strauss et al 1963) was skewed in favour of the staff, whose status as ‘healthy’ or ‘sane’ afforded them greater legitimacy in defining what was real and true, while any gestures of resistance by inmates were dismissed as symptomatic of insanity (cf. Rosenhan 1973). Thus in Goffman’s model, the individual was rendered passive and powerless in the reconstruction of their identity.

Reinventing institutional life A central argument of this book is that a new form of institution has emerged since Goffman’s time, which implies subtler mechanisms of power and social control. Whereas traditional TI inmates were committed against their will, and new identities imposed upon them, now we find people choosing voluntarily to enter institutions, believing that they need to change, and that it is their own responsibility to do so. This can be understood within the wider context of late modernity (Giddens 1991) that characterises contemporary western societies, with its demands for highly reflexive selfhood and engagement with ‘therapy culture’ (Furedi 2004). While of course TIs still exist, as hospitals, prisons and so on, decarceration has led a shift towards community-based interventions for all but these most ‘needy’ of populations; in the spaces left behind have sprung up new institutional forms that provide different ways of reconfiguring the self. I propose the concept of the Reinventive Institution (RI) to describe these new sites of biographical identity work, whose purpose may be

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Introduction 3

religious, disciplinary, secret, therapeutic, educational or virtual. In Chapter 3, I unpack this concept, defining the RI as, a material, discursive or symbolic structure in which voluntary members actively seek to cultivate a new social identity, role or status. This is interpreted positively as a process of reinvention, self-improvement or transformation. It is achieved not only through formal instruction in an institutional rhetoric, but also through the mechanisms of performative regulation in the interaction context of an inmate culture. Using Symbolic Interactionist ideas, I show how such organisations operate as self-governed entities, whose definition of reality is created and upheld by the meanings social actors give to their situations. RIs can be understood as ‘institutions without walls’, which members are ostensibly free to leave but choose not to, because of the strength of their commitment. This may be to the yearned for end product, a reinvented self (as in the case of therapeutic clinics and educational establishments), or to the process of reinvention, as an intrinsically valuable journey (as with the decision to join a secret society or enter the Big Brother house). Whichever is the case, members recognise social interaction and relationships with each other to be pivotal to their success, and seek out the company of others rather than going it alone. Therefore the RI can be seen as both reinvented in its structure and function, and reinventing in its effects upon individual members. This raises important questions about the changing nature of power and social control in institutions. In contrast to the TI’s rigid hierarchical role structures that allow the ‘authoritative imposition of consequential identities’ (Dennis & Martin 2005: 191) by staff upon inmates, RIs pride themselves on democratic rule by the members themselves, who monitor each other’s conduct through peer-to-peer surveillance. As we shall see in Chapter 3, Foucauldian ideas of disciplinary power combine fruitfully with Symbolic Interactionist theories of negotiated order and dramaturgical identity performance, to elucidate what Lukes (2005) calls the third dimension of power: the consent of subjects to be governed. In the absence of coercion, Jenkins (2008) asks what leads people to follow rules, or why they ‘put up with’ regimes and sanctions. The answer may lie in the interaction context of institutional life, with its ‘inmate cultures’ (Goffman 1961a) that reinforce and legitimate members’ commitment. Each RI has its own discourse of reinvention, which is internalised, sustained and reproduced by its

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4 Total Institutions and Reinvented Identities

members in the course of their daily routines and ritual encounters. Being surrounded by others who display positive, uncritical attitudes and willing subservience creates a pressure upon the individual to believe equally fervently in their own transformation – or at least to behave as if they do. A key theme of the book is how RI members perform their conformity while appraising the authenticity of each other’s commitment (Weinberg 1996), evaluating their progress in relative terms. The power of the institution-as-structure is sustained by the everyday practices of the institution-as-interaction.

Agency and authorship We must then contemplate whether and to what extent those institutionalised have become more empowered to author their identities. Ostensibly, there has been a shift in the inmate’s role from being relatively passive (in TIs) to relatively active (in RIs) in the process of reconstructing the self. People who enter RIs are electing voluntarily to reinvent themselves, whereas TI inmates had the fate imposed upon them. The RI recruit displays greater agency throughout the whole period of their resocialisation: they seek out the institution, request the help of its leaders, and actively participate in its procedures. Superficially, they remain in control of what is happening, and are free to withdraw at any stage. Long before the point of admission, RI inmates have become estranged from their erstwhile civilian selves, and once inside, are ready to embrace the new identities on offer. Agency resides in choosing to adhere to the institutional regime rather than questioning its legitimacy. However, this agency is limited to a prescribed form: members are free to choose a path of self-improvement, but only from amongst the array of idealised potential selves presented to them by institutional discourses, which teach them what it means to be recovered, fit or authentic (Gubrium & Holstein 2001). By contrast, one could argue that the TI inmate possesses ‘true’ or original agency, in the sense of knowing oneself as a bounded entity, independently of the institution, even if this agent is eventually destroyed (see Chapter 2). RI recruits possess a kind of meta-agency, by reflecting on, reshaping and in some cases discarding their previous identities, but in doing so, deny these former selves their integrity. Perhaps a more accurate interpretation is that both TIs and RIs reveal a tension between coercion and voluntarism, passivity and agency, with shifts occurring only in the relative balance of the two. Whereas the TI inmate was explicitly coerced but showed gestures of resistance, the RI

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Introduction 5

recruit is formally free but finds their autonomy compromised by the demands of institutional allegiance. These are not simply ‘cultural dupes’ (Garfinkel 1967), brainwashed by a seductive rhetoric, but rather knowledgeable agents, attempting to rewrite themselves in line with cultural scripts. In Mead’s (1934) social behaviourist terms, the TI inmate is primarily an ‘I’ – a privatised, reactive subject – while the RI member is closer to the ‘Me’ – a socially defined object, constructed through the eyes of others. Of course, this distinction is not absolute: in both cases, the I and Me coexist in a Meadian dialogue, as the inmate acts, reflects upon the social consequences of their action, and adapts their ‘looking glass self’ accordingly (cf. Cooley 1902). However, perhaps again there has been a shift in the relative balance of the forces. Whereas the TI inmate acted impulsively, in response to perceived assaults on the self, the RI member is more self-consciously engaged in the reflexive project (Giddens 1991) of biographical identity work.

Outline of the book This volume explores the changing nature of institutional life and its effects upon members’ social identities in a range of contemporary sites. Chapter 2 takes a closer look at Goffman’s original model of the total institution (TI), elucidating its key features and locating it in an historical and political context. The asylum emerged as a means of segregating and confining deviant or troublesome populations, whose behaviour posed a threat to social order. Goffman was critical of psychiatry’s claims to neutrality, arguing that staff and patients were engaged in a relationship not of contractual service, but of inequality and exploitation. Inmates were forced to undergo a ‘moral career’ of resocialisation against their will, through which their identity was erased and supplanted. The prior, civilian self was ‘mortified’ or systematically eroded by the ‘institutional arrangements’ of the hospital, such as its admission procedures, systems of privilege and social mobility, and records of behaviour. Nevertheless, Goffman’s focus on the interaction context through which such practices took place left some room for negotiation: inmates formed ‘underlife’ cultures of resistance and devised strategies for ‘working the system’, even though these gestures were ultimately futile. Chapter 3 introduces the concept of the RI and identifies its key features. Here I revisit Foucault’s (1975) model of disciplinary power, combining elements of it with the Symbolic Interactionist theories of negotiated order (Strauss et al 1963) and interaction order (Goffman

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6 Total Institutions and Reinvented Identities

1983). I suggest that in the RI, inmates discipline themselves by internalising a gaze that is directed not only vertically downwards, from staff in positions of authority, but also horizontally and laterally, through peer-to-peer surveillance. This echoes Lukes’ (2005) three dimensional theory of power, which emphasised the need to secure the will of subjects to be governed. I suggest the term performative regulation to describe the way in which inmates monitor and sanction each other’s behaviour by sustaining a shared belief in the institutional reality, which they dramaturgically enact. Individuals learn both to present themselves as ideal inmates, ‘doing’ conformity and seeking to appear committed, and to appraise each other’s claims to authenticity, evaluating their progress in relative terms. The reticulated gaze of peer surveillance indicates a multidirectional flow of power as simultaneously top-down, bottom-up, horizontal and circulatory. Chapters 4–9 identify and examine various types of RI, seeking to elucidate how identity reinvention occurs and performative regulation operates in each. The emphasis is on the micro-level social encounters and interaction that take place within different inmate cultures, using ideas from dramaturgical theory and Symbolic Interactionism. Chapter 4 examines religious institutions, from splinter groups of mainstream faiths to separatist sects and cults, New Age ‘self-religions’ and programmes of spiritual exploration, such as the Alpha Course. I suggest that despite a wider trend of secularisation, these kinds of RIs have become increasingly popular: the resacrilisation of society has occurred through a process of recarceration. Chapter 5 investigates camps and training schemes that employ a ‘military’ approach to character reform. Disciplinary regimes and drills are used to govern inmates’ behaviour and demand submission of the will in institutional sites that range from prisoner rehabilitation programmes to outdoor sports and youth groups, weight loss camps, reality television and makeover shows. Chapter 6 explores the world of secret societies, which appeal by virtue of their exclusivity: gaining access to restricted information promises to confer social capital upon members, creating a tantalisingly mysterious allure. As well as traditional secret societies such as the Freemasons, we consider more recent recreational pursuits such as men’s service clubs and the Magic Circle. I suggest that what members find most rewarding is not the content of the specialist knowledge per se, but rather the social process of fraternisation through which such ideas are transmitted. However, the insularity of these inmate cultures can become a problem, as evidenced by the hazing rituals of initiation in fraternity houses. Chapter 7 explores the plethora of clinics and treatment programmes that

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Introduction 7

have emerged out of late modern ‘therapy culture’, which encourages us to work at our mental and emotional health. Clients voluntarily check themselves in to rehabilitation centres, therapeutic communities and selfhelp groups in the hope of overcoming everyday ‘problems of living’ (Szasz 1961), such as gambling, Internet addiction and shyness. The interaction context of self-help groups is particularly interesting to examine, as members explicitly seek to perform their commitment to treatment regimes (Weinberg 1996) while assessing whether their peers are authentically recovering (Paik 2006). In Chapter 8, we examine the experiences of those who attend academic ‘hothouses’, such as elite boarding schools and performing arts conservatories. While their various talents may be cultivated, these inmates find that the schools also intend to nurture their personal development and claim a greedy hold over their whole identities. Peer socialisation into college life encourages students to perform not only their art but their dedication to it, with a competitive intensity that can have dramatic effects. Finally, in Chapter 9, we consider the extent to which RIs can exist in cyberspace, as virtual institutions: can members of online communities feel as tightly integrated as those in physically bounded sites, and develop equally cohesive bonds with one another? From mental health forums through blogging, v-logging, fan clubs and social networking sites, we see how virtual realities at once allow identity play and circumscribe the limits of its possibility. This selection of sites is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather to demonstrate the variety of forms that RIs can take, and their pervasiveness throughout contemporary western culture. Identities can be variously reinvented by the discourses and practices of therapy, education, religion and so on, and this is possible because institutions have themselves been reinvented by processes of decarceration, democratisation and performativity. The interaction context through which all of this takes place is an under-explored object of study, which provides some fascinating fodder for the sociological imagination (Mills 1959). Themes of power, agency, conflict, negotiated order and dramaturgical selfpresentation converge in this unique opportunity to revisit classic theoretical debates.

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2 Totally Committed

Conceptualising totality The concept of the total institution (hereafter ‘TI’) was introduced in Erving Goffman’s (1961a) influential text, Asylums, a case study of St. Elizabeth’s psychiatric hospital in Washington, DC. Here, he spent a year observing under cover as ‘assistant to the athletics director’, thereby gaining access to both staff and patient areas. Inspired by his Chicago School mentors Everett Hughes and Robert Park, Goffman was working within the Symbolic Interactionist tradition (though he preferred to describe himself as an anthropologist or ethologist), and was concerned with the micro-level routines and practices through which social realities are created in everyday life. Methodologically, as an ethnographic field researcher, he sought to immerse himself within the culture he was studying, in order ‘to learn about the social world of the hospital inmate, as this world is subjectively experienced by him [sic]’ (1961a: 7). Although he did not sleep on the wards, he spent most of his time there, talking to patients and experiencing the daily round from their perspective. Goffman was unashamedly sympathetic towards these ‘inmates’, as he called them, and in acknowledging this bias, pre-empts Becker’s (1967) famous claim that sociologists have a moral duty to represent the views of the relatively powerless ‘underdogs’. However, Goffman’s aim was not to write a book about mental illness per se, but rather to demonstrate how the self was socially shaped and re-shaped by patterns of interaction, which may be crystallised in the rules and practices of institutional settings. He introduced the concept of the total institution as a Weberian ideal type (Weber 1904) which could 8

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Totally Committed 9

be found in many empirical forms, not just the psychiatric asylum. It was defined as, a place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated individuals, cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life (Goffman 1961a: 11). This included not only hospitals but army barracks, boarding schools, prisons and so on, in which disorderly groups were segregated, reformed and ultimately ‘improved’ (Wallace 1971). Goffman identified five types of TI in terms of their function: to care for the disabled, incapable and harmless; to contain those with infectious diseases; to protect the community from ‘dangerous’ people; to enable the collective pursuit of an educational or work task; and to provide sanctuary for those who voluntarily retreated from society. It is interesting to note that the latter two apply equally to Reinventive Institutions (RIs), such as university colleges, monasteries and utopian retreats (see Chapters 4 and 8), which suggest a positive volition to seek membership, yet Goffman focused almost exclusively upon the former three types. His emphasis was on the coercive nature of the power relations that operated when members were institutionalised against their will. The four key features of Goffman’s TI were: (a) the unfolding of the daily round in the same place and under the same authority, (b) batch living, or being treated alike as one anonymous mass, (c) the rigid timetabling and scheduling of activities, imposed by a formal system of rules and a body of officials, and (d) the orientation of these activities towards a single rational plan or institutional goal, namely that of resocialisation. The overall effect was one of ‘collective regimentation’, as TIs broke down some barriers: between spheres of activity (work, sleep and recreation) and between individual inmates (who were treated en masse), while creating others: between the inside and outside worlds, and between staff and inmates. Consequently, the TI inmate was ‘totally’ encompassed by the institution and immersed in its local culture; this self-contained world sustained its own reality, beyond which life became difficult to imagine. Drawing on Symbolic Interactionist notions of negotiated meaning (Blumer 1969), Goffman’s dramaturgical perspective suggested that this social reality was constructed in the manner of a theatrical performance. Casts of actors tacitly agreed to sustain a common definition of the situation (Thomas & Thomas 1928) through their individual acts

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10 Total Institutions and Reinvented Identities

of self-presentation, and sometimes perceived a discrepancy between the characters they performed to audiences frontstage and the ‘real’ selves to which they retreated in the privacy of the backstage region (for an explication of the dramaturgical approach, see Goffman 1959; Burns 1992; Manning 1992; Smith 2006). As such, the reality of the institution was no more than a working consensus of what was going on, precariously upheld by these actors through their mutual (mis-) perceptions. The continued existence of the TI was contingent upon the successful co-ordination of role performances, and subject to a constant threat of disruption. In recounting how, most of the time, most actors harmoniously co-operate to uphold social order, Goffman has traditionally been criticised for neglecting issues of power, inequality and conflict (Gouldner 1979; Stryker 1981), but more recent work has emphasised that these themes are paramount in his theory (Jenkins 2008; Scott 2010a). However, it is worth noting some criticisms that have been levelled at this model. Firstly, flaws in Goffman’s methodology and theoretical analysis may render Asylums unreliable as a document of institutional practices at the time (Davies 1989; Smith 2006). As a case study, St. Elizabeth’s was not necessarily representative of psychiatric hospitals, let alone other types of TI (Perry 1974), and so it may not have been appropriate to present as an ideal type (Levinson & Gallagher 1964). Institutions vary in their degrees of totality (Wallace 1971), just as inmates may vary in their degree of commitment to them (Lin 1968), while some TIs are more voluntaristic than coercive (Mouzelis 1971). A second criticism is of Goffman’s cavalier writing style (Williams 1988), which made his analysis rather disjointed and inconsistent (Lofland 1984). His observations were selective and impressionistic, littered with his trademark magpie’s collection of footnotes from documentary sources, and there is no supporting evidence from interviews with St. Elizabeth’s staff or patients (Smith 2006) which may have shed new light on Goffman’s analysis. In particular, he may have misinterpreted the inmate experience as being wholly undesirable: scant attention is paid to the idea that patients may regard hospital admission as a welcome relief from their symptoms (Mouzelis 1971), which themselves may have a physical, psychological and phenomenological reality beyond the level of social construction (Sedgwick 1982). It is also frustrating that Goffman talks about TIs in general terms, seeming to forget his own definitions, qualifiers and distinction between the five different types (Weinstein 1994). He fails to consider how an inmate’s voluntary admission and active pursuit of reinvention (especially beyond

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Totally Committed 11

the psychiatric context) might engender different power relations to those found in the traditional, coercive asylum.

Historicising the anti-institutional critique It is worth considering how and why the asylum came about as a setting for the treatment of the mentally ill, and why Goffman was interested in it. Until the nineteenth century, madness had been variously understood as a sign of demonic possession, witchcraft, hereditary defects and mere social nuisance. The 1834 Poor Law introduced public lunatic asylums and workhouses as broadly similar vessels of containment to which paupers were sent, depending on their ability to work. As Scull (1979) suggests, these places were essentially dumping grounds for those whose families could not afford to care for them: the label of ‘insanity’ was liberally applied to the disabled, elderly and homeless. A shift occurred with the 1845 Lunatic Asylums Act, which led local authorities to build county asylums based upon the humanistic principles of Samuel Tuke’s famous York Retreat: ‘lunatics’ were now seen as vulnerable and in need of protection (Rogers & Pilgrim 2005). Towards the end of the nineteenth century, madness began to be medicalised, or seen as mental illness. The 1890 Lunacy Act ruled that asylums should have a therapeutic as well as custodial function and be rehabilitative in their aims (Busfield 1986), while campaigners such as Henry Maudsley argued for the use of medical treatments for symptom relief rather than mere containment. The 1930 Mental Treatment Act introduced new terminology: asylums were renamed ‘mental hospitals’, and lunatics became ‘patients’. The early twentieth century saw an expansion in the range of mental disorders that were recognised (‘neurotic’ anxiety and depression as well as ‘psychotic’ schizophrenia and dementia), the numbers of people treated, and the types of treatment available (from electroconvulsive therapy to leucotomy, insulin coma therapy, and eventually pharmaceutical remedies). Mental illnesses were conceptualised as diseases, located in specific sites within the body, and somatic treatments were favoured over talk-based therapies (Prior 1993). The mental patient became the object of a new clinical gaze (Foucault 1961) as the mind, like the body, was regarded as penetrable by psychiatric knowledge. Nevertheless, the custodial function of TIs continued. The Mental Treatment Act of 1930 referred to ‘persons of unsound mind’ who could be treated against their will, insofar as they were incapable of knowing

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what was in their best interests. Certification gave way to the practice of sectioning, named after relevant sections of the 1983 Mental Health Act, which gave psychiatrists powers of detainment for the purpose of assessment and/or treatment. Goffman’s concern was with the social and moral judgements bound up in such procedures: the designation of a mentally inferior status was used to justify not only the treatments patients received but also the control of their living arrangements, selfpresentation, daily routine, and contact with the outside world. This pessimistic image of the asylum as stark, austere and rigidly controlling is familiar from iconic depictions in films and novels such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Kesey 1962), The Bell Jar (Plath 1963), An Angel At My Table (Frame 1987) and Girl, Interrupted (Kaysen 1993). The protagonists in these auto/biographical accounts raise important questions about how definitions of madness and sanity are socially constructed, value-laden judgements, made by those in positions of power. Visions of social control were also reflected in the physical design and architecture of asylum buildings. Prior (1993) describes how, until the mid-twentieth century, asylums were located in geographically isolated sites outside the main towns. They were designed to function as self-contained communities, on the one hand offering ‘a safe and positively structured therapeutic environment’ (Prior 1993: 26), whilst on the other hand, segregating and enclosing their inmates in a closed, impermeable world. This drew a symbolic boundary between the sick and the healthy, reflecting the stigma associated with mental illness: many of the ex-patients of Ballybreen, the Irish hospital he studied, referred to the institution as ‘the colony’. There were divisions between wards for men and women, adults and children, ‘idiots’ and ‘maniacs’ and those receiving different types of treatment. Even by the 1980s, the re-labelling of wards to reflect nursing specialisms (Rehab, Continuing Care and Disturbed) meant that patients’ identities were defined by their position within the administrative structure. Gittins (1998) makes a similar case, drawing on the narratives of expatients and staff at Severalls Hospital, Essex, over the period 1913–1997. As a county asylum built in response to the 1845 Lunacy Act, Severalls’ design reflected modernist principles of scientific progress, the containment of ‘disorderly’ populations, and the regulation of morality. Spatial boundaries separated inmates from the outside world (locked wards, enclosed courtyards, iron railings) and from each other (individual padded cells, locked wards and physical restraints), but also imposed group identities upon patients by assigning them to different spaces by class, gender and diagnosis. A central corridor divided the hospital into men’s and

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women’s wards, while the overcrowded pauper wards contrasted with the comfortable villas in which middle class, fee-paying patients were housed. Gittins also notes that these were administrative rather than clinical classifications, serving principally to efficiently manage large populations: Class, gender and categorising of illness were literally built into the hospital infrastructure, and thus operated as primary determinants of power relations and a way of life. Through these, Severalls’ inhabitants’ notions of identity and self were to a great extent constructed, or re-constructed (indeed, de-constructed in the older sense of the term), imprinted and defined (1998: 5). In the mid-twentieth century, sociological studies inspired by Goffman pointed to the social environments that were created within the mental hospital. Many of these theorists came from a Symbolic Interactionist perspective, and so emphasised the ways in which interactions both between staff and patients, and between different groups of patients, affected the latter’s experience of hospitalisation. The cultural milieu of the ‘inmate world’, as Goffman called it, became recognised as forming an integral part of the therapeutic environment, shaping understandings of prognosis and recovery. For example, Stanton & Schwartz (1954) described the hospital as a social system comprised of interdependent parts, whereby staff relations and practices could exist in tension or harmony with patient’s interests – an idea that was to be developed further in Strauss et al’s (1963) study of the hospital as a negotiated order between various interest groups in the occupational hierarchy. Dunham & Weinberg (1960) argued that inmate culture was characterised by a mixture of solidarity and friendship between patients, bolstered by their subordinate relationship with the staff. The tension and conflict of interests between the two groups led to a distinct inmate culture, whereby patients demonstrated resistance as much as compliance. Other studies were more critical of the effects that ward life had upon patients, insofar as they became socialised into the role of the passive, compliant inmate. Concerns were raised about patients becoming ‘institutionalised’: for example Wing (1962) pointed to patients’ attitudes of withdrawal and passivity as they became accustomed to life within the asylum walls and lost the motivation to return home. Braginsky et al (1973) observed that many long-stay, chronic patients came to see the hospital as their new home, in contrast to the acute patients who remained focused on discharge. Roth’s (1971) study of Farewell Hospital,

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a chronic care home, bemoaned the ‘slow motion’ pace of life, which fostered social and economic dependence on the institution: ‘many hospitals are not so much medical facilities as huge boarding houses for the damaged and derelict of our society’ (1971: 55). Two years later, Rosenhan (1973) famously demonstrated how difficult it was, once labelled mentally ill, to negotiate release. His team of researchers faked schizophrenia to gain admission to psychiatric wards, but found that when they ceased to display the symptoms, their ‘normal’ behaviours were interpreted in light of the diagnostic label and their protests dismissed as symptomatic ‘acting out’. Asylums is regarded as a polemical critique of psychiatry as a vehicle of social control, in particular the practice of incarcerating patients against their will. It can be located within the anti-psychiatry movement alongside the works of Laing (1965), Scheff (1966) and Szasz (1961), who argued that the label of mental illness was a misnomer for social deviance, as a threat to be contained and managed. By considering the meanings patients give to their own behaviour, we might understand ‘madness’ as a socially intelligible (Laing 1965) or communicatively rational (Crossley 2000) response to a coercive social environment. The impact of this ‘anti-institutional critique’ (Prior 1993) was an important contributory factor in the late twentieth century trend of decarceration, or the shift away from inpatient to community care (Rogers & Pilgrim 2005), although Scull (1977) suggests that this was more of a cost-cutting exercise, fuelled by an economic crisis of the state. Another important factor was the ‘pharmaceutical revolution’ of the 1950s, whereby the introduction of new antipsychotic, neuroleptic and tranquilliser drugs obviated the necessity for long stays in hospital. By the turn of the twenty-first century, most psychiatric hospitals had been closed and replaced by psychiatric units within general hospitals, alongside outpatient services. Inpatient care is still available but is restricted to relatively severe cases and the average length of stay has dramatically decreased (Rogers & Pilgrim, ibid.).

The institution as an organisational structure When writing about the ‘institution’, Goffman uses the term synonymously with ‘organisation’, although the two have slightly different meanings. Fulcher & Scott (2007) distinguish between organisations as structures, in which particular activities are carried out in a regular, rule-governed way towards a collective goal, and institutions as established practices, or culturally normative routines of interaction that

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may or may not take place within such a bounded site. In functionalist terms, a social institution addresses the ‘system needs’ of a group or society, such as those for order, stability and the (re-)integration of its members (Parsons 1951), and as such reflects their collective values (Durkheim 1893). This may take the form of an abstract ideal, such as the family, or a more tangible structure, such as the university. Organisations, meanwhile, are self-contained social systems: formal, hierarchical structures of roles (Turner 1962), rational rules (Albrow 1970) and administrative procedures, such as those of a bureaucracy (Weber 1914). Organisations are often physically bounded spaces, which can be relatively closed or open in terms of interaction with other social systems and the wider society. Goffman was concerned with the TI as a closed, impermeable organisation, insofar as this created a unique bounded world that ‘totally’ encompassed its members. Goffman’s conflation of the terms institution and organisation reflects his Symbolic Interactionist leanings: he saw the organisation not as a reified, external structure, but as comprised of institutionalised practices – regular patterns of interaction, continuously performed by individuals in the course of their daily lives. Interactionist readings of the organisation focus on the micro-level social practices through which the appearance of order and structure is created. Perhaps the most influential model to which Goffman’s approach can be compared is that of Negotiated Order Theory (Strauss et al 1963; Strauss 1978), which focused on the ways in which rules are interpreted and enacted on the ground. Rules are not static, inflexible forces upon behaviour but rather emergent products of interaction, which are subject to continual revision. Power is not held by those in certain roles or positions, but rather is fluid and dynamic: different interest groups compete and bargain with each other to gain access to resources. The snapshot of social order we might observe in a specific organisational setting is a collective accomplishment, contingent upon the various factors of the ‘negotiation context’, such as the number of actors, their experiences, skills and knowledge, the sequence and frequency of interactions, the number and complexity of issues under discussion, and the visibility of their negotiations to other parties (Strauss 1978). Negotiated Order Theory emphasises actors’ constant adaptation to the structures in which they are embedded (Fine 1984): rules can be selectively applied, stretched or ‘fudged’ in accordance with the particular interests of actors (Day & Day 1977), and we can detect a ‘revolutionary potential’ in the perspective (ibid.: 131). This was exemplified by Gouldner’s (1954, 1955) studies of industrial conflict within

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workplace organisations, where the hierarchical divisions between employees and their line managers created competing interest groups. Gouldner (1954) argued that the rules could be enforced in three main ways: through a punishment-centred bureaucracy (with open hostility and resentment between the two parties), a representative bureaucracy (with workers contributing to the formation of the rules and agreeing to comply with them), or a mock bureaucracy (whereby there was a tacit understanding that the rules would not be enforced, creating solidarity between the two parties). In the latter case, an ‘indulgency pattern’ (Gouldner 1955) operated, whereby managers and workers turned a blind eye to each other’s rule infractions. However, when a new employer chose instead to enforce the regulations, the employees rebelled by ‘working to rule’, eventually resulting in strike action. Goffman’s TI fits most evidently with the model of the punishmentcentred bureaucracy, although we see hints of the mock bureaucracy at certain points in Asylums: in the institutional ceremonies, such as ward parties, which reduce the social distance between staff and inmates, and in the notions of hospital underlife, ‘playing the system’ and ‘making do’, discussed below. In contrast to this avowed commitment to a hierarchical structure, RIs suggest something more akin to the representative bureaucracy, wherein staff and members together negotiate rules and willingly follow them.

Power as coercion The hierarchical division between staff and inmates was central to the operation of power in TIs, the distinction between mad and sane, expert and novice, and so on legitimating the supervision of a large majority by a small minority. Anticipating Foucault (1975), Goffman made reference to the powers of surveillance invested in prison guards, medical superintendents, army captains and the like by virtue of their claims to knowledge: not only of the inmate’s ‘problem’ (a specifically located disease or behavioural deviation), but also of their location and movements within the TI. Through the legitimate exercise of formalised rules, the staff were able to control every aspect of the inmates’ lives, from their contact and fraternisation with each other, to their access to other parts of the building and communication with the outside world. Staff were granted the absolute right to ‘gaze’ into the backstage regions of their charges, forcing private information about the self into public, frontstage spaces: dormitories, common rooms and hospital wards. Not surprisingly, Goffman noted mutual suspicion and

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hostility between staff and inmates, which was heightened by the visible and explicit nature of power: staff imposed the rules while inmates followed them; inmates were socially isolated and contained within the TI while staff retained contact with the outside world; interactions between the two groups were limited to the giving and receiving of instructions, social distance was maintained, and social mobility from one stratum to the other was impossible. Nevertheless, while resented, such inequality was not challenged, for it was widely understood that the distribution of civil rights was linked to the respective moral statuses of staff and inmates, which were accepted by both parties. Those who had been sent to a TI for the purpose of punishment or reform were deemed too weak and incapable of determining their own fate, while those in charge of them claimed superiority by virtue of the fact that they had never been in this position. They enforced the rules through personal encounters with their charges, but this authority was legitimate: embodying the institutional ethos, they were ‘simply carrying out orders’. Thus the inmate was assigned a very passive role in the process of remaking the self: social identities were designed according to an institutional rhetoric and imposed upon whole batches of inmates. Goffman argued that TIs were, ‘forcing houses for changing persons; each is a natural experiment on what can be done to the self’ (1961a: 22). This relates to a central theme of Asylums: that treatment procedures, living arrangements and institutional practices have significant moral implications because they are used to (re-)define the inmate’s whole self, not simply a facet of their lifestyle. Every gesture and action in the exercise of power is enforced not only in the interests of organisational efficiency, but also to remind inmates of their standing: a formal instrumental organization does not merely use the activity of its members. The organization also delineates what are considered to be officially appropriate standards of welfare, joint values, incentives, and penalties. These conceptions expand a mere participation contract into a definition of the participant’s nature or social being… Built right into the social arrangements of an organization, then, is a thoroughly embracing conception of the member – and not merely a conception of him qua member, but behind this a conception of him qua human being (Goffman 1961a: 164). In this respect, Asylums represents an important rejoinder to the criticism that Goffman, and Symbolic Interactionism more generally, neglected

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issues of power (Gouldner 1979; Stryker 1981). This misinterpretation may be a result of his unique writing style. As Becker (2003) argues, Goffman used a morally neutral, technical language to describe the forms and practices he observed, rather than either making explicitly critical value judgements or resorting to the ‘conventional categories’ already in use within the institution. This allowed him to adopt a position of anthropological indifference, presenting his analytical categories in the manner of a ‘dispassionate sorting’ (Becker 2003: 665) that appeared to be merely descriptive and drew parallels with other, familiar modes of social organisation. For example, he used terms such as ‘echelon’ rather than ‘hierarchy’ or ‘domination’, ‘role dispossession’ rather than ‘identity theft’, and ‘trimming’ or ‘programming’ rather than ‘brainwashing’ (Becker 2003: 664) – words that sound chillingly euphemistic. Becker suggests that for the scholar who reads Asylums closely, this is far more unsettling and morally disturbing than an overtly polemical account would have been, as it leads us to reflect upon the coercive aspects of our own social worlds that we take for granted. The feelings of shock, disgust, outrage and shame that are evoked are all the more powerful as we cannot dismiss the TI as an extraordinary anomaly, but must instead consider the ‘banality of evil’ (Arendt 1963). The concept of the TI revealed how organisational structures shape the behaviour of individuals through the ‘authoritative imposition of consequential identities’ (Dennis & Martin 2005: 191), albeit mediated by routine, micro-level encounters. Power was conceptualised as the capacity to influence others in a hierarchical structure, through communicative practices that limit their access to resources (Rogers 1979). The overall picture that Goffman paints is of a relatively powerless inmate, passively controlled by the rules of the TI, the actions of the staff and the institutional arrangements that normalise this pattern of domination. However, we can also detect hints of agentic resistance in the way that inmates responded to their situation, both individually and collectively, as discussed later in this chapter. Goffman’s TI was a dramaturgical interaction order (Goffman 1983) in which power was met with resistance and negotiated in a struggle for resources. Conflicts of interest were overt and undisguised, as staff and inmates alike understood the differences between their respective claims to sanity, knowledge and authority. Paradoxically, the overall effect was one of order and conformity, because this acceptance of the status differential meant that inmates’ views were rarely listened to, nor did they expect them to be. Their gestures of resistance were small and ultimately futile, aimed more at reminding themselves of their resilience as individuals

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than at making any significant difference to the way the organisation was run. As we shall see in Chapter 3, this forms an interesting contrast with the RI, in which members’ opinions are welcomed in an ostensibly democratic negotiation of power, but where their personal commitment to the ethos of the institution means that actual resistance is unlikely.

Agency and selfhood Despite accusations to the contrary, Goffman was somewhat critical of the Western conception of the rational, self-contained individual (Scheff 2006), arguing that the self was an ongoing, emergent product of interaction. Nevertheless, he depicts the author of this self, the social actor, as a relatively stable entity: someone who attempts, through consciously performed strategies, to control the impressions they create, and seeks to ‘make’ rather than passively ‘take’ social roles (cf. Turner 1962). Furthermore, Goffman implies that the actor perceives him or herself to have had a prior, whole self, distinct from the institution, which was relatively consistent. Even (or especially) those admitted against their will remained invested in the lives they had been leading outside the institution walls, and their ‘civilian self’, comprised through work, relationships and domesticity. Although this identity came under fire from the force of institutional arrangements, the fact that inmates recognised and resisted this suggests that they retained a dignified awareness of independent selfhood. The sense of being wrongfully incarcerated, protestations about being misunderstood and the desire to escape, all point to an autonomous drive to defend one’s ‘real’ self, however futile these attempts might ultimately be. Inmates furthermore perceived a conflict of interests between themselves and the staff, experiencing the TI as a hierarchical structure of ‘us and them’; this was a coercive enclosure in which they were trapped, rather than a fabric into which they wove themselves. For Goffman, then, the person who entered the TI had a distinct sense of his or her ‘true’ self, which s/he struggled to retain in the face of danger. Much of the polemical impact of Asylums stems from the moral outrage evoked by the idea of depriving an individual of their human rights and civil liberties. This is illustrated by Goffman’s essay on ‘The medical model and mental hospitalization’ (Asylums, pp. 283–336). Here, he takes an anti-psychiatric stance, arguing that the medical model is an inappropriate metaphor for the inpatient treatment of mental illness, which involves social interaction and moral judgements

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(cf. Szasz 1961). Goffman criticises the image of psychiatry as a personal service occupation, in which clients request the assistance of a technical expert and enter into a voluntary, contractual agreement. Drawing an analogy to the car repair industry, he describes a process by which customers bring a damaged possession to the servicer, leave it at the workshop and return to collect it. This is an impersonal relationship, insofar as the client’s self remains separate from the object under repair, and the servicer is only interested in ‘tinkering’ with the detached part. In the asylum, by contrast, patients committed involuntarily have no choice as to whether and how they are treated. Treatments are not simply technical but moral, and therefore socially ‘fateful’: the patient’s whole self is deemed to be faulty, not just one part, and so any ‘correction’ will significantly alter their identity. Furthermore, the whole person must remain within the hospital, while their civilian life grinds to a halt. ‘Mental hospitals institutionalize a kind of grotesque of the service relationship’, Goffman (1961a: 321) concludes, by disguising an abuse of power as an act of benevolent professionalism. Goffman’s concern was with the effects of these power relations upon inmates’ identities. A central theme of Asylums is of the self under threat: any environment that so totally encloses its members – physically, spatially, temporally and culturally – has the power to rewrite their identities without challenge. Goffman’s social actor is one who, under normal circumstances, would possess a strong sense of personal integrity: a rational, self-contained agent who enjoys exercising autonomy over his or her lifestyle (Burns 1992; Manning 1992). Once given over to the TI, however, these capabilities are gradually eroded as the self becomes putty in the hands of its captors: ‘the prepatient starts out with at least a portion of the rights, liberties, and satisfactions of the civilian and ends up on a psychiatric ward stripped of almost everything’ (Goffman 1961a: 130). Moreover, this is only the beginning of a long process; the main purpose of a TI is to act as a ‘resocialization chamber’. New identities are imposed upon the crumbling remains of the mortified self, which is rebuilt in accordance with the institutional ethos: The self, then, can be seen as something that resides in the arrangements prevailing in a social system for its members. The self in this sense is not a property of the person to whom it is attributed, but dwells rather in the pattern of social control that is exerted in connexion with the person by himself and those around him. This

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special kind of institutional arrangement does not so much support the self as constitute it (Goffman 1961a: 154). The ‘institutional arrangements’ to which Goffman refers here include the physical design of the site, schedule of activities, rationale behind the rules, and so on, which legitimate the process of identity reconstruction. However, these arrangements only become ‘real in their consequences’ (Thomas & Thomas 1928) when interpreted and enacted through the routines and practices of the staff and inmates. Thus the institutional fabric of the TI lies not in the architectural material of the rules per se, as abstract structures, but in the meanings that these hold for the participants and the subsequent effects upon the exercise of power.

The moral career The repressive, coercive effects of the TI upon the self are perhaps most evident in Goffman’s account of what he called the moral career: a ‘regular sequence of stages… in the person’s self and in his [sic] framework of imagery for judging himself and others’ (1961a: 119). Over the course of their stay, inmates’ self-identities were processed by the institutional arrangements to effect a series of changes. Previous identities were erased and replaced with new ones, designed and cultivated by the ethos of the institution. These were intended to create a permanent shift in the way that individuals defined themselves and were defined by others in future interaction. This career trajectory was ‘moral’ in the sense that again, it implicated the inmate’s entire identity rather than just an aspect of their lifestyle. It had what Goffman called an ‘extrusory’ character by systematically eroding selfhood. Goffman’s essay on the moral career (Asylums, pp. 117–155) refers to three stages (pre-patient, in-patient and ex-patient), although he focused mainly on the second insofar as it implicated the daily round of institutional practices. The ex-patient phase, in which the discharged inmate comes to terms with the stigmatising effects of having been institutionalised, is given scant attention in Asylums but is addressed in Goffman’s later work, Stigma (1963a). The pre-patient stage occurred when those around the individual complained of his or her ‘bizarre’ or inappropriate behaviour and demanded that something must be done. The emphasis here is on social reactions to deviance: with a nod to labelling theories of mental illness (Scheff 1966; Szasz 1961; Lemert 1967), Goffman suggested that whether or not a

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person entered a psychiatric hospital was contingent upon the judgements other people made of their behaviour rather than the individual experience of symptoms. This stage in itself was a trajectory of progressive commitments (Becker 1963) to the role: Goffman referred to the ‘betrayal funnel’ or ‘circuit of agents’ through which the deviant may be passed (family and friends, social workers, police) before being finally diagnosed by a doctor, and to the ‘alienative coalition’ that they formed in his or her eyes. The admission process was often arranged secretly, through acts of trickery, threats and persuasion, and it might only be once inside the TI that the patient realised what has happened. This retroactive career and its incumbent feelings of betrayal, abandonment and bitterness stand in contrast to the RI inmate, who decisively participates in each step of the journey. The in-patient phase began with the ‘mortification rituals’ of admission, which symbolically removed the items of identity equipment used by the erstwhile civilian to perform individual selfhood. Personal possessions were confiscated and replaced with standard institutional issue (pyjamas, toothbrush, comb, etc), which imposed upon the inmate a uniform identity: they became one of a batch to be treated alike, defined by the master status (Hughes 1945) of the mental patient. A symbolic boundary was marked between the prior, ‘home world’ from which the individual was to be disculturated (Somner 1959), and the new ‘universe of meaning’ (Berger & Luckmann 1967) into which they were entering, and so previous commitments, such as occupational roles, were dismissed as irrelevant. Patients might resist this with a ‘self-respecting tendency’ (1961a: 141), offering apologies or sad tales to rationalise their situation: ‘I got here by mistake because of a diabetes diagnosis, and I’ll leave in a couple of days. [The patient had been in seven weeks.]’ (1961a: 140). These accounts and justifications (Scott & Lyman 1968) served to distance the inmate from the role ascribed to him or her, and shield the self from threatening invasions. The ritualistic and insidious nature of mortification, built into the bureaucratic framework of rules and procedures, is reminiscent of Garfinkel’s (1956) degradation ceremonies, which accompanies some rites of passage: new recruits were reminded of their inferior status vis-à-vis staff and established members, and shown their place in the hierarchy. While not designed to humiliate (unlike hazing rituals, discussed in Chapter 6), there was an expectation of deferential compliance, and the patient suffered the indignity of losing control over their self-presentation. There was a violation of the ‘informational preserve’, as private details about their medical history, home background and so on were made available

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to the staff (there might also be an obligation to report further details throughout one’s stay, such as confessions of rule infractions, details of toilet visits or meals consumed), as well as invasions of their personal space and ‘territories of the self’ (Goffman 1963b). Inmates were subjected to ‘contaminating exposure’ to objects, places and people with whom they would not normally choose to associate, and had no control over whether or not they moved in these circles. Central to the process of mortification was the practice of ‘regimentation and tyrannization’: anticipating Foucault’s (1975) notion of disciplinary power over docile bodies, Goffman describes how the minutiae of corporeal movements were subject to regulation. Rules might govern the length of time one could spend in a bed or a chair, the number of steps one should take when traversing a corridor or the number of bites required to finish a meal. More generally, the inmate lost control over their ‘personal economy of action’, or the freedom to determine their daily routine: they could not choose which activities to do, when, where and with whom; nor could they decide to abandon a task and move on to another, having to seek permission to access resources they would normally take for granted. In having their ‘lines’ of action opened up to scrutiny, challenge and intervention, the inmate was humiliatingly disempowered. Progress along the moral career trajectory was represented by a ‘privilege system’ of rules, rewards and punishments for more or less desirable behaviour. Mundane items such as cigarettes were defined as contraband and had to be requested from the staff, while similarly routine activities once taken for granted, such as the right to walk outside, now had to be earned. The effects of this were also mortifying, reducing the adult inmate to the status of a child. The privilege system was built into the very fabric of the institution in the form of the ‘ward system’, a graded hierarchy of living arrangements along which patients progressed in line with their perceived level of recovery – or as Goffman saw it, their degree of compliance with the rules. Docility was rewarded by promotion to a more autonomous ward, where patients might be allowed to wear their own clothes and have unsupervised time alone, while disobedience was punished by demotion to a more closed ward with greater surveillance of their movements. Thus making an effective clinical recovery was viewed synonymously with being a ‘good’ patient, in social and moral terms: staff argued tautologically that a compliant patient was in better health while a disruptive patient was simply acting out their symptoms. Deviance and rule infractions were seen as evidence of the patient’s deterioration rather than as wilful, agentic resistance (cf. Rosenhan 1973). Here again, the whole self was implicated, as

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one’s position in the ward hierarchy was read as an index of one’s moral worth and status. Patients were taught that whether or not they ‘got better’ was a matter of personal responsibility, dependent on their social conduct, attitude to authority and willingness to change. Material artefacts and routinised procedures served to operationalise and reify the ward system, in particular the ‘case record’, which documented the minutiae of a patient’s behaviour, day by day. Goffman was sceptical about the way in which ‘evidence’ was selectively recorded to create a narrative of progress or decline: he pointed out that while a document of successive episodes of deviance painted the picture of an unsound mind, it would be possible to dredge up equivalent information from anybody’s life history and create a similar account (1961a: 146). Staff therefore wielded enormous power in being able to frame an individual’s moral status. Incidents of good or bad behaviour were ‘looped’ self-referentially to justify a diagnosis and treatment plan, while contrary evidence was overlooked. Case records were discussed in staff meetings, where opinions were shared and reinforced; non-compliant inmates found themselves vulnerable to being labelled ‘troublesome’ and detained for longer.

Cynical compliance Over time, the in-patient became accustomed to the asylum’s rules and practices and began to orient themselves to its institutional arrangements. ‘Secondary adjustments’ allowed the inmate to accommodate to their new situation and make institutional life as comfortable as possible for themselves. Once they had ‘learned the ropes’, they developed an understanding of how some rules might be fudged or circumvented, some staff bargained with, and so on. Goffman identified various ‘lines’ of action that the inmate could take, reflecting different levels of commitment to the official rhetoric and compliance with its regimes. These also indicated the extent to which the self had been successfully mortified or remained intact. Withdrawal (rendering oneself incommunicative or inaccessible) and intransigence (refusing to co-operate) suggested that the patient retained a sense of his or her own agency and struggled to protect the boundaries of the self. Conversion, meanwhile, suggested a genuine transformation, whereby the inmate ‘sincerely’ believed in the benefits of reinvention and was fully immersed in the role of the mental patient. Most commonly, however, inmates learned to ‘play it cool’ with a combination of these techniques, vacillating between different levels of commitment.

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In some cases, these lines of action were themselves strategically performed: Goffman suggested that patients learned to give ‘cynical’ displays of docility, by offering the responses they thought doctors wanted to hear but not believing in the parts that they were playing. The well socialised inmate recognised that in order to be deemed eligible for release, they must play along with the rules. As Goffman sardonically remarked, ‘[t]he patient must “insightfully” come to take, or affect to take, the hospital’s view of himself’ (1961a: 143). This indicated a sense of ‘moral loosening’ or fatigue, as patients ceased to care about defending their previous identities, and resignedly did whatever it took to get out. This is supported by other studies of psychiatric institutions, during and since Goffman’s time. Caudill (1968) describes a Mr Esposito, who tried in vain to persuade staff that his ‘difficult’ behaviour arose in response to the ward conditions and infantilising treatment he received. Whenever he offered such a socially intelligible account of his symptoms, the doctors responded by citing theories of organic pathology that discredited his story. Eventually, Mr Esposito’s frustration gave way to apathy, and he adopted the role of the ‘good’ (passive) patient: At this point it seemed that Mr Esposito had begun to realize he could not communicate his needs through excitement. He therefore shifted his approach to his therapist, as indicated in the therapeutic progress notes of the next few days. He became ‘submissive, quiet, calm, clear and clean shaven.’ Dr Ryan seems to have responded very positively to this shift in Mr Esposito’s behavior, and communication improved between doctor and patient (Caudill 1968: 138–139). More recently, Hornbacher (1998) confesses to having invented a story about childhood sexual abuse in order to convince staff that she was engaging with her ‘real’, deeper issues and therefore eligible for release. Her case exemplifies the ‘moral loosening’ and fatigue that Goffman attributes to the long term inmate who learns to manipulate those around them – a ‘shameless game’ of ‘civic apathy’ (Goffman 1961a: 151): The remainder of my time in Lowe House was spent dealing with this non-issue… I lobbed a firebomb to the right, and while everyone was chasing the firebomb, I disappeared stage left. Absolved. I created a straw man and he took all of the blame (Hornbacher 1998: 212).

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Regulated resistance Such cynical performances were consolidated and intensified in a culture of resistance, which Goffman called the ‘underlife’. This was a pattern of action, both individual and collective, through which inmates sought to challenge the authority of the staff and assert their own autonomy. A key feature of the underlife was its distinctiveness: against a background of clear rules, hierarchical divisions and unidirectional flows of power, any gestures of resistance were immediately visible. There was no ambiguity over how inmates should behave, and so they saw themselves quite clearly as either conforming or rebelling. Moreover, it was the coercive nature of the TI, the institutional arrangements themselves, that created the conditions of possibility for deviance. As Goffman observed, practices of rationing and restricting made even the most mundane objects and activities appear more desirable. This ‘indulgencegenerating’ character of sanctions (Goffman 1961a: 251) is an intriguing paradox of the classic TI, and reminiscent of Gouldner’s (1955) mock bureaucracy. However, the subordinate status of the asylum inmates, and the fact that their views tended to be discredited, meant that these acts of resistance were limited and ultimately futile. Many were simply individual, opportunistic gestures of defiance in the face of power, aimed more at preserving the inmate’s dignity than at any organised collective uprising. Indeed, a more overt display of resistance threatened to reinforce the staff’s image of them as ‘troublesome’ patients and prolong their stay. This evoked further cynical performances, whereby in order to avoid punishment, inmates would pretend to be engrossed in obedient behaviours, while making surreptitious moves to break the rules. These can be read as acts of role distance (Goffman 1961b), as actors sought to assert that they were more than just the roles assigned to them. Here again we see the resilience of a ‘true’ self, whose agency arises in the face of repressive power. In De Certeau’s (1984) terms, such acts of ‘making do’ with one’s everyday life, while apparently trivial in their effects, have a symbolic importance in flexing the muscles of individual agency. The manifest function of these acts for the inmates was a pragmatic, instrumental one of making life on the ward more comfortable while they waited out the terms of their sentence. Goffman used the term ‘secondary adjustments’ to refer to the tactics and strategies inmates acquired once they had made the ‘primary adjustment’ of learning the TI’s official rules. This was also known as ‘working the system’, empha-

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sising the inmates’ agentic volition. Secondary adjustments involved either taking an unauthorised means to a legitimate end (for example, sneaking extra food from the canteen) or taking legitimate means to an unauthorised end (such as using a day pass to buy contraband items in the town). ‘Make do’s were artefacts reworked for a new purpose, such as spoons carved into knives, or rolled up newspapers used to cushion hard seats. Spatial territories could also be subverted, as for example inmates retreated to private areas (toilet cubicles, phone booths, etc) to indulge in forbidden activities like smoking, or pilfered goods from a shared resource like the kitchen. The staff often turned a blind eye to these minor infractions, recognising their ultimate triviality, and thus contained any potential disruption. The effect of this indulgency pattern (Gouldner 1954) was to sustain and normalise a low level of deviance in the manner of repressive toleration (Marcuse 1964). At other times, resistance was more organised: patients mobilised together to protest against rules, request privileges or stand up for one another in the face of admonishments. They also devised trading systems to circumvent the limited rationing of supplies, by exchanging contraband possessions, bargaining, bartering and gambling with substitute currencies, such as cigarettes. Patients would ask each other to perform favours for such a payment rather than ask the staff, thereby keeping potentially discrediting information away from the case record. More deviously, they organised raids on the hospital stores, either sharing their bounty or adding it to a personal stash. It is interesting to note the significance of the fraternisation process here: more established inmates mentored new recruits and ‘showed them the ropes’, while a buddying system operated as inmates paired up. Crucially, Goffman argued that it was this interaction context that sustained the hospital underlife as much as the individual acts of the members within it: the inmate world had its own culture of recruitment, socialisation, demands and sanctions. Inmates were locked into relationships of mutual regard, offering each other just as many rewards and punishments as the official ward system, for example, by ostracising ‘squares’ who refused to take part in rebellion. Mechanisms of informal social control operated alongside the formal controls and contributed in equal measure to the scaffolding of institutional arrangements. Ultimately, however, the power of the underlife culture was also limited, for Goffman observed that in the main, patients remained wary of each other and socialised only in pursuit of instrumental gains, rather than for the intrinsic benefits of fraternisation. The stigmatising nature of the ‘mentally ill’ label, especially when imposed against their will, meant

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that they did not consciously mobilise together, nor did they embrace the status of patienthood: instead of clinging together to uphold their patient status against the traditional world, they sought in cliques and dyads to define themselves as normal and to define many of the other patients present as crazy (Goffman 1961a: 265).

Revisiting coercion In Goffman’s model of the TI, the most salient pattern is one of coercion, albeit peppered with hints of resistance. He used the concept to describe institutional organisations that operate as ‘resocialization chambers’, involving the ‘authoritative imposition of consequential identities’ (Dennis & Martin, op. cit.) against the inmate’s will. This affords the self a largely passive role in the process of its reinvention: the old self is mortified by a violent assault on its integrity, and a new self put in its place. The inmate has no say in which identity this will be and how it will be imposed: the moral career trajectory is pre-determined by the ‘institutional arrangements’ of rules and rhetoric, routines and practices. Staff and inmates stand in opposition to each other in an explicit power hierarchy, and the social distance between the two parties is great. Furthermore, TIs are closed and impermeable to the outside world, making it harder for inmates to maintain connections with their previous, civilian identities. Nevertheless, the TI model does attribute a limited degree of agency to the individual inmate: there is a ‘true self’ trapped within the institutional structure, at least initially, and this is defined as the person who went into the institution, not the one who comes out. Consequently, we find gestures of resistance, albeit limited and ultimately futile, as the inmate tries to cling to their former self. They do not embrace the new identity, which is often stigmatising, nor do they cultivate a group identity with their peers. The underlife is a culture that emerges out of necessity rather than choice, as inmates share a common but unwelcome fate, and it functions primarily to satisfy each inmate’s individual interests. The most the TI inmate can hope for is to make secondary adjustments to their new life and feign compliance well enough to be released; more commonly, however, they succumb to the mortification process and find themselves institutionalised. In the next chapter, we shall see how this contrasts with the pattern found in RIs, whose clients are involved from the outset in engaging

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with the institutional rhetoric, voluntarily seeking admission and actively participating in the process of reinvention. Although a more critical interpretation points to the subtler operation of power, it is more difficult to prove the case that RI inmates are being treated against their will. Indeed, the will itself is subject to reconstruction as participants learn to want these changes (cf. Rose 1990). In the RI, there is greater ambiguity over where the prior self ends and the new self begins, or where the boundary lies between the individual and their institutional arrangements. The reinvented self is part of these arrangements, not only as an emergent product but as an integral part of its operative mechanisms. Furthermore, insofar as RIs cultivate self-governed cultures of conformity, we shall see how the dispersed, reticulated gaze of peer surveillance can be no less powerful than TI regimens in determining the fate of inmates.

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3 Reinventive Institutions

This chapter considers how social and political changes since Goffman’s time have impacted upon the structure and function of total institutions, and the motivations and perceptions of their members. Not only has the physical context shifted, from isolated enclosures to community-based ‘institutions without walls’, but also the symbolic meaning of resocialisation has changed, from one of coercive mortification to voluntary self-improvement. The model of the ‘Re-inventive Institution’ (RIs) that I introduce here can be seen as both re-invented in its design and re-inventing in its effects. However, this does not necessarily imply the liberation of the agentic inmate, for a subtler form of power operates through the circulation of discourses and routinised practices that keep members equally committed to an institutional world. This process, which I call ‘performative regulation’ is more than just disciplinary power imposed on docile bodies (Foucault 1975; Rose 1990), for it demands the active involvement of individuals in the creation of their own regimes and adherence to them, as well as the mutual surveillance of members by their peers. Yet it is also more than a democratic interaction order (Goffman 1983) or negotiated order (Strauss 1978), for hierarchical relations affect the way that institutional rules are designed and implemented. Performative regulation therefore describes a multidirectional flow of power as simultaneously top-down, bottom-up, horizontal and circulatory. As in the TI, there is a tension between active and passive constructions of the self in authoring its new identity, but the balance between the two has shifted from one of manifest coercion/latent agency to one of manifest agency/latent coercion. With this in mind, I define the RI as, a material, discursive or symbolic structure in which voluntary members actively seek to cultivate a new social identity, role or status. 30

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This is interpreted positively as a process of reinvention, selfimprovement or transformation. It is achieved not only through formal instruction in an institutional rhetoric, but also through the mechanisms of performative regulation in the interaction context of an inmate culture.

Decarceration: The mortification of TIs One of the driving forces for these changes in the latter part of the twentieth century was the trend of decarceration: a shift away from closed, total institutions towards community-based alternatives. This applied mainly in the context of psychiatry, as concern grew for the welfare of incarcerated inmates following the publication of Goffman’s Asylums, other critiques of the demoralising effects of institutionalisation (Wing 1962; Roth 1971; Rosenhan 1973) and the polemical texts of the anti-psychiatric movement (Szasz 1961; Laing 1965; Scheff 1966). Martin’s (1985) Hospitals in Trouble, a review of scandalous tales of neglect, abuse, and indeed ‘mortification’ in asylums, concluded that patients’ welfare was subsumed beneath the organisational and management pressures of running a TI. Martin pointed to the many forms of isolation (geographical, intellectual, personal and so on) that both patients and staff suffered, making this a wholly undesirable workplace. It seems that isolation was built into the structures and arrangements of the TI, creating what we might call an ‘institutionalised institutionalisation’. Consequently, many of the large mental hospitals were closed and their inmates transferred to various alternatives, which were consolidated by UK government initiatives of community care in the 1990s: these included new community mental health centres, outpatient clinics, halfway hostels, day care centres and voluntary services (Prior 1993; Rogers & Pilgrim 2005). Those deemed still to need inpatient care were transferred to psychiatric wards of general hospitals, creating a small but significant minority of classic TI inmates. Nevertheless, the average length of stay was drastically reduced, as was the number of beds available, so that now only 3.2% patients remain for more than 90 days (Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health 1998). This trend has been interpreted in different ways. On the one hand, decarceration was a triumph for anti-institutional morality, but on the other, it created problems of its own. Critics have pointed to a ‘revolving door’ effect of people being admitted, discharged and re-admitted for only the short term relief of their symptoms, while receiving insufficient support in the community (Lauer & Brownstein 2008). From a political

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economy perspective, Scull (1977, 1979) argued that the closure of traditional TIs was due more to a fiscal crisis of welfare capitalism than to a genuinely altruistic concern with patients’ welfare: the cost to the state of inpatient care and building maintenance was becoming unmanageable as hospital populations grew. However, decarceration was also fuelled by a ‘pharmaceutical revolution’ in the 1950s and 60s, as three types of drug were introduced to treat psychiatric symptoms: major tranquillisers and anti-psychotics, such as chlorpromazine to treat schizophrenia, minor tranquillisers or benzodiazepines to treat anxiety, and anti-depressants such as tricyclics, MAOIs, and eventually SSRIs, such as Prozac and Seroxat – miraculous ‘wonder drugs’ that were prescribed for what critics saw as an ever-expanding list of once normalised ‘problems in living’ (Szasz 1961; Healy 2004). At the same time, there has been an increasing interest in controlling the behaviour of ‘troublesome’, disorderly populations, recasting some mental illnesses in moral terms (Nettleton 2006). Consequently, Prior (1993) argues that we should not overstate the impact of the anti-institutional critique, for dehospitalisation was a multifaceted process that was already gathering momentum by the time that Goffman and his contemporaries published their works. He suggests that a more pertinent factor shaping each of these dimensions was the reconceptualisation of mental disorders and ideas about appropriate treatment. As Foucault’s (1963) genealogical account showed, understandings of ‘madness’ have been subject to successive historical revisions, in line with changing notions of reason and rationality (Busfield 1996). More recently, the delivery of healthcare services has been changed by the introduction of new technologies. Telephone counselling, telepsychiatry (Rogers & Pilgrim 2005) and the Internet have facilitated access to medical knowledge, information and support, so that erstwhile passive patients have become relatively well informed, critically reflexive consumers (Lupton 1995). Increasing numbers of people join online support groups (Alemi et al 1996) or use online resources to selfdiagnose, becoming ‘expert patients’ who know more about their conditions than some medical professionals (Fox et al 2005). Even those who have not been formally diagnosed or labelled are encouraged to monitor their own physical and mental health with screening programmes and check-ups (Hughes 2000; Lupton 1995), extending the clinical gaze from sick to healthy populations. Armstrong (1995) describes this trend towards ‘surveillance medicine’ as a key component of medicalisation, or the reframing of social problems as clinical conditions (Conrad 2006). Through the ‘psychiatrization of difference’

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(Castel et al 1982), new subjectivities have been created and defined as pathological, thereby legitimating the need for more treatment centres, regimes and therapeutic discourses. An ever-expanding list of experiences that would previously have been normalised as everyday ‘problems in living’ (Szasz 1961), such as shyness (Scott 2006) and obesity (Monaghan 2007) are now defined as addictions or pathologies for which people should seek help. Decarceration has also occurred more widely, across different institutional contexts. Workplace organisations were transformed by the process of debureaucratisation, as the traditional Weberian hierarchy of ranked officials came under challenge. The ‘managerial revolution’ of the 1950s–1970s, which separated company ownership and control, gave line managers greater power to supervise teams of workers in a dispersed, extended network. New regimes of scientific management, flexi-time and human resource management in the late twentieth century meant that the organisation was restructured to transcend the boundaries of physically enclosed spaces. Organic organisations, in which teams of employees collaborated on each other’s projects instead of having rigidly defined roles, and network organisations, which subcontracted work out to third parties, became increasingly popular, and with the rise of the Internet and pervasive computing, many virtual organisations now exist only in the ether of cyberspace (Fulcher & Scott 2007). In the penal context, prisoners may be released on parole or discharged into community reform and rehabilitation programmes, while young offenders may receive non-custodial sentences such as electronic tagging and Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs). Increasingly, institutional practices operate independently of a physically bounded site, encroaching into the spaces of everyday life. Lyons (2001) suggests that we are living in a surveillance society, whereby more and more aspects of our daily lives are monitored by new technologies: not only those imposed, such as CCTV, identity cards and DNA databases, but also, as I argue, those sought out, such as self-help groups. Cohen (1985) argues that decarceration has simply widened the net of surveillance over vaster territories, so that larger, erstwhile ‘healthy’ populations become caught within its mesh. Having seeped through the TI walls, power has become ‘trans-institutional’ (Castel et al 1982): dispersed and pluralised throughout myriad sites, not all of which are closed and total – or indeed even recognised as institutions. Paradoxically, therefore, the effects of decarceration are more indicative of recarceration. That is, rather than being dissolved into harmonious democratic negotiation, power has simply been redirected

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into other channels, where it operates more insidiously. These might be understood as ‘zombie institutions’ (Beck 1992; Bauman 2000), which though dead in form are still alive in their effects.

The culture of reinvention At the micro-level, it is important to consider how a culture of introspection and self-conscious vigilance has driven individuals to seek refuge in these places. Why have we become so concerned with repairing, reforming, improving, and reconstructing our identities, and why does the idea of authentic living hold so much promise? Goffman’s mid-twentieth century writing depicted a rather stoical, rational, selfcontained individual who, though conscious of dramaturgical concerns, did not seriously doubt his or her own integrity. Goffman’s (1959) actor was concerned about how the self might appear, and how audiences might gain the wrong impression, but not about whether its private, essential form was adequate. Indeed, it was in this ‘backstage’ sphere of life that actors could relax out of role and indulge their real selves. Even in Asylums, where the focus is on how patient identities come under threat, there is still the assumption that there was a wellintegrated, relatively stable self there in the first place. In Goffman’s theory, the default is a healthy, contented, whole self, whose destruction was a moral outrage. In contemporary debates about the self, however, we find a more pessimistic view. Gone is the idea of stability and fixity, and in its place we find theories of fragmentation, uncertainty and anxiety. The psychic structure of the self is said to have undergone a radical transformation in response to changes in the cultural climate of Western societies, particularly secularisation, Weberian rationalism and disenchantment, and the rise of individualism. Reviewing this literature, Gubrium & Holstein (2001) make a distinction between modernist theories, which point to an essential, inner self that can be invaded, colonised or threatened but may be rebuilt, and postmodernist theories, which suggest that there is no underlying self, only fragmented, multiple identity performances, leaving us to construct an entirely new self. Nevertheless, they argue that both sets of theories suggest essentially the same thing: that the contemporary Western self is preoccupied with a quest for authenticity and self-improvement. Berger et al (1973) pointed to the decline of traditional structures such as the extended family and organised religion, which had once provided distinct social roles and identities, and suggested that the self roamed

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around ‘homelessly’, looking for a set of meanings to adhere to. Yet at the same time, it has become increasingly hard to know where to look for such solutions: we are bombarded with images of different ‘possible selves’ (Markus & Nurius 1986) via the mass media, and live a ‘multiphrenic’ existence (Gergen 1991) as social chameleons, adapting ourselves to the situations we move through and the people we meet. This is more than the dramaturgical strategy of tailoring one’s identity performances to different audiences, however, for it also affects the actor behind the characters – the inner self. Phenomenologists point to the pluralisation of the lifeworld (Berger & Luckmann 1967), whereby experiencing the social world as a fragmented reality means experiencing ourselves differently within each part of it. The self has become increasingly fluid, dynamic and lacking internal cohesion, which on the one hand leaves us free to construct our own identities from a plurality of images, symbols and discursive representations (Hall 1996), but on the other hand, creates a paralysing sense of uncertainty and anxiety (Marris 1996; Wilkinson 2001). We perceive risks in every social environment we encounter (Beck 1992) – even though these may be manufactured by human agency (Giddens 1990) – and so it seems safer to retreat to the relatively controllable inner world. The paradoxical effect is that despite being plagued by feelings of self-doubt, risk and uncertainty, we still turn to the self as the last remaining source of knowledge, and attempt to anchor ourselves in its quagmire of meanings. In Giddens’ (1991) account of late modernity, these experiences are related to changes in the structure of society. His account of the disembedding of social relations and their rearticulation across time and space holds an interesting resonance with the idea of remodelling the TI. Just as Giddens points to social institutions like the family, the workplace and mass media as being less concrete and tangible, we might say that the structure of total institutions has also changed, from being located in physically bounded sites to being dispersed through different cultural formations. An alternative model of ‘liquid modernity’ (Bauman 2000), though contrary to Giddens’ theory in many ways, presents a similar view of institutional dissolution as the consequence of an unshackling of social relations from traditional structures of authority, such as community, social class and occupation. Liquid institutions are those that are not fixed in time and space but rather flow and move through barriers, seeping into the skins of their individual members. These structural changes are seen to affect everyday life at the microlevel through the emergence of a post-traditional order (Giddens 1994), in which individuals must decide for themselves how to live and what

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choices to make. Social identities are no longer imposed by external authority structures, such as the church and extended family, and are increasingly viewed as personal constructions. Beck & Beck-Gernsheim (2002) describe a process of individualisation, whereby the late modern actor seeks to plan and control his or her life course, through constant reflection and rational choice: the ‘DIY biography’. Giddens (1991) suggests that emancipatory politics, which challenged the external imposition of inequality, oppression and exploitation, have given way to life politics, wherein the self is both the agent of change and the problem to be tackled. This involves a constant questioning of one’s own morality, decisions about how best to live, and an obligation to live authentically, or true to one’s potential (Giddens 1991: 215). Intimacy, for example, has undergone a structural transformation away from the traditional institution of marriage to the serial monogamy of the ‘pure relationship’, based upon emotional rather than practical ties (Giddens 1992). This is organised by principles of equality, openness and negotiation: partners constantly reflect upon whether they are happy, and move on if they are not: commitment is only provisional and happiness must be worked at. However, such freedom comes at a cost. The idea of complete selfdetermination can be a troublesome burden, the obligation to get it ‘right’ creating an overwhelming sense of responsibility for one’s own fate. Giddens describes the late modern condition as one of pervasive ontological insecurity and existential anxiety. Instead of being able to trust in the stability of our relationships, families and careers, we have learned to doubt everything and inhabit precarious, fragile lifeworlds. The Giddensian agent lacks the robustness that Goffman’s actor took for granted, and is plagued by existential questions about their ontology (what it means to be alive, and why it matters), the finitude of human life (living towards one’s death with a reflexive self-awareness that time is limited), the experience of others (whether they can be trusted, and what they might provide for us), and the continuity of self-identity (how to keep a particular narrative going) (Giddens 1991: 54–55). The response to this last dilemma, Giddens argues, is to regard the self as a ‘reflexive project’: something to be designed and planned, continuously worked upon, revised and monitored. This might take the form of signing up for a course of therapy, starting a new hobby, changing one’s career or embarking on a diet. Paradoxically, these highly individualistic goals are pursued through social means, as actors look to new ‘expert systems’ for guidance on how to implement change.

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The institutions in which we search for new identities incorporate therapeutic discourses, normative practices and modes of interaction, and so may not appear as tangible settings. Indeed, in Giddens’ (ibid.) view, institutions themselves have become self-reflexive, by questioning their own mechanisms and exploring alternative arrangements: they may be rearticulated as global or even virtual structures, and encourage bottom-up as well as top-down flows of power. There has been a lay reskilling of the would-be member, who is no longer seen as institutional putty. Thus RI members will often be consulted on the design and implementation of its programme, if not by leaving critical feedback then at least by being considered as a target audience. As capitalist enterprises, many RIs realise that they must appeal to a niche market of consumers, and seek to understand these clients’ interests and motivations. This may be presented as an institutional rhetoric of ‘helping’ ‘enabling’ or ‘unlocking potential’ – seemingly altruistic motives that encourage new recruits to see this as a journey made under their own volition. As Bauman (2000) argues, consumers shop around nomadically for the ‘right’ solution, while service providers work hard to curry favour with potential clients: ‘Authorities no longer command; they ingratiate themselves with the chooser; they tempt and seduce.’ (Bauman 2000: 64). This effect is particularly noticeable in the context of psychotherapy, self-help and counselling, discussed more in Chapter 8. The rise of ‘therapy culture’ (Furedi 2004) in North America and Western Europe suggests an anxious preoccupation with the self as unfinished business: a collection of loose ends to be tied up. Lasch (1979) argued that in a culture of narcissism, we have become increasingly intolerant of imperfection, while doubting our own resilience to weather the storms of life events. Without traditional role models (he makes controversial claims about the loss of the patriarchal father figure) and lacking a sense of internalised authority, the modern self has a weak superego, which sits unhappily with the demands of our individualist culture. At the first sign of trouble, we seek out others who promise salvation, and impatiently hope for an instant solution. Lasch talks of the unrealistic hopes we pin onto therapists and counsellors, and how, as ‘adoring disciples’, we fail to criticise or hold them accountable to their claims. Instead, we believe blindly in the possibility of cure, repair or improvement and adhere to their regimes. This ‘faith in the counsellors’, noted some half a century ago by Halmos (1965), is said to have intensified with rise of the ‘psy’ disciplines and ‘psy’ experts (Rose 1990). These are the secular priests of

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late modernity, who promise to save us from ourselves. Foucault (1976) pointed to the ‘confessional’ rituals of psychotherapy, whereby simply acknowledging one’s shortcomings and requesting guidance brings relief from the burden of individual responsibility. The discourses cited by counsellors transmit a disciplinary power, internalised by clients, which reconstitutes their subjectivities: as recovering addicts, alcoholics, co-dependants, and so on. Foucault talks of the expert knowledge vested in the confessor, not only to invoke confessions from the recalcitrant follower, but also to ‘judge, punish, forgive, console and reconcile’ (1998: 61–62). Significantly, the process echoes that of the moral career imposed on Goffman’s asylum inmate: the client learns the moral significance of their ‘sinful’ conduct, which has implications for the self as a whole (Am I a good person? Should I have acted in that way? Do I deserve to be treated like that?). Interestingly, too, Foucault suggests that the expert authority of the confessor can take many forms, beyond the therapeutic context: it may reside in an individual person (such as a spiritual guru), an organisation’s code of practice (such as an ethical review committee), a system of knowledge (such as an academic discipline), a peer group’s conditions for membership (such as completion of a hazing ritual) or a technological artefact (such as a computer). In subsequent chapters we examine the role of ritualistic confessionals in each of these RIs’ institutional arrangements. However, this is not simply a matter of cultural doping (Garfinkel 1967). The suggestion of a need for redemption and self-improvement is not passively taken but actively interpreted and worked with by the client as a knowledgeable agent. Indeed, the Sartrean cynic might argue that we seek advice from those who tell us what we want to hear (Craib 1994), and so even by choosing a particular counsellor, we have already made an unconscious decision as to how we will resolve our problems. Bauman’s (2000) image of the nomadic consumer shopping for a new identity suggests that the old self is willingly discarded and the new self eagerly sought, in contrast to the mortifying practices that Goffman described. Bauman describes this process as a rite of exorcism, through which we seek to shed unwanted parts of the self. Nevertheless, it is important not to overestimate the freedom and autonomy of the RI-seeking agent, or the realism of their goals. Craib (1994), as both a psychotherapist and sociologist, suggested that the rising popularity of psychotherapy and counselling was fuelled by a culture that encouraged unrealistic hopes and desires: personal growth, fulfilment and self-actualisation were presented not as abstract, ethereal concepts but as concrete, political rights to which every individual

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was entitled. He was critical of the idea of improving or reinventing the self, for human nature was inevitably a ‘disappointing’ mess of good and bad, love and hate, success and failure, impulse and restraint. Craib denounced the notion of the perfectible self as a dangerous myth, arguing that a more realistic aim was to accept feelings of ambivalence, conflict, and ultimately disappointment. The rise of RIs can be seen as part of this culture of dissatisfaction with the fallible self. They offer to process, reshape and reform by trimming away negative emotional experiences, replacing them with a discursively constituted institutional identity. To borrow a phrase from Craib (ibid.), what then emerges is a set of ‘gingerbread people’, all fitting the same cookie-cutter model and chanting the same views. Ironically, far from embarking on an individualistic journey of self-discovery, adherents are provided with ‘McSelves’ – generic new identities, not so very different from the standard hospital issue of the Goffmanesque asylum.

Institutional inscription The self-reflexivity of these identity projects introduces another level of analysis: not only are individuals aware of themselves as objects to be reconstructed, but they are also aware of themselves as subjects, driving the process of reconstruction. An important feature of life within the RI is the participants’ understanding and representation of this process to themselves and others. We can contrast this to the moral career of Goffman’s TI inmate, who was aware only of being controlled by others, and positioned themselves as victims, secure in their private authenticity. The RI inmate faces a more complex task in having to make sense of their own decision that they are flawed in some way, and that reinvention is needed. They must engage in biographical identity work (Gubrium & Holstein 1995), by reflecting upon and ordering their life experiences into a coherent self-narrative that creates meaning out of adversity, ambivalence or confusion. Motives may be identified, either prospectively (a conscious decision to reinvent oneself) or retrospectively (to help oneself adapt to a new position), as well as heroes, villains and other mythical archetypes of the fictional genre (McAdams 1993). Typically, too, these tales follow a narrative of triumph over adversity, through the positive reinterpretation of challenging life experiences. As Plummer (1995) explains, Stories of suffering, surviving and surpassing are personal experience stories which speak initially of a deep pain, a frustration, an anguish…

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The narrative tells of a form of suffering that previously had to be endured in silence or may indeed not even have been recognised at all… There is a coming out, a shift in consciousness, a recovery through which a negative experience is turned into a positive identity and a private pain becomes part of a political or a therapeutic language (Plummer 1995: 50). The RI inmate is actively engaged in constructing an account of agentic, voluntary self-improvement. Strauss (1969) suggests that we seek to reach a subjectively meaningful understanding of changes to our roles or statuses as transformations of identity, which, if not actively pursued, are at least defined retrospectively as having been in one’s own interests. We draw upon a culturally legitimated grammar of motives (Mills 1959) to rationalise that these various life experiences ‘helped us grow’, or ‘made us who we are today’. Strauss points to five such types of transformation, all of which seem pertinent to the discussion of RIs. Firstly, there may be a temporary change, such as mourning or sickness, which though unpleasant at the time, teaches us something new. Secondly, there may be periods of disidentification with a previous identity, for example when leaving home or starting a new job. Thirdly, there may be a longer term process of education or coaching, whereby the learner moves gradually along a sequence of stages towards a desired state of competence. Fourthly, ceremonial rites of passage function to welcome an erstwhile outsider into a closed community or allow those inside to move up the ranks. Finally, a ‘turning point’ may occur, at which an individual finds themselves in an unexpected new role that changes their perspective on life. This may be perceived as externally imposed, as for example one adapts to unemployment or a lover’s betrayal, but equally can be self-imposed, when an individual feels misaligned with their current identity, begins to question themselves and seek resolution, such as the decision to come out as non-heterosexual. Crucially, Strauss argues that while many turning points are experienced as private, internally driven processes, they are often institutionally mediated. An authority figure may determine whether an inmate has met certain key challenges that demonstrate growth, maturity or courage (for example by passing an initiation ceremony) or that they have reached the required threshold of a trajectory towards self-improvement (such as one of the twelve steps in a recovery programme), and that they are eligible for entry, progression or release. Furthermore, the turning point takes into account the reactions of others, insofar as it often involves a proclamation of one’s new, private, identity to a public audi-

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ence, whose opinions matter. Therefore in the institutional context, it is not only the authoritative judgements of leaders that are interactionally ‘fateful’ (Goffman 1967), but also the more informal opinions voiced by peers and fellow inmates. These significant others (Mead 1934) may share formal membership with the individual, or figure more as an imagined, symbolic reference group to whom inmates orient themselves. This suggests that the inmate culture of an RI provides an increasingly salient interaction context for the reinvention of identity, compared to its more limited role in the TI. Status passages are institutionally mediated not only in the process of their unfolding, but also in the manner of their discursive framing. The stories that members construct are not purely individual, selfauthored accounts but rather are shaped by the discourses and rhetoric of the RI to which they are committed. They are designed, created and told with reference to a wider set of meanings that circulate in the institution’s values, norms and communicative practices. Gubrium & Holstein (2001) suggest that the very private troubles of contemporary selfhood are understood and accounted for by publicly available narratives, which can be virtually bought ‘off the shelf’ at institutional outlets. A ‘panorama of discursive environments’ (2001: 12) surrounds the individual, providing an array of convenient identity templates: not only for the troubled selves they might have been in the past, but also for the ideal, possible selves that they might become. Clients perform identity work by selecting from these templates and fitting themselves into them, accounting for their troubles with standardised discursive frames. For example, the ‘recovering alcoholic’ is a discursively constituted subject position (cf. Foucault 1976), characterised by notions of addiction, disease and helplessness, but also the anticipation of living with sobriety (Denzin 1987). The discursive environments to which Gubrium & Holstein point are an array of institutions that, like the RI, are not limited to physically bounded, totalising structures: they include new religious movements, self-help groups and relationship counselling. Each of these institutions is ‘in the business of structuring and reconfiguring personal identity’ (2001: 2) in response to widespread cultural anxieties or ‘going concerns’ (Hughes 1933) of the late modern age (Paik 2006). Gubrium & Holstein describe this as symptomatic of a wider cultural process, the deprivatisation of the self, whereby personal matters are opened up to scrutiny and public consumption: the self as our primary subjectivity is increasingly constructed within, and from, distinctive public circumstances; identity accordingly

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takes myriad hyphenated forms: ‘the self-according-to-this-agency,’ ‘pathological-self-from-that-professional-standpoint,’ ‘personalityas-viewed-by-this-expert,’ and so on (Gubrium & Holstein 2001: 154). These arguments echo Atkinson & Silverman’s (1997) comments on the ‘interview society’, wherein the compulsion to share one’s selfstory, to confess and to self-disclose, goes hand in hand with a greedy thirst for intimate knowledge about others, displayed by the mass media, therapeutic experts and even social researchers. For example, Lowney & Holstein (2001) point to the television talk show as an institutional site in which troubled selves are reconstructed, albeit by nothing more than cleverly evocative production devices. This ‘travelling circus’ presents a ‘spectacle of human torment’ through its array of heroes and villains, overlaid with a moralistic narrative of salvation. It acts as a vehicle for parading archetypal troublesome identities (the addict, the adulterer, the wayward teen) and their pantomimic methods of salvation (confession, acceptance of responsibility, recalcitrance and determination to do better). Ferris (2004) makes similar remarks about the moral definition and processing of identities in Loveline, a therapeutically-themed radio call-in show. Gubrium & Holstein go some way towards documenting the current trend of self-reinvention, and present some striking examples of the diversity of institutional sites in which this can take place. However, within the constraints of an edited collection, they stop short of theorising how and why this change has come about, beyond their arguments about the deprivatised self. Surprisingly, their book makes little mention of Goffman or the total institution, and there is no attempt systematically to relate this concept to the contemporary ‘panorama of discursive sites’ that they describe. Furthermore, in pointing to trends of deprivatisation, colonisation and invasion, there is a danger of overstating the idea of coercion and understating agency, in the manner of Wrong’s (1961) ‘oversocialized’ person. While institutions may present an array of template identities, clients are still relatively agentic in electing to fit themselves into these, for what they believe are their own benefits. Gubrium & Holstein do emphasise the biographical identity work performed by members as they seek to align themselves with institutional realities, but imply that this is, de facto, limited by the latter: before inmates can even begin to tell their self-stories, they must be socialised into the discursive frameworks of the institution. They are trapped in a hermeneutic circle of

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accounting for institutionally-driven changes to the self by using terms and concepts acquired from the institution itself. The implication is that, while members may believe that the changes they have undergone are in their own best interests, their perception of these interests has been skewed.

Alternatives to the total institution Other models have been proposed to describe the form of the contemporary institution, though not in explicit contrast to the TI. Some of these models have been developed within the context of organisational sociology, and so, like Goffman, assume the synonymy of institution and organisation. For example, in the workplace, a process of debureaucratisation is said to have created two new working environments, the network organisation and the virtual organisation, which allow employers, employees, colleagues and subcontractors to communicate beyond the confines of a physically bounded site (Fulcher & Scott 2007). Flexible working hours and the globalisation of labour across different time zones (Giddens 1990) have helped to create 24-hour companies, wherein at any moment, a critical mass of staff will be united in the pursuit of a corporate goal. The aesthetic organisation (Gagliardi 1996), also associated with the workplace but applicable elsewhere, is one concerned with its own image, appearance and self-presentation. Dramaturgically, members seek to control the impression they create upon different audiences (clients, visitors, inspectors) by performing aesthetic labour (Nickson et al 2001), through their individual dress, bodily demeanour and environmental decor. This organisation is like a theatrical stage, comprised of setting, scenery and props (cf. Goffman 1959), which enable it to present a desired image of itself to others. For example, a religious sect or cult may attempt to ‘rebrand’ itself to reach new audiences: as we see in Chapter 4, the growing popularity of Alpha Courses reflects a conscious attempt by Christian groups to challenge preconceptions of the faith and reinvent its image. The greedy institution (Coser 1974) is an intriguing concept, referring to those that claim the totality of their members’ social identities by pervading every role they play and every aspect of their lifestyle. This feature is shared with the TI, of course, but whereas Goffman’s inmates were typically incarcerated against their will, greedy institution inmates are more often voluntaristic. For example, upon entering a ballet school, secret society, or the Big Brother house, new recruits

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find that themselves in an insular social world whose culture pervades every level of their being – these are not simply recreational hobbies acquired as an appendage to the self. Greedy institutions are exclusive and demand absolute commitment from their members: they are expected to weaken existing ties with other social groups and give the organisation their undivided loyalty. Furthermore, unlike Goffman’s TI, the greedy institution rarely physically confines its inmates, but rather creates a symbolic boundary between insiders and outsiders that is equally powerful: these are disciplinary mechanisms, not blockades (Foucault 1975), or ‘institutions without walls’, which members are ostensibly free to leave but choose not to. Instead of experiencing a mortifying loss of self through institutionalisation, they willingly discard their old selves in the hope of cultivating a new self. Coser’s model promises to be useful in explaining why members feel such a strong sense of commitment to RIs, and why they might experience ‘release anxiety’ (Goffman 1961a) about leaving: if one has lost one’s former identity and social network, and the new role cannot be performed outside the institution, then how should one behave, and where does the real self lie? Finally, Quirk et al (2006) take issue with Goffman’s assumption that the TI must be closed and impermeable to the outside world. Their concept of the ‘permeable institution’ makes a valuable attempt to revisit the TI, but only within the context of psychiatric care. Quirk et al suggest that im/permeability, sidelined by Goffman as a peripheral feature of the asylum, is increasingly significant to contemporary forms of inpatient care. The three psychiatric wards that they studied were identified as permeable institutions for a number of reasons. They involved a rapid turnover of patients, admitted on a temporary basis, who were less likely to develop an institutionalised outlook. Patients were encouraged to remain focused on returning home by maintaining regular contact with friends and family. The rules regarding standardised hospital issue were relaxed, as patients were allowed to wear their own clothes, keep personal possessions, and thereby remain attached to their civilian identities. There was no deliberate attempt to ‘mortify’ these former selves or to impose a permanent new social status beyond the period of stay. Treatment procedures were not inherently linked to the patient’s moral status, as Goffman had argued, but rather were detached from the inner self: A key difference for today’s in-patient, then, is that in many respects he or she remains a person while in hospital and is much less likely

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to be relieved of the obligations of personhood than were inmates of the old asylums (Quirk et al 2006: 2114; emphasis in original). Furthermore, this study indicates the role of the interaction context as a mediator of power. Staff-patient relationships were relatively democratic, as patients were consulted on the running of the wards and encouraged to bond with the staff. In some cases, patients were even mistaken for staff, as they roamed freely through the hospital grounds and gave off an air of confidence. Just as Strauss (1978) observed negotiated order between occupational groups within the staff team, Quirk et al found evidence of negotiation between that team and others, across the status hierarchy. Patients were able to negotiate with staff their living arrangements, treatment options, and conditions of release. Thus not only was the boundary between inmates and the outside world permeable, but also that between the staff and inmates. Ultimately, though, the balance of power lay in favour of the medical professionals, whose staff world (Goffman 1959) has its own culture of norms, routines and practices. Staff not only learned techniques to regulate the level of permeability of each ward (by limiting unwanted visitors, locking doors or transferring disruptive patients to other wards), but also used their discretion in interpreting rules, for example by turning a blind eye to minor rule infractions, as in Gouldner’s (1955) indulgency pattern (see Chapter 2). However, Quirk et al do not consider how the interaction context of inmate culture, too, can function to mediate the exercise of power.

Discipline and surveillance All of this paints a rather confusing picture of how power operates in the RI. We have seen that it is quite different from the direct and explicit coercion found in the TI, yet perhaps not as harmoniously democratic as the Interactionist vision of negotiated order. A third explanation to which I have alluded is the Foucauldian concept of disciplinary power (Foucault 1975). This rather sinister vision suggested a shift from repressive techniques of physical force and public displays of brutality towards a new social order based upon productive forms of power – those associated with ostensibly benign, positive aims of increasing knowledge about social groups – concealed within private settings. This involved techniques of surveillance and monitoring, exercised over deviant populations, who were confined (to TIs) for that purpose. Prisoners, hospital patients, army recruits and so on were put under the

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constant surveillance of guards (or guardians of knowledge, such as medical personnel), whose ‘gaze’ pervaded the institution. As an archetypal model, Foucault described the Panopticon, in which prisoners were observed in their cells from a central tower, by guards who were themselves invisible. The punishment was twofold: not only incarceration, but also the psychological effects of believing oneself to be under scrutiny. Inmates understood that they could be being watched at any time, and so learned to monitor themselves at all times, just in case they were caught out. The mind was controlled via the body: by being confined to spatially organised cells, subjected to timetables, schedules and other regimes, and drilled in corporeal deportment, inmates learned to control their own thoughts, movements and conduct. Foucault argued that this technique of social control was spreading beyond the institution walls to create a ‘carceral society’ based upon disciplinary power. Whole populations were monitored through health checks and clinics, educational services, surveillance devices and so on, encompassing the ‘normal’ alongside the deviant. The quest for knowledge was extended to mapping the terrain of ab/normality by imposing categorical boundaries in different discursive contexts, such as psychiatry, clinical medicine, penology and sexology. The clinical gaze was furthermore internalised by subjects, who became self-surveillant, offering themselves up to knowledgeable experts, such as social workers, life coaches, solicitors and counsellors. The debate about medicalisation/ psychiatrisation outlined above suggests that more and more people are seeking to have ‘normal’ life experiences recast as illnesses and duly treated. In Rose’s (1989, 1990) work, we find these ideas applied to the contemporary context of regimes of self-improvement. He points to the curious paradox of social control and regulation being delivered through discourses of liberation, freedom and citizenship: we are obliged to be free (Rose 1989). The modern regulative state exercises power not through externally imposed coercion but through subtler ways of governing individual will. Disciplinary power infiltrates both subjectivity and intersubjectivity: the desire to gain knowledge of oneself, other people and the spaces in between. One of the most prominent media he identifies is the expertise vested in the ‘psy’ industries, or the ‘therapeutic culture of the self’ (Rose 1989: xii). This provides a comprehensive body of knowledge about both who we are and who we might become. A carrot is tantalisingly dangled by the ‘emancipatory potential of the application of psychological discoveries to the troubles of human existence’ (1990: 215). This knowledge base incorporates a plethora of

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discourses (psychoanalysis, cognitive-behaviour therapy, humanistic counselling and so on), each of which accounts for self-development in different ways, as well as an increasing number of experts to whom we might turn (psychotherapists, life coaches, relationship counsellors). Here we are reminded of Gubrium and Holstein’s ‘panorama of discursive sites’ from which consumers are invited to select. Moreover, these ways of knowing are internalised and self-imposed, as clients work on practising techniques between sessions, tracking their progress in reflective journals, and consuming self-help literature. Rose (1990) identifies the ‘techne’ of psychology as an organised, institutional discipline. This legitimates the use of surveillance instruments not only by professionals but also by their clients, as therapeutic terminology, assessment tools and maps of the terrain can be acquired and self-administered. This might involve checking one’s own IQ, body image, anxiety level or relationship style against a ‘grid of perceptions’ (Foucault 1961) such as body weight charts or personality scales. Although Rose suggests that we learn to ‘assemble’ ourselves and cite motives of self-fulfilment, self-actualisation and self-improvement, he attributes these motives to the ‘colonization of the lifeworld’ (Habermas 1981), whereby the channels of communication between genuinely free citizens have been blocked by ideology: our thoughts are not our own, and our perception of our own (and others’) competence is limited. We are enterprising selves, Rose argues, only insofar as we decide to comply with the discursive regimes on offer. The techne of expertise therefore operates through the ‘self-regulating capacities of subjects’ (1990: 156), by disguising regimes of social control as opportunities for self-mastery: Self-help, today, entails an alliance between professionals claiming to provide an objective, rational answer to the question of how one should conduct a life to ensure normality, contentment, and success, and individuals seeking to shape a ‘life-style’, not in order to conform to social conventions but in the hope of personal happiness and an ‘improved quality of life’ (Rose 1990: 156–157). We seek out these experts because we feel that we want to transform ourselves, but this perceived autonomy is ultimately illlusory: [Regimes of power] no longer seek to discipline, instruct, moralize, or threaten subjects into compliance. Rather, they aspire to instil

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and use the self-directing propensities of subjects to bring them into alliance with the aspirations of authorities (Rose 1990: 160). Rose provides a powerful and convincing explanation of how individuals can become entangled in the institutional machinery of ‘therapy culture’, but his analysis is perhaps clouded by its pessimism. The vision of a penetrative web of surveillance suggests that those entangled in its mesh are little more than cultural dopes (Garfinkel 1967), rendered powerless to resist the seductive allure of selfknowledge. Rose implies that the sense of autonomy clients experience by administering technologies of the self is no more than an obedient response to a disciplinary gaze, keeping them trapped within the carceral society, but what of clients’ agency, and the meanings they bring to this transaction? As Jenkins (2008: 163) points out, when considering the exercise of power over free citizens in liberal democracies, we need to ask, ‘why do people put up with it?’. Lukes (2005) argues that power is most effective when it operates not through coercive domination but by securing the willing compliance of subjects to be governed. This ‘third dimension’ of power may be subtle and insidious but it is not necessarily exploitative: Lukes warns against patronising dismissals of cultural dopes or false consciousness, arguing that people are actively involved in translating the discourses of power into personally meaningful terms and using them to their own advantage. Moreover, insofar as they perceive the effects of power to be positive (for example, when therapy makes us feel better), they can be said really to have acted in their true or best interests. This suggests that if power is truly pervasive, it operates not only vertically but also horizontally, diagonally, and circularly, across all dimensions of a spherical network, and is mediated by the meanings actors give to their experiences. Surveillance, in particular, operates through various dimensions. Firstly, Foucault’s model of the carceral organisation emphasised a top-down (though dispersed) disciplinary gaze, beginning in knowledge bases and discourses, channelled through guards and authoritarian leaders, and ending up in the ‘docile bodies’ and minds of physically confined inmates. This certainly describes the situation of Goffman’s inmates in the traditional TI (indeed, Foucault’s Panopticon prototype was inspired by the nineteenth century prison), but does not explain why contemporary RI inmates may feel equally incarcerated in ‘institutions without walls’, which they are free to leave. Secondly, Rose’s vision provides a partial answer to this, by pointing to the surveillance inherent in discourses per se: when people engage with

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and apply knowledge to themselves, they perceive it as being in their own best interests. Far from resenting their guardians, they seek them out as authoritative experts, whose penetrative gaze does not intrude but rather informs and elucidates. Thirdly, there is the willing compliance of subjects to be governed, as Lukes (2005) argued, and the idea that self-discipline does not mean false consciousness. However, I propose that there is a fourth medium through which surveillance operates: the interaction context of inmate cultures, wherein members gaze at each other and monitor their relative progress towards a shared goal. This mutual surveillance implies a network of connections between inmates, who exercise an equally penetrating, ubiquitous gaze.

Performative regulation The mode of power that operates within the RI can be understood as what I call performative regulation: a synergy of the concepts of disciplinary power (Foucault 1975), negotiated order (Strauss 1978) and interaction order (Goffman 1983). Each of these models is necessary but not sufficient to explain how and why people join an RI and continue to live by its rules, despite not being physically confined. For example, the first feature of performative regulation is its view of the actor as simultaneously controlled and controlling, docile and agentic, solipsistic and other-oriented. How is this possible if we limit ourselves to any of the three existing models? Rose’s interpretation of disciplinary power reveals how authoritative bodies of expert knowledge pervade the minds and govern the bodies of individuals, turning them into obedient, self-disciplining subjects. However, this model underestimates the agency of actors, who are involved at every stage of the reinvention process: not only in following an institutional regime but in seeking it out, making sense of it and incorporating its rhetoric into their self-narrative. The model of disciplinary power also cannot explain why RI members voluntarily undergo reinvention in such a distinctly social environment, alongside like-minded others. If one is not forcibly incarcerated, then why not go it alone? What does the unique character of an RI’s inmate culture add to the experience of reinvention that keeps members mentally, emotionally and socially committed to the project? The concept of interaction order can explain this latter point, but may be guilty of overestimating the degree of consensus between inmates and neglecting the potential for conflict between different interest groups (cf. Gouldner 1979). It is easy to overcompensate for

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Rose and Foucault’s pessimism by presenting a rosy-coloured view of institutional life as one of networked but self-contained individuals, harmoniously pursuing their various goals. Negotiated order theory provides a compromise of sorts, addressing the messiness of competition and bargaining, but is still arguably naive in its democratic vision: it neglects the significance of power being exercised over inmates as well as by and through them. The question of social control remains paramount: RI members are not entirely free to choose the manner of their reinvention, for they can only select from the array of discourses on offer within their cultural milieu (Gubrium & Holstein 2001). As I suggested in Chapter 1, the transition from TI to RI implies not simply the replacement of coercion with voluntarism, but rather a shift in the relative balance of the two. There remains a tension between active and passive constructions of the self in authoring its new identity, but the balance has shifted from one of manifest coercion/latent agency to one of manifest agency/latent coercion. A second feature of performative regulation is the mutual surveillance that takes place between individuals within the same stratum of an institutional hierarchy. Disciplinary power is exercised not only vertically, through the penetration of authoritative knowledge down into individual consciousness, nor even bi-directionally, with individuals willingly submitting themselves to the gaze. It is also exercised horizontally, as members monitor each other’s conduct and shape their progress towards a common goal. Bauman (2000) argued that the most powerful figures in ‘liquid’ modernity were not authoritative leaders but rather the peer group, for we find inspiration in the stories of ‘people like me’ who recount overcoming the same troubles. Foucault’s claim that disciplinary power is pervasive and impersonal encourages us to move away from conspiratorial theories of coercion towards a subtler process of legitimation, whereby ideas and practices come to be taken for granted as normal, natural and inevitable. Thus the discourses that circulate in an RI may be attributed to an original, inspirational leader, but are powerful largely because of their legitimation by the social body. The mutuality of surveillance is achieved through the interaction context of the RI. It is important to consider the dramaturgical nature of everyday life within these institutions, and the self-presentational motives of members as social actors. In Goffman’s TI, inmates performed differently to different audiences: to staff, they presented themselves as more or less compliant rule followers (e.g. the good patient), while to each other, they performed as resilient, role-distant selves (by defens-

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ively asserting their civilian identities). In the RI, this distinction is blurred, as inmates, who see themselves as voluntarily committed, share their tutors’ optimistic vision of ‘progress’, however this is defined. There may not be such a distinct underlife, or culture of resistance, for those who feel disenfranchised with the regime can (officially, at least) simply leave. Those who remain committed retain a vested interest in convincing themselves and each other of their belief in the institution and the part they are playing within it: Goffman’s notion of a sincere performance. These performances are enacted and observed through the interaction context of the inmate culture. Self-helps groups, college dorm-mates, boot camp sites and so on each provide a community of significant others who are undergoing the same transformation and who share the same motivation to interpret it positively. Thus inmates play to each other as rule-followers as well as intransigents, performing their commitment both to motivate their peers and to convince them of their own sincerity. Their motivation is reflected back to them through these others’ performances, which amalgamate in an emergent, collective team performance of obedience. Actors respond to each other’s perceived progress along the moral trajectories of reinvention, and challenge or sanction those who seem not to be adhering to the rules. They understand their own progress or reinvention not only in terms of the teachings of authoritative leaders and official programme rhetoric, but also in terms of how significant others (fellow inmates) are regarding them and evaluating their conduct; ‘progress’ is understood in relative as well as absolute, individualistic terms. This suggests that power is productive, not only in the way that Foucault described, as an abstract, impersonal system of knowledge that creates discursive subject positions, but also in its dramaturgical deployment and negotiation. The panoptical gaze of the RI is on the one hand exercised, internalised and self-imposed (vertically), but on the other hand, enacted and performed (horizontally). Therefore we might say that power in the RI is not only discursively constitutive but also interactively productive of identities. Finally, insofar as this collective performance of compliance is but a definition of the situation (Thomas & Thomas 1928), it remains precariously open to challenge. Following Giddens (1984), we can observe the interdependence of structure and agency: the power of the institution-as-structure is achieved by the process of the institutionas-interaction, while in turn, this interaction is limited by the rules and routines of the structure, or ‘institutional arrangements’ (Goffman 1961a). As such, the RI is dynamic and constantly evolving. The interaction

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order of the RI is a self-imposed framework: because members are casting the net of surveillance over themselves, they have some autonomy in deciding – individually or collectively – where the attention is focused and why. Every inmate has the agentic potential to make a difference, to challenge and transform the rules in which they are embedded (Giddens, ibid.). For example, there may be a difference between the reality ‘presented’ (to staff, visitors and each other) and the reality ‘believed’ by members privately (Scheff 1968). Some individuals develop a cynical attitude, either towards the institution as a whole, or towards the conduct of their peers, and seek to challenge the interpretations that they make. In the following chapters, we shall see how different types of RI afford different opportunities for such acts of resistance, as well as evoking various reactions from within the inmate culture. Nevertheless, given the voluntary nature of RI membership, explicit challenges are rare, and inmates tend to remain committed to upholding the definition of the situation. This raises the question of why it is important to members for the show to go on, publicly as well as privately. What do members get out of the performative, collective nature of the inmate culture that they could not experience in isolation, and what does this interaction context contribute to the process of self-reinvention? Why is mutual surveillance accepted as legitimate, and how is it achieved? These are simultaneously questions of personal and social significance, promising to elucidate not only individual members’ motivations but also the mechanisms of micro-social order in this unique institutional context.

Reinventing the institution To summarise, the RI has the following features that distinguish it from the classic, Goffmaneque TI, and locate it in a contemporary cultural context. The remaining chapters explore the manifestation of these features in six different kinds of RI. • Function of identity reinvention  Improvement, enhancement, transformation • Agency of inmates  Former self willingly discarded, not mortified  Active engagement with institutional discourses  Biographical identity work  Self-regulation

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Challenge leaders Challenge each other Voluntarism  Active pursuit of membership  Continued commitment by choice  Free to leave Permeability  Inmates retain contact with outside world (if desired)  Reflective dialogue with former self  Leader/follower hierarchy flattened  Negotiation and discussion  Staff accountable to clients Cohesive inmate culture (aligned with institutional rhetoric)  Resistance less likely  Peer interaction valued intrinsically Performative regulation  Multidirectional flow of power (vertical, horizontal, circulatory)  Interaction context (rituals, routines and daily practices)  Mutual surveillance  Peer sanctioning of conduct  Relative evaluation of individual progress 

•

•

•

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4 Religious and Spiritual Communities

This chapter examines some of the institutions, organisations and communities that people join when they believe with deep fervour in a discourse of reinvention. To some extent, this describes all types of Reinventive Institution (RI): in Chapter 3, I described a pervasive culture of reinvention, wherein ideas of self-improvement and transcendence have led individuals to seek guidance from inspirational gurus. Some institutions, however, offer an explicitly spiritual route to selfactualisation and seek to transform casual followers into fervent believers. This may involve the repackaging of a traditional faith, New Religious Movements (NRMs) such as sects or cults, or a secular belief system. Joining a spiritual RI involves many of the same motivations, experiences and interactional processes as joining a traditional religious order. There is a quest for knowledge and understanding, a promise of salvation and a willingness to submit to the authority of leaders who provide instruction on the interpretation of doctrines. However, the object of worship is different: the sacred, mysterious force that inmates ultimately seek to understand is not a transcendent god or spirit but their own self-identities, as idealised potential. Furthermore, the social processes of acquiring and practising religion have changed somewhat. The seemingly personal, direct experience of faith is informed by cultural discourses that pervade and deprivatise identities (Gubrium & Holstein 2001) by teaching uniform, standardised ways of knowing ourselves (cf. Rose 1990). Spiritual RIs share in common the social context through which faith is communicated and the functions that belonging serves for members: it is not only collective sentiments and solidarity, but also discipline and mutual surveillance that keep members committed to a spiritual doctrine. 54

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The meaning of belief Sociologists of religion have long recognised the difficulty of trying to define this nebulous concept (Wilson 1966; Barker 1989; Bruce 1995). Religion may be theistic, involving the belief in and/or worship of supernatural beings, such as gods or spirits, which are invested with magical powers and have a fascinatingly unknowable character. Wallis & Bruce (1992: 10–11) define religion as the actions, beliefs and institutions people create to orient themselves to impersonal powers that are perceived to have the capacity to intervene in human affairs. Durkheim (1912) made a distinction between social phenomena that are sacred (set apart and forbidden) and those that are profane (associated with the mundanity of everyday life), pointing to the feelings of reverence and awe with which believers regarded the former. However, many of these features also characterise our relationship with secular objects of veneration, and translate into atheistic discourses of reinvention. Bracketing out theological debates, then, we can identify three social aspects of religion that apply to a range of contemporary institutions. Firstly, belief systems provide frameworks of meaning that help people to make sense of life events and create narratives of self-identity. Berger (1969) referred to religion as a ‘sacred canopy’ or ‘plausibility structure’ that provided explanations of social experiences, such as inequality and disadvantage. Weber (1914) proposed that religions offered a ‘theodicy of disprivilege’ that helped the less powerful, socio-economically deprived make sense of their positions. More critically, Marx (1845) argued that religion served an ideological function of legitimating exploitative class relations: by promising salvation in the afterlife and discouraging dissent, religion was the ‘opium of the masses.’ By extension, the current obsession with the self, or individualistic narcissism (Lasch 1979), could be seen as enabling the affluent middle classes to adjust to relative poverty and felt deprivation (Townsend 1979) by pursuing alternative means of spiritual fulfilment. Secondly, there are the social functions of collective worship. Durkheim (1912) famously argued that it did not matter what or whom people believed in; the crucial point was that they did so together. In the ‘primitive’ societies he studied, totemic worship was organised by clan membership, which strengthened people’s commitment to the group’s shared moral values and collective sentiments. Ritual ceremonies had an ‘effervescent’ character, through which believers were swept up in a wave of intense emotion, but again, this was ultimately a feeling of awe towards each other and the sui generis force of the collectivity. Fulcher & Scott

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(2007: 407) therefore define religion as ‘devotion or attachment to a system of beliefs that defines the moral obligations and responsibilities that people have towards one another’. Finally, the institutional mediation of religion is central to its effectiveness as an agent of social control. Weber (1964) argued that soteriology, or the promise of salvation through belief, invoked a notion of ‘institutional grace’: in order to be saved, one must commit oneself to membership of a communal organisation (Amarasingam 2008). Joining an established institution served as an insurance policy of sorts, reassuring members that they were part of the elect group. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber (1904) showed how such religious ideas could influence economic behaviour that, once rooted in an institutional context, instigated social change: Calvinist salvation anxiety led to shrewd profit reinvestment and bureaucratisation, which fuelled the rise of capitalism. However, other commentators emphasised the conservative force of religious institutions: functionalists such as Parsons (1951) identified the church as an agent of socialisation, while Herberg (1955) pointed to the role of Protestant, Catholic and Jewish communities in providing a sense of ethnic identity in the USA’s ‘cultural melting pot’: religious participation was a way of performing American citizenship and assimilating oneself into the mainstream culture.

Religious total institutions One of Goffman’s subtypes of TI was ‘those establishments designed as retreats from the world even while often serving also as training stations for the religious’ (1961a: 16). Thus ‘abbeys, monasteries, convents and other cloisters’ (ibid.) represented a kind of TI that inmates might voluntarily enter, as opposed to being incarcerated against their will. Although Goffman said little about this type of TI, it is worth considering how they operated in contrast to contemporary spiritual RIs. Goffman’s account of life in the monastery or convent is one of austere conditions, harsh regimes and strict hierarchical divisions. While individuals may have chosen to enter such institutions, they did so with an attitude of complete subservience to the religion and the staff who embodied it. There was none of the modern preoccupation with the self, or with the institution as a means of reinvention; on the contrary, the aim was to forget oneself and act as a servant of God (Kerr 2008). Goffman described religious rituals of mortification, like those of the asylum, which aimed to eradicate the former self. For example, Benedictine monks were stripped of their clothes and issued the monastery habit, which was ‘typically of a ‘coarse’ variety, ill-suited, often

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old, and the same for large categories of inmates’ (1961a: 29). This was designed not to punish, as in the prison, or in the interests of efficiency, as in the asylum, but rather to teach recruits the value of asceticism. By surrendering their possessions, the monks subsumed their own identities beneath the authority of the institution: For their bedding let a mattress, a blanket, a coverlet, and a pillow suffice… in order that this vice of private ownership may be completely rooted out, let all things that are necessary be supplied by the Abbot: that is, cowl, tunic, stockings, shoes, girdle, knife, pen, needle, handkerchief… (cited in Goffman 1961a: 28). Elsewhere in Goffman’s account, religious rituals served a ceremonial role in forcing inmates publicly to pay penance. The practice of ‘begging soup’, whereby a disgraced nun filled her bowl with two spoonfuls of leftover soup from each of her sisters, was a humiliating punishment that was willingly accepted – simultaneously a pious act of self-flagellation and a performative act of contrition, through which the member displayed her commitment to the institution. Mortification occurred here through ‘contaminative exposure’, by violating the territories of the self and forcing contact with profane matter. Here again, the aim was to strip the inmate of any pretensions toward individuality or uniqueness, and reduce their status. In contrast to the celebration of the self we find in contemporary RIs, the religious TI sought to turn its inmates into a uniform mass of ‘docile bodies’ (Foucault 1975: 136). Uniformity was also imposed by rigid schedules and routines. Zerubavel (1981) describes how the horarium, or daily timetable, of sixth century Benedictine monasteries ensured that each day unfolded with absolute regularity. The division of the day into ‘microscopic temporal units’ meant that members knew exactly what they should be doing at any given time: The brethren… must be occupied at stated hours in manual labor, and again at other hours in sacred reading… the brethren shall start work in the morning and from the first hour until almost the fourth do the tasks that have to be done. From the fourth hour until about the sixth let them apply themselves to reading. After the sixth hour, having left the table, let them rest on their beds in perfect silence. (The Rule of Saint Benedict, cited in Zerubavel [1981: 34]) However, such efficiency was dependent on features of the religious TI that may not be found in the contemporary RI. For example, contrast

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the bloc living arrangements of the monastery – inmates housed in dormitories and moved around en masse – with the modern spiritual retreat (see below), where individuals pay to secure a private room and find solace in isolation. This consumerist aspect in turn changes the relationship between staff and inmates: as service providers and clients, they enter into a contractual agreement based upon mutual respect rather than domination and subservience. The nature of voluntarism has therefore changed: rather than dutifully submitting to the hierarchical authority of church doctrines, RI members elect to join a democratic community of believers, where inspiration comes as much from fellow devotees as from the leaders.

Resacrilisation: The changing institutional context of religion The resurgence (or resilience) of interest in spirituality at first appears anomalous when considered alongside the overall pattern of secularisation that is said to be characterising modern Western societies. Wilson (1966: 14) defines secularisation as ‘the process whereby religious thinking, practice and institutions lose social significance’, as indicated by declining levels of participation in collective worship and the loss of religious influence over social behaviour. There are different ways of interpreting this, however. Weber (1914) argued that the rationalisation of society had caused widespread disenchantment, or a loss of belief in magical, spiritual and supernatural forces, and a sceptical regard for ‘unscientific’ knowledge claims, but this still permits the possibility of an equally strong commitment to atheistic knowledge. Berger (1969) described a pattern of desacrilisation, or the emergence of a secular consciousness; the sacred canopy had been rolled back from the lifeworld. Parsons (1951) pointed to the disengagement of religion from other social institutions through the separation of church and state. With religion no longer a primary agent of socialisation, it had become a marginal, self-contained sphere of society. Finally, religion is said to have been pluralised, as followers pick and choose from an eclectic mix of belief systems, and treat their composite faith as a private matter. In this model, spirituality is regarded as a lifestyle choice or leisure pursuit (Wilson 1966), relatively detached from the rest of one’s life. Micro-level theories explain how these wider patterns have changed the motivations of individual actors so that paradoxically, some secular belief systems have become more popular. Bellah’s (1964: 359) interactionist account of religion as ‘a set of symbolic forms and acts which

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relate man [sic] to the ultimate conditions of his existence’ anticipates Giddens’ (1991) commentary on the late modern self’s dilemmas of ontological insecurity and existentialist anxiety (see Chapter 3). Bellah’s (1967) notion of individuation suggests that there has been a shift away from organised, collective worship to introspective, self-reflective quests for meaning: faith has become a matter of personal belief, or ‘civil religion’. Paradoxically, we can witness the simultaneous occurrence of the privatisation of the lifeworld (Berger & Luckman 1967) and the deprivatisation of the self (Gubrium & Holstein 2001), as the internal dramas to which we turn are inscribed by cultural discourses. This begs the question of why some people seek to join a closed community in which religion is not disengaged but ‘greedily’ intertwined with other agents of socialisation, in an exclusive, impermeable world. In Chapter 3, we considered the argument that decarceration has been followed by recarceration: the creation of new institutional contexts in which power operates more insidiously, through performative regulation. These may not be walled, physical enclosures, but rather pervasive cultural discourses to which adherents feel equally committed, and groups to whom they are equally devoted. In the context of religion, recarceration takes the form of resacrilisation (Greeley 1973): the resurgence of faith and religious practice, channelled into different institutional contexts. Instead of worshipping gods, totems and supernatural forces, we now seek meaning in the secular world of nature, humanity, and individual self-identity. New discourses of reinvention encourage us to believe with religious fervour in the potential of ourselves: to be transformed, repaired, improved, even perfected. Crucially, however, these existential questions are created by the very institutions that provide solutions to them; the two are intertwined. As Bruce (1995) argues, new religious movements have not arisen in response to pre-existing, innate human needs or causes of dissatisfaction, but rather these ‘problems’ have come to be defined and recognised as such through the rhetoric of the groups themselves. Discourses of self-improvement generated by institutional cultures impose an interpretive lens through which members are invited to view themselves as candidates for reinvention. New subjectivities are created through the discursive constitution of both the troubled self and its potential resurrection (cf. Gubrium & Holstein 2001). Spiritual RIs may be the ‘self-religions’ of late modernity (Heelas 1984), but their discourses, rituals and practices are mediated by the interaction context of their institutional cultures.

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New Religious Movements One of the strongest arguments for resacrilisation is the growth of New Religious Movements (NRMs) since the latter half of the twentieth century. While attendance fell and participation in acts of collective worship declined in all of the main churches and denominations during this period, there was a proportionately greater level of involvement in religious sects and cults. It is estimated that there are around 3000 NRMs in the West and 10,000 worldwide (Barker 1999). A common explanation for this is that religion has survived but simply changed form: there has been a decline in belonging but not in believing (Davie 1994). For example, individuals may follow the teachings of astrology, feng shui or psychic phenomena (Jowell et al 1991) but not belong to an organised, traditional church. Davie (ibid.) suggests that in even in a secular, agnostic society, we find a persistent need to believe in something, and a typical response is to develop an eclectic interest in all matters spiritual, which she calls ‘common religion’. As Fulcher & Scott (2007) put it, In a secular society, the uncommitted mainstream religion of the vast majority of the population is a sprawling and amorphous array of beliefs that form a framework of taken for granted ideas that, for most people, are an integral, if rather marginal, aspect of their day-to-day lives (2007: 425). NRMs grew in the 1960s and 1970s, in the context of post-war affluence, consumerism and capitalist disenchantment. It is often suggested that the movements appealed not to those in absolute poverty but to the relatively deprived (Glock & Stark 1965) – young, white and middle class people – as they offered alternative ideologies that resonated with hedonistic counter-cultural values (Barker 1989; Bruce 1995) and promised a more ‘authentic’ way of living. Insofar as NRMs borrowed elements from Chinese philosophy, Buddhism and other non-theistic spiritual traditions, this represented the ‘Easternisation of the West’ (Campbell 1999). Barker (1989) suggests that religious experience is only one of many things that NRMs offered their members, and other benefits appealed more to the secular consciousness: the promise of career success, improved health, self-development, the idea of kingdombuilding and a sense of community. She points to the importance of members’ friendships as something that generates social as well as moral or faith-based commitment, for there is a sense of belonging and

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being understood by likeminded others: ‘often it is loyalty to those relationships that have subsequently developed which will keep people in the group’ (1989: 27). Wilson’s (1966) typology identified seven different kinds of NRM. These included the Salvationist, which promise marginalised people access to sacred gifts or knowledge, and through them, the hope of elevated status in the afterlife (e.g. the People’s Temple); the Revolutionist, which predict the imminent destruction of the world and urge people to join in order to be saved (e.g. Jehovah’s Witnesses); the Manipulationist, which offer routes to economic or other culturally valued, secular markers of success (e.g. Scientology); and the Utopian, which advocate the cultivation of a radically alternative lifestyle, often by physically removing oneself from the mainstream culture (e.g. kibbutzim). Meanwhile Wallis (1984) distinguished just three types of NRM: the World Rejecting, which detach themselves ideologically and often physically from mainstream society; the World Accommodating, which tolerate these values but suggest that spiritual enlightenment will provide a deeper sense of satisfaction; and the World Affirming, which positively advocate secular values (such as individualism, career advancement and financial gain) as an end in themselves and teach members the skills and knowledge needed to achieve these. More broadly, NRMs can be divided into two main groups, sects and cults. These stand in contrast to churches: universalistic religious organisations tied to the state, and denominations: branches of a church that are separate from the political state but whose values permeate mainstream culture (Troeltsch 1912). The names ‘sect’ and ‘cult’ are often used synonymously, as well as pejoratively, and there is much confusion as to the difference between them. A sect often begins as a divergent schism within a religion, as members with particular values or ideals branch off to form an independent group (Fulcher & Scott 2007). By focusing on a particular set of beliefs or interpretation of a sacred text, the sect claims a monopoly over religious truth and may be evangelical in its methods. Yet sect membership is voluntary, and new recruits elect to join on the basis of an individual, expressed commitment to the belief system. Furthermore, sects tend to have a relatively democratic power structure in which every member’s view is treated as equally valid, rather than there being a hierarchical division between leaders and followers. For these reasons, sects may be regarded as the more benign type of NRM, to which the mainstream culture accommodates itself with an attitude of bemused acceptance. Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists and Quakers may find themselves the butt of jokes and scepticism, but are rarely seen as harmful.

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The cult, on the other hand, embodies what for many is the stereotypical image of a NRM as something dangerous and manipulative. Cults are often founded by a charismatic leader who generates a devoted following through the advocacy of extreme religious views: Reverend Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church, Jim Jones of the People’s Temple, and David Berg from the Children of God, are memorable figureheads with varying degrees of notoriety. Many cult leaders proselytise about an apocalyptic vision of the secular world as doomed, then promise salvation through their membership. Cults may also be residentially segregated, and members may be persuaded to cut off ties with the outside world. Cults are typically short-lived, consisting of first generation believers (Barker 1989) who have been personally inspired by their leader: as Weber (1914) noted in his model of charismatic authority, once such individuals die or leave office, they cannot easily be replaced, and so the organisation tends either to dissolve or to become a routinised bureaucracy (Manning 1989). Certainly, there have been a number of high profile cases of alleged abuse, manipulation and dubious sexual practices that have given NRMs a poor reputation. The Children of God was a world-rejecting, Salvationist cult in 1960s California, which predicted the end of the world in 1993, followed by a revolution of ‘godly socialism’. In preparation for this, members were asked to ‘be a sex revolutionist for Jesus’ through the notorious ritual of ‘flirty fishing’, whereby sexual conduct was permitted between adults and children, and promiscuity was encouraged as a form of religious prostitution to attract potential converts (Barker 1999). The People’s Temple involved the establishment of Jonestown, a residentially segregated community in Guyana, where the progressively intense relationship between the charismatic leader and his followers culminated in a mass suicide pact, in which 918 people died. The Unification Church, which aimed to create a Kingdom of Heaven on earth in celebration of the Second Coming of Christ (embodied by the Reverend Moon), was accused of defrauding members of their life savings, imposing strict controls upon behaviour, such as celibacy and abstinence from alcohol, and using manipulative tactics to ‘brainwash’ new recruits into joining, such as ‘love bombing’, or showering people with affection. These practices can be explained by the psychopathology model of cult recruitment (Bainbridge & Stark 1979), which asserts that charismatic leaders are suffering from delusional mental disorders (for example when grandiose beliefs drive attempts to build a community of followers) and pose a psychological threat to vulnerable recruits. Anti-cult groups such as INFORM and FREECOG have been

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formed at grassroots level by concerned friends and relatives attempting to intervene and rescue members. However, Barker (1984, 1989) argues that the public image of NRMs evoked by such scandals is largely a matter of moral panic (Cohen 1972), which is out of proportion to the actual risk posed by sects and cults. In particular, she disputes the accusations of brainwashing and mind control that have often been levelled at NRMs. In The Making of a Moonie, Barker (1984) argued that religious conversion more typically involved a gradual process of informed decisionmaking, whereby members rationally weighed up the evidence for and against the beliefs that were proffered, and felt able to challenge the leaders. Rather than being brainwashed into joining these groups, people would enter and leave with equal frequency, and there was a rapid turnover of members. Furthermore, Barker identified different levels of faith and devotion, ranging from casual interest, through participation in regular meetings, to fully committed members, suggesting that it is only at this final stage that religion has a totalising effect. This echoes Symbolic Interactionist theories of identity as an ongoing trajectory of progressive commitments (Becker 1963), and of course Goffman’s (1961a) notion of the moral career. From her interviews with ex-members of various sects and cults, Barker (1989) concluded that most who join NRMs do not ‘suffer’, believe they have been ‘brainwashed ‘ or experience negative after-effects; in fact many testify to having benefited from spiritual growth and personal development (Barker 1989: 137). This more measured analysis suggests that while the majority of NRMs are relatively benign, those that do involve questionable practices tend to be those that are residentially segregated and socially isolated. Barker (1989) identifies a number of risk factors that distinguish the ‘dangerous’ from the ‘harmless’ NRMS, and these map directly onto the characteristics of the TI (see Chapter 2). They include, firstly, the community’s residential segregation and isolation from the wider society: the more closed and impermeable it is, the more ‘dangerous’ ideas can be communicated without challenge. Secondly, an ideological distinction between ‘us’ and them’ creates an impermeable boundary between the NRM and other social groups to which members might otherwise retain a commitment, and this makes ‘greedy’ demands upon them (Coser 1974). Thirdly, important decisions are made for members by the group’s leaders in an authoritarian power structure, silencing individual believers. Charismatic gurus may claim divine powers or special knowledge from which followers are excluded, thereby denying

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them individual agency. Finally, NRMs that pursue a single goal in a single-minded manner may be intolerant of other values and belief systems to which individuals hold loyalties. Cult members are taught that there is a fundamental incompatibility between these beliefs and their own and that outsiders simply do not understand; it is therefore pointless to communicate with them. Together, Barker argues, these risk factors create a sense of separateness that works on various levels (physically, socially, mentally, emotionally and ideologically) to keep the NRM dangerously isolated from and impermeable to the outside world. It is this closedness or intolerance of other value systems that, when internalised by followers, can render them unreachable. Barker (1989: 85) speaks of a ‘Peter Pan Syndrome’ that afflicts cult members, as the infantilising effects of coercive instruction leave them unable to make decisions for themselves; the parallel with Goffman’s TI inmate is clear. In Barker’s model, all other NRMs that remain accessible to the outside world are deemed non-threatening, for members are presumed to have made a willing choice to enter and stay in them. This would include all of Wallis’s (1984) World-Affirming sects, many of Wilson’s (1966) manipulationist cults of success and his utopian movements. Far from mortifying and suppressing former identities, these groups promise to positively enhance the wellbeing of the individual, by liberating and authenticating their ‘true’ selves. For example, we shall see how New Age philosophies advocate holism (mind, body and spirit) as a path to universal connectedness and integration, not segregation (Bruce 1995). However, by retaining a permeable boundary with the outside world, spiritual RIs are not heroically exposing themselves to challenge and making themselves accountable, but rather opening the floodgates to infiltration, both from and into wider cultural values. This echoes Foucault’s (1975) model of disciplinary power as a network of capillaries permeating a social body; spiritual RIs do not stand alongside mainstream culture but are immersed within it. As Cohen & Taylor (1992) argued, the escape routes we create to retreat from the routines of everyday life are in fact formed with it, through culturally prescribed institutional sites.

Faith-based spiritual RIs Community-based networks Some spiritual RIs are based upon established religious faiths, and are seen to appeal particularly to those who feel socioeconomically deprived

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or otherwise marginalised. Berg & Kniss (2008) describe how the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), was revived after a period of decline by Indian immigrants to Chicago. In contrast to the first generation Hare Krishnas of the 1960s, who were motivated by a quest for individual spiritual enlightenment, this new generation of believers used the movement to cultivate a sense of belonging: to each other, to the city of Chicago and to ISKCON as a transnational religious community. The findings echo Herberg’s (1955) account of the role played by faith-based groups in enabling members both to perform their own ethnic identities and to be socialised into mainstream US culture. The effect was a plethora of micro-level transnational interactions, as the local white American residents began to show an interest in the movement: Devotees’ attempts to do things ‘the Indian way’ are reflected in almost every part of their daily lives. They wear Indian dhotis and saris. They eat Indian vegetarian food. Many of them speak one or more Indian languages. They study Indian religious texts such as the Bhagavad-Gita and the Srimad-Bhagvatam, and they learn to read and recite the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit. The temples feature elaborately decorated deities and other religious symbols, and with the chanting, incense, decorations, and Indian food, they sound, smell, look, and taste like temples throughout India (Berg & Kniss 2008: 89). Family and kinship can be an important factor mediating the recruitment of new members to these groups. Leman (2008) conducted a longitudinal survey of Italian converts to the Jehovah’s Witness movement in Belgium, which revealed interesting changes over time. When asked what had attracted them to the movement, 34 of the 61 respondents in 2005 cited the concept of fratellanza (brotherhood, love and unity), while only six answered ‘spirituality’. Over half of the sample had been recruited to the community by a relative, and fratellanza had symbolic connotations of family, friendship and intimacy. While the same pattern had been found in the 1970s and 1990s, Leman argues that the trend has become more pronounced, to the extent that religious practice has become virtually synonymous with social networking. A similar effect has been observed in Eastern Lightning, the fastest growing NRM in contemporary China, which teaches that Jesus has returned to earth as a Chinese woman (Dunn 2009). To communicate this unorthodox message, the movement makes extensive use of

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women’s guanxi, or existing family and friendship connections. Its handbook explains, Methods such as following people in the know, establishing connections (guanxi), making friends, kindly persuasion, building affection, using both hard and soft tactics, and a mix of all kinds of different styles have all been used to good effect in evangelism… . At the moment there are many materials for evangelism; giving copies of God’s Word and hymns on CD and also testimonies is very beneficial. Lots of new people are coming in; we must make good use of newcomers’ guanxi networks so as to bring even more people in. (Jiaohui gongzuo yuanze shouce [2006], cited in Dunn 2009: 108–109) Parachurches Within the dominant religious institution of a society, splinter groups or ‘parachurches’ may develop if sectors of the community feel that their interests are under-represented. Jeffries et al (2008) describe how bisexual black Christian men in New York found solace in religion when they felt excluded from the city’s ethnic and gendered communities. Whereas mainstream churches catered for the needs of white gay, black gay and black heterosexual people, these men felt that they had been overlooked. Some responded resignedly, deciding that their religion must remain a private matter, while others remained ‘in the closet’ and joined one of the existing churches. However, a significant number found solace in the city’s Metropolitan Community Churches (MCCs), which were more tolerant of sexual diversity. Although some of these churches adopted a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ approach to the new members’ bisexuality, the men did at least feel that they belonged to a community in which they could ‘be themselves’: [Outside of church] You’ve got to be careful. And you’ve got to use control, that is, keeping everybody separate. You know, you just don’t want people to run into you anywhere. (Right. So it’s kind of keeping lots of separate worlds?) Yeah. But in some cases, they’re geographically separated… except in church. (Michael, aged 26, cited in Jeffries et al 2008: 470). The men in this study viewed MCCs as a site for social networking, quite apart from the religious instruction and spirituality they sought there. Six of the respondents had dated men they met through the church, and regarded it as a safe haven for non-heterosexual fratern-

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isation. This reflects one of the key features of the RI, that peer interaction is valued intrinsically and motivates members to remain in the organisation: Some of them I may have met through other friends. Some of them I may have met in a supermarket or at church. [One recent partner] was a family friend. During one of [me and my wife’s] separations, he came on to me. And I kind of said, do you think it’s time for you to go home? And then we got over that and became friends. We were very much in the church. And then, sometime later on, after our final separation, we winded up having oral sex. (Clay, aged 44, cited in Jefferies et al 2008: 470) Starks (2009) identifies a number of splinter groups within Catholicism in the USA, where religious beliefs are often closely associated with political views. The self-identified ‘traditional’ Catholics he interviewed were members of such groups as Catholics United for the Faith, Women for Faith and Family, and the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, while those who saw themselves as ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ joined groups like Call to Action, Dignity/USA, and Catholics For a Free Choice, which campaigned for such issues as women priests, abortion rights and sexual permissiveness. Nevertheless, political beliefs were not the primary motivating factor in securing membership of these groups, but rather family socialisation and networking within local parishes. Starks proposes a model of ‘generalised cultural conflict’, whereby individuals gained a stronger sense of self-identity by positioning themselves vis-à-vis debates within the wider religious community: they distinguished themselves from other Catholics whilst reinforcing their sense of connectedness to others within their own parachurch, whom they saw as ‘fellow travellers’. Spiritual friendship Other faith-based RIs take the form of an interest or activity group, to which members become progressively committed through a career trajectory of religiosity (cf. Becker 1963). New recruits begin by dabbling in weekly seminars, workshops and conferences, which may or may not lead to more intense periods of immersion in the institution. For example, Vipassana Meditation is an ancient Indian technique that has become popular in the west through such means, and which promises ‘the total eradication of mental impurities and the resultant highest happiness of full liberation’ (http://www.dhamma.org/en/vipassana.shtml).

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However, the passage to this enlightened state is framed as a serious venture demanding hard work, which is not for the faint-hearted. It involves ten day residential courses at retreat centres, where members are expected to renounce any ritual practices associated with other religions, such as prayer, bead counting, singing and dancing: this is a greedy institution (Coser 1974) that demands total commitment to its teachings. Vipassana students follow a strict ‘Code of Discipline’ that has clear Foucauldian overtones. In order to focus completely on meditation, they must remain silent, abstain from sexual activity, intoxicants and eating after midday, and dress modestly without any ‘body decoration’ such as jewellery. Their daily schedule is as rigid as that observed by Zerubavel’s (1981) Benedictine monks, though with a greater focus on instruction and group activity: 4:00 am 4:30–6:30 am 6:30–8:00 am 8:00–9:00 am 9:00–11:00 am 11:00–12:00 noon 12noon–1:00 pm 1:00–2:30 pm 2:30–3:30 pm 3:30–5:00 pm 5:00–6:00 pm 6:00–7:00 pm 7:00–8:15 pm 8:15–9:00 pm 9:00–9:30 pm 9:30 pm

Morning wake-up bell Meditate in the hall or in your room Breakfast break Group meditation in the hall Meditate in the hall or in your room according to the teacher’s instructions Lunch break Rest and interviews with the teacher Meditate in the hall or in your room Group meditation in the hall Meditate in the hall or in your own room according to the teacher’s instructions Tea break Group meditation in the hall Teacher’s Discourse in the hall Group meditation in the hall Question time in the hall Retire to your own room – Lights out (http://www.dhamma.org/en/code.shtml)

Students are expected to maintain a ‘Noble Silence’ by avoiding not only speech but also written and non-verbal communication with each other, and even the instructors can only be consulted at certain times of day. This highlights an intriguing paradox of spiritual RIs: that people should join a collectivist institution and immerse themselves in such a totalising social environment, when their aim is to pursue highly individualistic methods of self-reflection (isn’t ‘group meditation’ a contradiction in terms?). This brings us back to a central puzzle of

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the RI’s appeal more generally: why people choose to reinvent their self-identities through social groups rather than going it alone. In this case it seems that, as with the secular creative retreats discussed below, members perceive a value in subjecting themselves to the disciplinary gaze of peer surveillance, without which they feel unable to concentrate and exert sufficient self-control. Performative regulation therefore occurs as members internalise a sense of collective scrutiny, which they then use to discipline themselves. Even though they may not be communicating directly, they are aware of each other’s presence and of their shared commitment to the institution’s rules, which they tacitly agree to uphold. By contrast, the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO) is an international religious community with branches (Buddhist Centres) in many major cities, which recognises explicitly the role of peer interaction in consolidating spiritual beliefs. FWBO teaches techniques of meditation, yoga, visualisation and mindfulness, or a detached awareness of one’s own thoughts and feelings. Together, these techniques are believed to take one on a path towards understanding the ultimate, universal truth, or dharma. FWBO group practices range from casual ‘drop in’ lunchtime sessions to regular classes, weekend retreats, and some residentially segregated communities. While eclectic in content – the movement draws from various Buddhist traditions – a key principle is ‘spiritual friendship’, or the collective pursuit of enlightenment: this involves ‘spending time with friends who share ideals, and engaging in ritual practice with them’ (Coleman 2001: 117). However, this movement has been plagued by scandals about misogyny, drug abuse and sexual misconduct, most notably from journalistic reports about members being ‘converted’ and coerced into homosexual acts with the leaders (Bunting 1997; Barrett 2001). This seems to apply to those further along the trajectory of commitment, for whom leaving was not an option. The testimonies of ex-members suggest that the alleged events took place in the retreats and communities, whose closed, insular inmate cultures normalised deviant practices. A diary entry from Matthew, a young man who was later to commit suicide, reads, January 1985: I feel more trapped here. Trapped by the… routine, trapped by the ominous determination of ‘spiritual friends’ to keep me here. I’m losing my will. Panic! (Bunting 1997 http://www.ex-cult.org/fwbo/Guardian.htm) After leaving the FWBO, Matthew later wrote a letter to his mother that revealed his experience of peer pressure. This was delivered through

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the oppressively permeable gaze of mutual surveillance between fellow inmates: ‘I have felt manipulated all the way by people who have allowed themselves to be manipulated. I am now out of reach of all that ghastly sales talk… [it was] a petty totalitarian state, an Orwellian Albania with its own Big Brother.’ In another, he said: ‘I could never return to that ghastly concentration camp atmosphere with its force-fed dogma and drip-feed friendships… where reason and individual experience are crushed by people who expect total submission before any real friendship or recognition is gained.’ (Bunting 1997 http://www.ex-cult.org/fwbo/Guardian.htm) The Alpha Course Less sinister observations have been made of the Alpha Course, a recent development in the Christian faith. In recognition of an increasingly secular, rationalised culture, this course is targeted at sceptics, lapsed believers, agnostics and those with a mild curiosity, aiming to provide, an opportunity for anyone to explore the Christian faith in a relaxed setting over ten thought-provoking weekly sessions, with a day or weekend away (http://uk.alpha.org/). Although started by a charismatic clergyman, Nicky Gumbel, the course has become routinised into a standardised lecture series that can be attended at a variety of institutional outlets: a ‘McFaith’ of sorts. The lecture topics covers such questions as ‘Is there more to life than this?’, ‘How can we have faith?’ and ‘Why and how should I tell others?’. These are followed by informal discussions in small groups with a facilitator, in which ‘guests’ (as members are called) are encouraged to question and challenge the lecture content. Critical reflection is the hallmark of the Alpha Course and is used to distinguish it from more traditional Christian instruction: members are positioned not as passive recipients of a message, let alone victims of brainwashing, but rather as equals in an interactive, democratic discussion. This creates the impression that one is actively engaged in seeking out answers and forming independent opinions of the learning material: the path to reinvention is unique and different for everyone. As one past guest testifies: If you want a no-holds-barred, open and honest discussion, you can bring all the questions and things that annoy you about anything to

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do with Christianity or religion to Alpha. You ask it, listen to what has got to be said and then make a decision. If you never ask the questions you’ll never get any answers, and if you never give it a go you’ll never know whether it was right or wrong, good or bad. ( Jan) (http://alpha.org/past-guests) Another interesting facet of the Alpha Course is its use of rhetorical language to discursively (re-)construct Christianity. Perhaps in response to popular conceptions of the faith as being outdated, old fashioned and irrelevant to younger generations, apologists have attempted to repackage Christianity to appeal to a new market of increasingly dubious and disillusioned people, who are viewed nevertheless to have a quest for meaning. Similar observations can be made of The Silver Ring Thing, a youth-led Christian movement that promotes sexual abstinence until marriage (http://www.silverringthing.com/), and Students Serving Christ, a campus-based group of young evangelists (Magolda & Ebben 2007). Alpha Courses are designed to be as accessible and inclusive as possible: they are taught by young, dynamic leaders, free of charge, held in civic venues, make frequent references to popular culture, and are tailored to the vernacular discourse of its target audiences. Alongside the standard programme, there are specialist variants such as Youth Alpha, Student Alpha, Senior Alpha, Alpha in the Workplace, Alpha for the Forces, Alpha for Prisons, and it is interesting to observe the changes of tone and language used in each one’s promotional material. For example, compare the sedate tone used to introduce Senior Alpha: We have large print Guest manuals with all the Bible verses printed out and in ring bound design. Large print ‘Why Jesus?’ booklets are also available. Courses are run in churches, people’s homes, in sheltered accommodation and residential homes (http://alpha.org/ senior). to the down to earth, ‘cool’ language used to sell Youth Alpha to teenagers: Basically, if you’re interested in getting some of life’s big questions sorted, and want to work out what you believe for yourself, then come along (http://www.youthalpha.org/whoisitfor). The delivery of course material to residential homes, prisons, university campuses and the armed forces can be cynically read as a marketing

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strategy to target a range of ‘captive populations’: although adherents ostensibly discover Alpha independently and autonomously, the movement also actively recruits potential consumers. As we shall see in Chapter 5, prisons and other traditional TIs provide convenient sites though which RI discourses are communicated, insofar as they house large numbers of people who may feel bored, aimless and open to the prospect of change (or perhaps eager to appear compliant with regimes of reform in order to be deemed eligible for release). Religion is delivered through the backdoor to a group of willing and hungry consumers. The testimonies of ex-offenders reveal how the RI’s rhetoric of spiritual salvation is combined with the TI’s regime of reform and rehabilitation into a narrative of reinvention: I learned from Alpha that being a Christian can be fun. I’ve made the commitment to start over in Christ. I’ve died in my old ways and I’m being resurrected in Christ in my new life. The mistakes I’ve made are over with and I’ve asked God to forgive me. Sherri, ex-offender – USA. (http://alpha.org/prisons) The exercise of authority here is subtle and insidious, stemming not from a single charismatic leader, but rather the actions of peer facilitators (cf. Bauman 2000). In a Channel 4 television documentary, gonzo journalist Jon Ronson (2009) pointed to Alpha’s marketing strategies of employing friendly, jocular, down to earth preachers (he likens Nicky Gumbel’s mannerisms to Tony Blair’s), the vision of ‘young pretty Christian women serving food’, and the publicity generated by celebrity converts, such as Geri Haliwell and Bear Grylls. However, Ronson argues that the most seductive element of Alpha is the ostensibly benign, non-directive, non-confrontational atmosphere of the small group meetings, through which members believe that they are making a free choice to learn. This manufactured ‘niceness’ obscures what is in fact a carefully orchestrated, McDonaldised schedule for processing inmates through a moral career of religious conversion: Alpha is all about rigorously structured, almost mathematical niceness, and this structure is a huge success. It’s hard not to feel warm towards these nice people who share their lives in small groups and only put the pressure on once, but even then it’s just engagingly flaky (Ronson 2009).

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Summer camps Other faith-based institutional sites take the form of retreat homes and summer camps. Here the pursuit of a deeper understanding of one’s existing religious beliefs, through intense prayer, meditation and study, is presented simultaneously as an opportunity for personal growth and selfdevelopment. Though closer to the traditional TI in terms of their residential segregation and physical boundedness, these are nonetheless RIs in that members elect to reside there, regard it as a positive opportunity for change, and are welcomed by staff as equal participants in a collective enterprise. Unlike the TI monastery or convent, where religious instruction is viewed as an end in itself, here it is regarded as a means to the ultimate end of self-transformation. For example, Nicholaston House in South Wales is described as a centre for restoration and healing, where, in an atmosphere of love and prayer, people would find acceptance, peace, hope and healing… [faith-building courses] lead to a deeper understanding of God’s goodness, calling and gifting in the lives of His followers (http://www.nicholastonhouse.org/). The centre offers a range of religious and secular themed courses over 3–10 days on such topics as, ‘when God asks the questions’, ‘prayer ministry’, ‘overcoming eating disorders’, ‘marriage’, ‘music, healing and creativity’, and ‘managing stress’, which are taught in small group workshops. Social activities complete the picture, including organised walks around the Gower Peninsula, ‘personal retreats’ and ‘chill out weekends’, and residents are encouraged to socialise in the communal dining room, lounges and art studio. Thus they are ‘totally’ immersed, not only in the religious doctrines they are studying, but in the values of a community of like-minded others, who share and reinforce their motivation for being there. As voluntary, fee-paying clients, Nicholaston inmates invest emotionally, socially and financially in the pursuit of serenity, and look to both instructors and fellow residents for support. Other Christian retreats of this kind hold more of a festival flavour, as worshippers are invited to celebrate and revel in their faith, while welcoming new members into it. Soul Survivor is a movement aimed at younger people, which organises festivals, fundraising events, community projects and voluntary work schemes around the world, bringing young people together to worship. It incorporates ‘Soul Action’, an awareness raising programme, as well as guidance on Bible study,

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discussion groups for those new to the faith, a magazine and online shop. The promotional material of its website, like that of Youth Alpha, has been designed using colourful images, graphics and a vernacular linguistic tone that implies a carefully targeted audience: Grab a tent & join us as we spend 5 days worshipping Jesus in a field! This year’s Soul Survivor events are packed full of awesome venues, time to chill with your mates, an incredible array of seminars and (start praying now) great weather! (http://www.soulsurvivor.com/uk/index.html) These events evoke Durkheim’s (1912) description of the ‘effervescent assemblies’ that characterised traditional religious worship. Equally important as the substantive content of the materials studied is the socially mediated process through which this is communicated. For example, Soul Action involves an event called ‘The Noise’, in which groups of teenagers work together on small scale community projects as an expression of their faith – the concept of noise is invoked both literally, to refer to boisterousness of adolescents, and metaphorically, to refer to the power of their religious fervour: The Noise is about action. Taking the love of Jesus to our streets and towns in practical ways through acts of service, love and generosity. It’s about following Jesus and doing some simple servant hearted stuff where you live… clearing up a run down estate, setting up a sports project for local kids or doing some gardening for an elderly lady. Go on, connect the dots between saying and doing, show your faith by what you do (James 2v18) (http://www.soulaction.org/ thenoise/index.html). Spring Harvest is a more temporally bound, annual event held over Easter: billed as an interdenominational Christian conference, it is held in a UK holiday camp and seeks to cultivate a distinctly jubilant atmosphere. The schedule involves communal prayer, Bible readings, seminars and workshops, but these are integrated with ‘fun’ sport and leisure activities, including a carousel, dodgems and an adventure playground. Spring Harvest, like Soul Survivor, invokes the services of charismatic preachers and activists, such as Steve Chalke and Tim Hughes, who are venerated as celebrities within the community, for their ability to communicate with young people. The atmosphere is punctuated by regular effervescent assemblies of collective worship. For

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example, the ‘Big Top’ is a nightly celebration that brings all campers together for prayer, public lectures, discussion, song and dance, complementing the more informal meetings that they have throughout the day in seminars, lounges and ‘cafe-churches’. The overall effect is to create a warm, supportive atmosphere that encloses the individual and confirms their faith. Indeed, the power of collective ritual practices is explicitly recognised by the organisers as being central to the transformative experience: Whatever your church background, there’s something special about worshipping our God, our creator, in the company of thousands of other people, with one heart and one mind – to praise God. (http://www.springharvest.org/main-event-sh/worship/module_ index.php?id=47)

Self-religions New Age spirituality Other RIs invoke a notion of spirituality not in terms of belief in a god or deity but as a matter of personal fulfilment. These are the ‘selfreligions’ (Heelas 1984) of late modernity, which promise to absolve the individual through regimes of holistic improvement, of mind, body and spirit. The new self is something to be worked at, prayed for and fervently sought, but this will ultimately be rewarded by the transcendent bliss of self-actualisation. Many of these RIs emerged out of the New Age movement in the 1980s, in reaction to the radical, retreatist sects and cults of the 1960s–1970s. Bruce (1995) explains that New Age movements are more loosely organised than those NRMs, based not upon residential segregation but rather the consumption of a service. This may take the form of individual practices, such as visiting health food shops, buying crystals or listening to self-hypnosis CDs, but also seminars, groups and workshops in an institutional context. New Age adherents are often eclectic in their approach, dabbling in the practices like leisure activities (cf. Bellah 1967), but through these disparate actions cultivate a sense of being ‘spiritual’. New Age practices encourage the individual to celebrate his or her uniqueness, albeit by using standardised, prefabricated consumables. Bruce (ibid.) identifies four themes of the New Age: new science (challenges to the dominant discourses of biomedicine through complementary and alternative therapies), new ecology (an interest in envi-

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ronmentalism and the interconnectedness of humanity and nature), new psychology (with themes of self-mastery, self-improvement and maximising one’s potential) and new spirituality (the idea that adherence to such regimes will evoke a state of transcendence, by being at one with the universe). There is a curious contradiction between the stance many of these movements take against rationalism, individual achievement and the capitalistic work ethic, and their own advocacy of self-disciplinary regimes. Bruce’s (1995: 113) description of this as the ‘paradox of naturalism’ highlights the moral, social and political principles that underpin participation in even these escapist havens: We are supposed to ‘just be yourself’ but we attain that authentic state by working hard to change into the sort of person the instructor or therapist or ‘resource person’ thinks we ought to be. Relationships have to be ‘worked at’. A room of middle-class people talking about their childhoods is a ‘workshop’. The publishers of those monthly magazines… now offer manuals for improving fitness, beauty, and personal relationships… But notice the point of such work and attention. Unlike the disciplines of the medieval monk or the ‘method’ of the Methodists, these modern techniques are not designed to help us conform to an external ethical code and better to glorify god. They are designed to make us happy: to allow us to fulfil our human potential (Bruce 1995: 113–114). Seminars of the self A second type of self-religion combines elements of Eastern spirituality and Western psychotherapy in the pursuit of human happiness. Scientology, Transcendental Meditation (TM) and the Human Potential movement are World-Affirming cults (Wallis 1984) that celebrate the values of individual achievement, career success and financial gain as a means of personal fulfilment. The idea of unleashing one’s true potential and being liberated from the alienating effects of consumer capitalism is bound up with the promise of achieving more within this system. For example, TM involves learning techniques of meditation and developing a personal mantra, in order to achieve a calm, positive and sharply focused state of mind: by channelling one’s mental energies into the self, we can become more efficient and effective. Scientology claims to enhance a follower’s mental health, confidence and efficacy. Its discourse is more psychotherapeutic, albeit in critical opposition to the physical and pharmacological treatments used in

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mainstream psychiatry. By following a course of Dianetic Therapy, members are taught ways of erasing ‘engrams’, or schematic memories that are thought to be preventing them from realising their true potential: the aim is ‘to make the able more able’ (Rolph 1973: 19). Members progress through eight stages of therapy until reaching the final, optimum state of being ‘clear’, or free of engrams: this is a moral career trajectory, but one along which clients believe they are propelling themselves voluntarily. In both TM and Scientology, we find an institutional rhetoric that is designed to appear personally and subjectively meaningful: working with a counsellor to devise one’s own mantra or identify one’s problematic engrams helps members to believe that the contents of the course has been tailored to their individual needs, rather than their having subscribed to a pre-existing, ‘off-the-shelf’ doctrine of McTherapy. This in turn creates the impression that the process of self-reinvention is one in which they are actively involved, voluntarily participating and empowered to exercise control. These belief systems are taught by seminars, workshops and conferences, which members attend like a weekly church service. In Scientology, members are described as ‘auditors’, a term that on the one hand flatters them with connotations of intelligent studentship, but on the other hand, implies a rather passive role of listening to an expert. Rolph (1973: 20) refers to Scientology techniques as ‘routine drills’ that enable student to become authentic social beings: to act rather than react, clear away mental debris and ‘confront past failures in order to get on with being successful’. There is a hint of neo-liberal individualism here, as the member is expected to take responsibility for their own development and progress (cf. Rose 1990). Members of these cults may feel committed to the teachings, not simply because they have been inspired by a charismatic leader, but rather because they have invested a great deal of personal energy, time and money in the process of learning. Neo-paganism There has been a recent resurgence of interest in a range of pre-Christian folklore and ethnic belief systems, such as Wicca, Druidism and Shamanism. These faiths do not worship a single deity but rather are polytheistic (recognising many gods or goddesses), animistic (seeing spirituality in all living things) or pantheistic (regarding God as an immanent force pervading everything in an interconnected universe). This revival on the one hand represents the ‘radical individualism’ of New Age practices (Bruce 1995: 120): holism is a rhetorical device that makes

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disciplinary regimes more palatable, but the ideas of returning to nature, connecting with the spirit world, and so on, cloak the same underlying goals of changing, improving, and reshaping the self. The theme of authenticity recurs, as members are encouraged to discard the trappings of materialism and consumer culture and embrace the simplicity of a ‘natural’ lifestyle. On the other hand, the way in which these values are pursued is perhaps the closest any contemporary religious movement will come to the Durkheimian (1912) model of collective sentimentality. The invocation of ancient rituals, folklore and festivities demands a ceremonial context for religious practice, often involving effervescent gatherings with traditional costumes, chanting and dancing: for example, in celebrations of the summer and winter solstices. Neo-paganism is said to hold particular appeal for young women, insofar as these are some of the few traditional religions in which goddesses and female deities are worshipped (Puttrick 1999). This, together with the wider appeal of NRMs to young, middle class, relatively affluent people (Barker 1989; Bruce 1995) may explain why the movement has gained a stronghold in schools and college campuses. As Hey (1997) argues, doing friendship is an important mechanism through which girls negotiate their place within the discourses of compulsory heterosexuality (Rich 1980). In the (arguably) post-feminist, secular culture of the sixth form college or university halls of residence, young, white, middle class women may form ‘platonic alliances’ (Hey 1997: 106) that celebrate female solidarity and independence. They do not need boyfriends, paternal approval or other male attention because the all-girl peer group provides a bounded, collective identity (Walkerdine 1987). Wicca, in particular, has been said to have a seductive appeal to adolescent girls, which has been fuelled by popular mass media texts such as Twilight, The Craft and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Bloustein 2002). Despite the alarmist associations of ‘black’ witchcraft with the occult, ‘white’ witchcraft (that which is performed for benign or beneficial ends) has been repackaged as a harmless teenage fashion. Curious teens can buy paperback introductions to paganism, audio CDs of ‘traditional’ songs and chants, kits for making spells and subscriptions to magazines that promise to turn them into a ‘real, practising witch’ in a few easy steps. The Internet is replete with resources, ranging from semi-professional organisations like the Pagan Federation (www.paganfed.org) and www.wicca.org.uk, which provide information on the faith’s history, mythology, traditions and upcoming events, to the more

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informal, self-published websites of individuals, such as Children of Artemis (http://witchcraft.org), http://witchway.net and, www.witchology.com, which offer online tutorials on how to practise wiccan rituals and observe annual festivities. Consumers can also mail order ‘ritual supplies’ such as potion ingredients, candles, incense and costume jewellery. These websites serve a social as well as informational function, by providing a space in which followers come together to discuss their beliefs; this may be as important as the rituals themselves in cementing their group identity. Indeed, for the adolescent living under parental home rules, it may be more practicable to learn the techniques via computer from the safety of her bedroom than to attend outdoor, nocturnal ceremonies. As we shall see in Chapter 9, online communities can become ‘virtual institutions’ in which groups of like-minded peers choose to congregate regularly, developing a strong collective identity. These tight, insular communities function as ‘neotribes’ (Maffesoli 1996), a contemporary equivalent of the 1960s–1970s youth subcultures, based not upon class conflict but upon shared interests and ideals. Expressive dance A different kind of spiritual transformation is pursued through the practice of 5 Rhythms Dance, which originated in the USA from charismatic guru Gabrielle Roth, and is now taught in ‘Moving Center’ schools around the world. This can be understood as a World Affirming NRM in Wallis’ (1984) typology, for it combines elements of transpersonal psychology, Gestalt Therapy and self-actualisation with spiritual notions of trance states, meditation and ecstasy. It is used as form of holistic therapy for those with mental health problems, particularly dissociative conditions, eating distress, self-harm and personality disorders: the dance movements are said to help sufferers feel and express their emotions directly, instead of suppressing them. The dance is comprised of five stages or rhythms – flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical and stillness – the exact steps of which are not formally taught but left to the individual to define. The result is described as a ‘wave’, an integrated communicative gesture that liberates the mind through embodied self-expression. Members attend 5 Rhythms classes regularly until they have learned the key principles, and may enjoy weekend retreats, workshops and informal practice at home. This demands a fervent level of commitment: dancers are encouraged to ‘sweat your prayers’ (Roth 1997).

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The testimonies of 5 Rhythms adherents suggest that each of the five stages has different emotional connotations, which, when put together, create a sense of advancement along a therapeutic career trajectory. For example, a Mental Health Foundation study (Cook et al 2003), based upon diaries, questionnaires and interviews with 18 recent converts, reported the following associations with each of the rhythms: Flowing: ‘Vivid image I have seen. Flowing … harmony and pure energy – a light, a joy, an explosion of pure energy and being (Flora)’ Staccato: ‘A wonderful opportunity to express anger and “nasty” feelings (Ella)’ Chaos: ‘I find it difficult to let go – physically – I don’t like chaos in my life – but when I have been able to let go and get into chaos it’s been exhilarating (Jay)’ Lyrical: ‘Helps me to integrate things, get through to the lighter side (Christine)’ Stillness: ‘Often a relief – I can nurse my body, my need to dance slowly is in time with the rhythm of the music – I’m usually really ready for stillness at the end of a wave (Jay)’ (Cook et al 2003: 4–8) Here we see how, despite the idea of individual interpretation, dancers in fact adhere to a pre-scripted ‘soul journey’ from optimistic motivation, through unpicking and unpacking traumatic experiences, rearranging and reordering them, and finally achieving a new, more authentic calmness. The ‘wave’ symbolises the therapeutic process in miniature, allowing students to ritually re-enact the experience of selfreinvention. Dancers propel themselves along this trajectory as a moral career, but their changing emotions are safely contained and managed within the narrative frame of the dance: because it is stylised and structured, they can be reassured that the feelings will be resolved by its end. Creative retreats Those with a creative talent may be drawn to artists’ and writers’ retreat centres. Here, individuals are encouraged to spend a few days or weeks in isolation from the outside world in order to concentrate intently on their work. This may appeal insofar as it conjures up the romantic

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image of the tortured genius, beavering away at his or her work with intense passion and total absorption (Jamison 1996). The creative retreat is depicted as a spiritual haven for the mind, an opportunity to maximise one’s potential and realise ambitions that would otherwise be scuppered by workaday concerns. The imagination of one’s own potential masterpiece takes on a totemic status as an object of worship, to be pursued through the practices of artistic passion. Some retreats are hosted in secluded houses in remote locations, creating a totalising sense of physical confinement. The Assynt Foundation invites artists to visit Glencanisp Lodge in the Scottish Highlands, where days can be spent working in isolation and evenings enjoyed alongside others in communal meals and social activities. It is ironic, yet in keeping with the institutional arrangements of the RI, that one should choose to pursue introspective self-identity work alongside others and through social interaction. Many such residences double as holiday centres, incorporating sport and leisure activities, film screenings, yoga and so on alongside the manifest focus of work, and these recreational activities are enjoyed in the company of fellow inmates. Indeed, in some retreat houses, the creative art itself is pursued collectively rather than in individual isolation. For example, the Anderson Ranch Center in Colorado tellingly describes itself as a ‘colony’, and extols the virtues of group learning: scheduled seminars and workshops are combined with leisure activities, exhibitions and talks. Although artists come here to work on their own projects, the ‘real’ work of spiritual growth and selfactualisation is seen to emerge from collaborative learning in an artistic community. Other creative retreats serve a more therapeutic function, promising to heal the troubled soul. Those who have suffered from traumatic life experiences, mental disorders and general ill health are invited to seek solace in a form of self-administered art therapy. Examples of these in the USA are Art for the Soul in Alabama and Angelspring Farm Wellness Retreat in Pennsylvania, whose director is quoted as being dedicated to the: personal and professional development of the whole person, with attention to spirituality and wellness. Angelspring is dedicated to providing excellent human potential and wellness-based education and experiences. Guests can take advantage of a total health retreat, offering opportunities that facilitate solitude, rural warmth, and spiritual guidance to renew the body, relax the

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mind, and rejuvenate the spirit… a place to rest, a sanctuary, and dealing with life stressors (http://www.giftfromwithin.org/html/ retreats.html). Some creative retreats take a different approach by focusing on discipline (see also Chapter 5): clients are encouraged to embrace the opportunity to make themselves work, devoting hours of labour each day to the pursuit of creativity. For example, the Urban Writers’ Retreat in London offers short weekend breaks that promise to transform the workshy or self-doubting into prolific artists: Never find time or space to write? Writers’ retreats provide freedom from the everyday chores and excuses that get in the way of writing like phones, relatives, TV, the Internet and work. Escape from distractions might sound like heaven or bootcamp. But by ‘stapling yourself to a chair’ you give yourself the greatest luxury and necessity a writer can have – time and space to just write. You might be surprised at how much you can get done. (http://urbanwritersretreat.web.officelive.com/default.aspx) There is a moral imperative in the idea that one owes it to oneself to work hard and unlock one’s true potential. The totalising environment is seen as key to this, with the idea that working alongside others helps to keep individuals committed to their schedules. Members are encouraged to cultivate a sense of ethical responsibility not only to themselves but to their peers, and an individual’s productivity levels are seen to reflect upon the whole group. A collection of past residents’ comments reveals enthusiastic feedback about the value of immersing oneself in an environment of formal and informal obligations: I learned I have very little discipline. I NEED to be forced to write really and I learned though that I enjoy it when I do so I really shouldn’t shoot myself in the foot by avoiding it! I realised how often I distract myself – not having the web was VERY key to progress being made, Wonderful. I missed music to begin with but got used to it. Every time I stopped for a break I wanted to go back to my desk again! (http://urbanwritersretreat.web.officelive.com/default.aspx)

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Secular social movements A third set of RIs are neither religious nor spiritual in the traditional sense, but rather concern belief systems to which individuals commit with equal passion and fervour. This may involve a political cause, ideology or set of values that lies outside the mainstream but which to the adherent represents a utopian escape. Martell (1994: 108) defines the social movement as ‘a collective attempt to further a common interest or goal through collective action outside established institutions’. People join such interest groups when their needs are not met and their voices are not heard by mainstream institutions, or when access to them is closed off (Tilly 2004). Martell makes a distinction between ‘old’ and ‘new’ social movements (NSMs), the former being rooted in party politics, and the latter being rooted in civil society, concerned with issues of personal choice and lifestyle. ‘Green’, or ecological movements are typical of this trend, for environmental activism tends to be pursued by the relatively affluent, well educated and media literate, whose political interests are otherwise well represented by mainstream politics: the ‘new environmentalism’ is ‘predominantly a middle class issue which only the middle classes have the luxury to be concerned with’ (1994: 127). Bruce (1995), too, regards the ‘new ecology’ as part of the wider New Age movement that appeals largely as an escapist fantasy for the middle classes. People join Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the National Trust and the Ramblers’ Association as ideological pursuits that are simultaneously leisure activities. These are RIs insofar as the idea of cultivating a greener, peaceful, more harmonious relationship between humanity and the natural world can be a seductive and all-encompassing dream, yet one whose pursuit can be easily accommodated to secular lifestyles. Activists can attend marches at weekends, rally supporters via homeadministered websites, visit historical listed buildings in summer holidays, all the time feeling as if they are contributing to a greater cause. Utopian retreats Some NSMs involve the residential segregation of their members in pursuit of a common goal. For example, Magnuson (2008) describes the appeal of the mythopoetic men’s movement to upper-middle class white men who were disillusioned with the model of the materialistic, statusconscious breadwinner. Through male bonding rituals, they explored new masculinities that reconciled archetypal notions of patriarchal provision with post-feminist sensibilities of emotional literacy. However, for Craib

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(1994), the true appeal of men’s movements lay not in their ideology, but rather the comforting social ritual of joining a group and sharing a vision: were it not for the weekly meetings, discussions and mutual reinforcement, the movement would not survive. Studies of the naturist movement (Weinberg 1965; Parry 1982; Bell & Holiday 2000) reveal how the claim that nudity is empoweringly natural, benign and non-sexual is a definition of the situation (Thomas & Thomas 1928) that has to be continuously upheld by mundane routines and practices. Naturist club members learn to perform nonchalance until it becomes real, and affect a blasé attitude to the sexualised potential of each others’ bodies: this is a ‘decent’ arena (Weinberg 1965), in which people contemplate more cerebral matters. Parry (1982) suggests that newcomers to the movement embark on a Goffmanesque moral career, as they make a series of personal adjustments to their new identity. There is a shift from initial feelings of self-conscious embarrassment and modesty to displays of confidence (real or affected), as the individual gradually substitutes the club’s view of nudity for the wider society’s and is resocialised into a new set of values. Rather like Becker’s (1963) marijuana smokers, they ‘learn the techniques’ of being comfortably naked, encouraged by the behaviour of other members, and find that within this bounded world, their deviance is normalised. Another famous utopian retreat is the kibbutz, an Israeli commune designed to be agriculturally, economically and materially selfsufficient and independent. Though originally organised as religious communities for the Jewish diaspora in Russia and Eastern Europe, kibbutzim also grew in popularity over the twentieth century because of the sanctuary that they offered from the modern world and contemporary western child-rearing practices. In the kibbutz, the principle of equality shaped the organisation of every aspect of communal life: property was collectively owned (from homes to clothing, food and money), everyone worked together on manual labouring tasks, and children lived not with their biological parents but in block residences, raised by metapelet (caregivers), nurses and teachers. The psychological effects of kibbutzim have been widely and critically debated, most famously by Bettelheim (1969), who suggested that the denial of individualism through a lack of private property left members emotionally impoverished and struggling to form intimate relationships. Although organised as a traditional TI in many ways, the kibbutz embodied some key features of the RI, such as communal living for the purpose of selfimprovement, striving to create a more fulfilling lifestyle and to live more authentically. Individual identity was cultivated and expressed

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through group identity; although kibbutz members deferred to a greater power, this was the authority of the community, not a transcendent deity. However, the experience of communal life is not the same for everyone: even an insular, inclusive community can exclude or marginalise some of its members. Ben-Ari (2001) recorded the experiences of ten gay men who grew up on kibbutzim in the 1970s and found that their sexuality was at best ignored and at worst openly rejected. Ben-Ari describes how the kibbutz ideology dictated certain principles that, though utopian in the abstract, were perceived as discriminatory in practice. For example, the principle of equality was expressed through not only sharing possessions, labour and relationships, but also by suppressing one’s individuality and conforming to group norms. There was a pressure upon members to think and behave alike, to share the same private beliefs and sentiments as well as public commitments, and to eliminate individual differences. Leaving the kibbutz was frowned upon, and those who did experienced enormous guilt. The kibbutz was a greedy institution (Coser 1974) that demanded its members’ total subservience: group life is intended to be intrinsically satisfying, generating a feeling of belonging and togetherness, as well as a common sense of purpose and experience. However, it is equally as easy to feel that one’s life is not one’s own, that there is no privacy, that the smallness of the community breeds narrowness, and that there is too much pressure to conform to the rules (Ben-Ari 2001: 106). Consequently, the gay men in this study reported feeling marginalised by the community, particularly as the informal peer sanctioning of fellow members made it clear that their sexual identities were deviant. One participant recalled how he resolved this by withdrawing from social activities in the kibbutz and retreating into himself: Social involvement was the single most important thing during adolescence in the kibbutz. For me, what was the most important thing was the worst thing. I confronted the threat by reading and preparing homework. I was clearly an outsider. I created a role for myself as ‘a loner’ (Ben-Ari 2001: 112). The strangest twist of fate, however, came when the young men were enlisted for Israeli military service. Although in many ways the military

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is an archetypal TI, to which individuals can be admitted against their will, forcibly segregated from the outside world and required to adhere to disciplinary regimes (see Chapter 5), in this case, it was experienced as a relatively liberating environment. Ben-Ari (ibid.: 115) describes this as a difference between the objective appearance of the military as a restrictive TI and the subjective experience of it as an escape route (cf. Cohen & Taylor 1992). In contrast to kibbutzim members, army personnel showed tolerance and acceptance of diversity, and gay soldiers were encouraged to express their sexuality. It was here that many of the young men came out to others and began to have homosexual experiences, and rather like students going away to university (see Chapter 8), this was seized as a positive opportunity to cultivate a new self: I felt that I was accepted for who I really was, not for putting on a mask… Only in the army I opened up to people. People who are not from a kibbutz are much more open to differentness. I felt they really accepted me, and I did not have to hide, nor to make excuses (Ben-Ari 2001: 115). Another participant attributed this difference of attitudes to the nature of the inmate culture in each institution, in particular the meanings attached to block living. Whereas kibbutzim members chose to live and work in close proximity, and regarded it as a symbolic expression of their shared values, soldiers in the military barracks were thrown together without any choice, in the interests of practical efficiency, and so felt no obligation to bond with each other. Ironically, this made it easier for inmates to develop what they saw as real, authentic relationships: In the army you are with people all the time, but you don’t have to be that close to them like you are in the kibbutz. It makes for the best opportunity to come out. You can monitor the degree of closeness. It is within your hands. If they reject you, it’s not a big deal. If they reject you in the kibbutz, you are lost (Ben-Ari 2001: 116). This reminds us that whether or not an institution constitutes an RI is a matter of not simply its objective structure and organisation, but also the way in which these institutional arrangements (Goffman 1961a) are perceived and defined by inmates. In Ben-Ari’s study, it was paradoxical that the kibbutz, which was intended as a utopian retreat (an

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RI), was experienced by some as repressive and coercive (a TI), while the traditionally totalising environment of the military (a TI) was recast as an opportunity for self-discovery. In the next chapter, we explore in more detail the idea that disciplinary regimes – or rather, the informal social networks through which they are taught – can be defined by RI inmates as positively enabling.

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5 Military Camps

Discipline is integral to regimes of self-improvement. In all of the RIs in this volume, we find members dedicated to following instructions, learning techniques and practising skills. Progress is represented by a moral career trajectory, with those who show the most effort and work the longest hours reaping the greatest benefits of transformation: ‘no pain, no gain’. However, in some cases, this means to success is emphasised as a valuable end in itself, forming the entire raison d’être of the institution. In this chapter, we examine a group of RIs that use discipline as a tool of reinvention, whether in the name of punishment, reform or character building. We shall trace the pattern of incarceration, decarceration and recarceration as we see how these institutions have been reconfigured in line with changing ideas of humanity, morality and rationality. An interesting paradox is that whereas penal TIs, such as prisons, have become increasingly concerned with therapeutic aims and inmates’ welfare, some non-penal RIs pride themselves on being harsh and dictatorial, re-mobilising the very disciplinary techniques that had fallen by the wayside. The members of these RIs willingly submit to the authority of an expert gaze embedded in the institutional arrangements: displays of uniformity, rehearsals of discursive rhetoric, and mechanisms of peer surveillance. Central to this process are the interaction-based rituals of observance through which members perform their commitment: drills, orders and regimes are followed with a ‘military’ precision, reinforcing the power of the RI as a vehicle of change.

Disciplinary power in the RI Foucault’s (1975) genealogical analysis of penality pointed to the social and historical contingency of modes of government, as shifting know88

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ledge bases led to the identification of new problems to be solved and troublesome populations to be managed. Foucault traced the development of ‘disciplinary power’ in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with a new package of strategies and techniques. There had been a shift away from the repressive power exercised through public spectacles of torture and execution (inflicted on the body), to the productive effects of knowledge (directed at the mind). While incarceration entailed physical confinement, this was overlain with the aim of humanitarian reforms to change the inmate’s character. It formed part of the ‘Great Confinement’ of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which saw the building of prisons, hospitals and Goffmanesque asylums in a new ‘carceral network’ of total institutions. Disciplinary power is conventionally associated with the TI, but many of its key features persist into the RI (Scott 2010a). Here we find a modification of the three main principles of disciplinary power: hierarchical observation, normalising judgements, and examination (Smart 2002). For Foucault, hierarchical observation was exemplified by the Panopticon, a model of the penitentiary designed by Jeremy Bentham in the eighteenth century. This revealed a new spatial configuration of power: prisoners were isolated in cells radiating from a central observation tower, from which invisible guards watched over them. Inmates felt themselves to be under constant surveillance, not knowing whether they were being watched at any point, and so learned to monitor their own behaviour constantly. The effect was an automatised, impersonal exercise of power: the guards need not even be present in order for their gaze to be felt, and prisoners became the principles of their own subjection. However, this was not simply a hierarchical gaze directed downwards, as befits the authoritarian model of power in the TI, but rather a multi-dimensional gaze, travelling along various axes. Disciplinary power was dispersed through a capillary-like network (Foucault 1975) and its observational gaze was reticulated: reflected and refracted within a network of agents (Scott 2010a). Thus in the RI, we find members showing their commitment not only by following orders from above but also by exercising mutual surveillance: monitoring each other’s levels of conformity, obedience and institutional progression. The exercise of a normalising gaze involved the classification and categorisation of individuals according to a ‘grid of perceptions’ (Foucault 1963) or set of standards for supposedly normal behaviour. This was informed by the rise of the human sciences – psychology, criminology, demographics and so on – whose knowledge bases provided the requisite theoretical models and typologies to legitimise population mapping.

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Individuals were aligned with group norms, for example through their levels of fitness, intelligence or law-abiding behaviour, and those who failed to conform would be ‘corrected’ by the regimes of designated institutions: asylum treatment programmes, juvenile detention centres and so on. Within these institutions, deviations from the prescribed moral career would be sanctioned by through micro-penalties of correction (Smart 2002: 86), such as reprimands for being late, inattentive, inconsistent or impudent. In the RI, penalties continue to be delivered through ‘drills’ and regimes, but these are enacted by the inmates themselves, as they perform conformity. The third element of disciplinary power is the examination of individual subjects, through the accumulation of documents and files. As we saw in Chapter 2, Goffman’s asylum made extensive use of the case record, which charted the progression of patients through the ward hierarchy towards ‘health’ and represented their moral career: rule conformity was rewarded and infractions punished by more or less indulgent treatments. The gathering of private information about individuals (their bodily functions, behavioural quirks and moral indiscretions) and its exposure to public scrutiny by the staff was one of the contaminating rituals of mortification Goffman saw as degrading the inmate by erasing their personhood. In the RI, this process is less austere: accepted by clients as essential to their recovery, and further legitimated by peer scrutiny. For example, the members of an eating disorder self-help group may collectively review each individual’s food diary (Rich 2006) or a reality TV show contestant might inform Big Brother about a fellow housemate’s attempts to manipulate the voting process (Ritchie 2000) – all in the name of helping one another to reach their shared goal. Members evaluate their own progress in relative terms, and are motivated by witnessing their fellow inmates ‘making it’. The peer examination process is overlain with moral notions of transparency, accountability and fairness (if the rules are upheld by one’s peers, they must be right), which secure the willingness of subjects to be governed (Lukes 2005).

Reforming penality Prisons, detention centres and other traditional penal institutions are of course traditional TIs – inmates are admitted involuntarily and coercive regimes are imposed on them. However, it is interesting to note that as the RIs based upon this model have become increasingly draconian, penal TIs have moved in the opposite direction, showing a

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greater concern with prisoner welfare. Although successive UK governments have rhetorically cited notions of ‘zero tolerance’, the ‘short, sharp shock’ and being ‘tough on crime’ (Morgan 2002; Rose 2000), these signify an underlying aim of reforming prisoners’ characters so that they may be returned to live productive, harmonious lives in the community. In this respect, penal and non-penal disciplinary institutions appear to be converging on a middle ground, where punishing regimes are combined with therapeutic aims. Hudson (1996) suggests that there has been an historical shift in penal strategies, away from retributive justice (simply punishing the offender for wrongdoing) to techniques which are reductivist (deterring prisoners from re-offending and would-be criminals from committing a first offence), or even restorative (repairing the damage caused to victims and protecting communities from ‘dangerous’ people). The Gladstone Committee’s Report of 1895 called for the abandonment of corporal and capital punishment, advocating instead ‘humane containment’ (King & Morgan 1980). While in Victorian times this simply meant incarceration in the panoptical penitentiaries that Foucault described, in the twentieth century, there was a move towards correctional institutions, such as borstals, detention centres and reformatories (Garland 1985). Young people, in particular, were redefined from hopeless delinquents to essentially good but troubled souls, who had ‘fallen off the rails’ and needed to be ‘put back on the right track’. Young Offender Institutions (YOIs), military correction centres and boot camps were revived in the 1990s to deter first time offenders from a life of crime. These typically involved harsh regimes of military style drills and physical training, designed to teach self-discipline, obedience and conformity: the ritual practices involved in following orders and adjusting to block living were believed to transform the inmate’s moral and social conscience. These reforms have also been driven by arguments about an alleged penal crisis, which centre upon overcrowding – the UK’s prison population of 85, 419 continues to be the highest in Western Europe (H. M. Prison Service 2011) – understaffing and poor living conditions. A ‘toxic mix’ of life sentence prisoners, politically motivated and mentally disordered inmates are perceived to be posing a threat to the smooth, orderly running of institutional life (Cavadino & Dignan 2007). Famous cases of disruption and disorder, such as the Strangeways Riots, increased pressure on the government, fuelled by the publication of the Woolf Report in 1991. This emphasised the need to improve prisoners’ welfare: incarceration was a punishment of deprived

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liberty, it was argued, and so to punish inmates further with an austere environment was an infringement of human rights. The HMIP agreed that prisoners were the ‘forgotten people’ of advanced industrial societies like Britain, and that there was a need to move away from the degrading imposition of enforced idleness (Morgan 2002). Meanwhile, decarceration led to a rise in non-custodial sentences, such as community service, electronic tagging, and most recently, Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs), all of which emphasise values of social inclusion. The aim of punishment has changed from mere containment to reform and rehabilitation; the offender is seen as a rational individual, homo criminologus (Rose 2000), who can be reasoned with and persuaded to discard his or her deviant lifestyle. Like the delivery of mental health care (see Chapters 2 and 3), penality has been reconceptualised from a matter of segregating and warehousing dangerous populations to one of rehabilitating and reintegrating troubled selves. In the redesign of penal institutions, inmate culture has been recognised as an important factor, affecting prisoners’ relationships with each other and with the staff. In Sykes’ (1958) Society of Captives, the prison was described as a Goffmanesque TI because of its closed, impermeable structure and mortifying effects: inmates lost their freedom, independence, personal possessions and autonomy, and were processed into ‘reformed’ characters whether they liked it or not. Clemmer (1940) expressed similar concerns about the risk of ‘prisonization’, a form of institutionalisation (Wing 1962), whereby those who spent so long immersed in this environment became dependent on it and unable to cope with life outside (see Chapter 2). Equally, however, Sykes emphasised how prisoners responded by developing an underlife culture of their own (Goffman 1961a), through which they challenged and subverted the officers’ authority. Cohen & Taylor (1972) concurred that making such secondary adjustments (Goffman, ibid.) to prison life was necessary for psychological survival, as inmates strove to retain their dignity. A key theme was the experience of ‘doing time’ – not only formally, by serving a sentence, but also subjectively and performatively, by findings ways of dealing with the depressing futility of incarceration. Prisoners learned to cultivate ways of both ‘killing’ time or filling the empty hours of ‘dead’ time, but also ways of ‘marking’ time and making it meaningful (Roy 1958), for example by cultivating friendships, activities and skills that would equip them for life after release.

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This is a dilemma that continues to haunt those serving longer sentences – for whom, of course, the prison still exists as a TI – but which highlights the agency with which even these inmates adapt to their surroundings. For example, Wahidin & Tate’s (2005) interviews with people in eight UK prisons revealed how they devised strategies for gaining a sense of control over their time. Cath, an older woman, described buying and hoarding food from the prison shop to eat in her cell, in order to avoid the regime of social eating at a scheduled hour: for me it is partly how to avoid being in the cafeteria longer than possible… So after you’ve trekked in the dining room you can just leave and be by yourself – just listen to the radio or read. Rather than sit like a lot of cattle waiting to be fed. I find it a very unpleasant part of the day. So I occupy myself in planning what I am going to buy. So that I don’t have to sit in that place more hours than is absolutely necessary. That gives me a sense of autonomy. (Wahidin & Tate 2005: 76) Wahidin (2006) suggests that what creates institutionalisation – a suffocating sense of temporal enclosure within the physical structure of the building – is the way in which block living is combined with ‘the synchronised movements of disciplinary time’ (2006: n.p.). That is, prisoners find their routines controlled by the obligation not only to be somewhere or doing something at a designated hour, but also to be doing so in the company of others. Thus the rhythms of prison life march on through drills and regimes designed to incarcerate inmates within the institution’s social structure. However, far from the ‘docile bodies’ Foucault (1975) envisaged, duly following orders in military formation, these inmates demonstrated agentic resistance to the threat of prisonisation: I still try to retain thoughts about outside. I mean obviously, um I think you have to work hard at not becoming institutionalised. Because you see people being institutionalised. And sometimes you are finding yourself. I mean sometimes you go for a shower at the same time everyday, because you know you’ve only got so much time left. And sometimes I’ll say to myself, ‘I’m not going for a shower tonight’. Just because I know I always go at such a time and sometimes it just stares you in the face. I think you fill your flask at a certain time because it is ten minutes before lock in. And I think,

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‘Oh, no’ and you know it’s a battle. It’s a battle not to become institutionalised because everything is regimented. (‘Julie’, participant cited in Wahidin 2006: section 6.5) There is some dispute over whether inmate prison cultures are indigenous, emerging out of the unique interaction context of each institution (Morgan 2002), or imported from pre-existing subcultures, ethnic groups and neighbourhood associations (Irwin & Cressey 1962): there may be not just one prison culture per institution, but many (Rock 1996). What seems clear, however, is that these interaction contexts develop in resistance to the dominant rules of the TI. There is an ‘us and them’ mentality between the staff and inmates as two distinct groups with oppositional values; institutional life unfolds as a battle of wills, and the solidarity of an inmate culture functions as a means of psychological survival. As we shall see, this contrasts with the RI, where staff and inmates are aligned with shared interests, goals and motivations; the hierarchy is flattened, and instructions are taken not from an authoritarian officer but from inspiring, facilitative peer group leaders (Bauman 2000).

Therapeutic prison programmes The late twentieth century saw the consolidation of this rehabilitative, welfare-oriented rationale for penal institutions, as part of the rise of the therapeutic state (Cohen 1990). A ‘new penology’ (Feeley & Simon 1992) has emerged, focusing on assessing risk and dangerousness, as tendencies that can be identified, controlled and managed through appropriate regimes of treatment. Prisoners are no longer dismissed as hopeless criminals to be segregated and detained indefinitely, but rather encouraged to engage in ‘purposeful activity’ and maintain regular contact with the outside world. There is an emphasis on inmates’ future selves after release; their identities are not simply mortified but optimistically rebuilt. Consequently, prisons have been reconceptualised as ‘not-so-total institutions’ (McCorkle et al 1995) that allow greater openness and permeability. Government funding has been put into redesigning their interior spaces to include visitor centres and fitness gyms, while the introduction of educational, literacy and vocational training programmes keeps prisoners focused on life after release (Cheney 2005). Increasingly, criminal lifestyles are viewed as a sign of ‘madness’ rather than mere ‘badness’ and accordingly medicalised, through treatment and accredited behaviour regimes (ibid.).

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With the employment of stepped status programmes, incentives and earned privileges, the prisoner’s identity, like that of the asylum inmate, is managed as a moral career of progressive rehabilitation. One example of this is Coalinga State Hospital, in northern California. The subject of a BBC documentary (A Place for Paedophiles, 19th April 2009), this institution houses male sex offenders who have served prison sentences but subsequently been diagnosed with sexual disorders and prescribed psychiatric treatment. Although forcibly detained on the grounds of dangerousness, there is a clear expectation that those who choose to engage with the Sex Offender Commitment Program have the potential to be ‘cured’ and ultimately released. Consequently, there is a pressure upon inmates to comply with the therapeutic regime, in part pragmatically, to speed up their release, but also socially and morally, to demonstrate a willingness to change. This is rewarded by promotion to the Golden Gate Centre, an area of the hospital with better living conditions, vocational and educational opportunities and leisure activities; those who decline to enter treatment are kept to a more austere, traditional prison wing. By engaging with the programme, inmates perform role distance (Goffman 1961b) from the deviant label of sex offender and align themselves with the institutional rhetoric: they are sick, they have made mistakes and wrongful choices, but through correctional retraining they can reinvent their sexualities. Labelled not ‘prisoners’ or even ‘patients’ but ‘individuals’, the men participate in cognitive-behavioural reconditioning and group therapy, which mirrors the form of a 12 step addiction programme (see Chapter 7). Abstinence is promoted as a means of ritual purification, detoxifying not only the body but also the mind of impure desires (cf. Denzin 1987; Weinberg 1996). Individuals meet with a staff facilitator, and are encouraged both to report their progress and confess their setbacks in attempting to master problematic behaviours: cutting down on masturbation, reducing ‘inappropriate’ thoughts and fantasies, and so on. In therapy, they are encouraged to take responsibility for their crimes while simultaneously moving away from that lifestyle. Role distance is performed and then internalised, as inmates learn to detach their new, emergent, healthy self from the image of the perverted miscreant. Unwanted parts of the self are willingly discarded as the individual’s sexual identity is reinvented. The Coalinga programme has five phases: treatment readiness, skills acquisition, skills application, discharge readiness, and community outpatient treatment. Tests of authenticity are administered at intervals to judge whether individuals are ready to progress to the next stage, and

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in some cases, these take the form of mortifyingly embarrassing rituals (such as plethysmography – a clinical measurement of erectile arousal) designed to detach the healing mind from its contaminative somatic counterparts. As one therapist interviewed put it, ‘many of [the individuals] have many likeable things about them, and the bit about them that isn’t likeable, they didn’t choose’. Alongside these official designations of the recovering self, it is interesting to consider the way in which Coalinga’s individuals present themselves, both to the staff and to each other. The 30% who enter the programme form a distinct community from the 70% who do not, and there is a degree of animosity between them. The latter view themselves as ‘bad’ but not ‘mad’: ex-criminals who have done their time and so deserve to be released; insistent that they are not mentally ill or dangerous, they resent being preventatively detained. Those who do engage with the programme, meanwhile, share the officers’ view that such individuals are in denial about their psychopathology, and strive to distance themselves from this self-image as much as possible. They not only comply with the regime but also perform this demeanour of conformity, in order to be recognised as being on the road to recovery. For example, an individual ‘caught’ by the film-maker in possession of an inappropriate picture of a young male ballet dancer, voluntarily approaches his therapist to pre-emptively confess the misdemeanour, framing it as an inadvertent lapse into symptomatic behaviour. Presenting himself as a good inmate, he performs contrition as he gravely reflects upon this evidence that he must continue to work on his inappropriate desires. In doing so, he aligns himself with the staff, gazing in dismay at the abject other self from whom he has become detached. Fellow inmates, however, regard this as a cynical performance (Goffman 1959): a devious ploy to win the favour of the staff and secure an early release. We are reminded of Goffman’s (1961a: 143) sardonic remark that, ‘[t]he patient must “insightfully” come to take, or affect to take, the hospital’s view of himself’. A second example comes from Fox (2001), who studied a regime of Cognitive Self-Change (CSC) at a Vermont prison for violent offenders. This institution conceptualised criminal behaviour as a sign of cognitive disturbance, a fault of personality that could nevertheless be corrected through the regular practice of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT). CSC encouraged the individual to accept responsibility, show a willingness to change, and redress ‘irrational’ thought patterns with self-disciplinary techniques. These included ‘policing oneself’ by identifying potentially ‘risky’ thoughts and behaviours, ‘catching’ oneself

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engaging in these and confessing to a therapist, learning and implementing a set of replacement ‘intervention thoughts’, conducting and logging ‘homework’ exercises in cognitive restructuring, and monitoring one’s changing moods and orientations to the programme. These inmates learned to map themselves onto models of recovery, charting their progress both individually, day by day, and relative to those around them; the results of these self-examinations were recorded in log books and case records. However, Fox asserts that what really evoked the change in prisoners’ identities was not the manifest content of the exercises, nor even the regimental discipline of performing them, but rather the metacognitive process of reflecting on their meaning, as a way of rewriting the self. The inmates came to understand themselves – their past behaviour, current feelings and attitudes to each other – in terms of the CSC vernacular, and (re-)constructed their biographical narratives in line with this institutional discourse (cf. Gubrium et al 1994). They learned to produce only ‘locally viable identities’ (Fox 2001: 176) from the range provided in the RI’s reinventive repertoire. For example, typical characteristics of a ‘criminal mind’ were contrasted with the thought patterns of a recovered self, and inmates were encouraged to track their journey from one terrain to the other. This provided an interpretive lens through which they made sense of reinvention as a dynamic trajectory; as narrative analysts have argued, the ritualistic process of telling of a ‘self-story’ is a powerful therapeutic tool (Denzin 1993; Plummer 1995). Again, however, Fox echoes Goffman (1961a) in suggesting that some of these constructions may be cynical performances: prisoners recognised that being seen to comply with the rehabilitation programme increased their chances of early release, and so would instrumentally play along. He hints that the prison officers were aware of this but turned a blind eye to it, through the indulgency pattern (Gouldner 1955) of a pretence awareness context (Glaser & Strauss 1964). That is, both parties knew that the performance was a sham, but neither referred to it explicitly, so that the show could go on. As Fox drily observes, ‘coercive programmatic practices, such as sentence-contingent therapies and rehabilitation, can virtually “bribe” new selves into being’ (Fox 2001: 176).

Non-penal disciplinary RIs At the same time as penal institutions have become increasingly welfareoriented, the RIs that draw upon their principles appear relatively

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punitive. Rose (1990, 2000) points to the rise of new ‘technologies of freedom’ as a correlate to the new penology, insofar as risk and dangerousness are identified in law-abiding, healthy populations. A new set of ‘control professionals’ (ibid.) has emerged to map out the terrain of normal problems of living (Szasz 1961) such as relationship breakdown, unemployment and general unhappiness. As we shall see in Chapter 7, there is an increasing number of private residential facilities to which such clients can self-refer for periods of reflection and repair (Rose, ibid.; Gubrium & Holstein 2001). Meanwhile, non-custodial institutions integrated into community life enable consumers to ‘improve’ or cultivate new sides of themselves through career choices, vocational skills training and recreational leisure. Each regime offers a different way of rethinking and transforming an incomplete self, and discursively produces different subjectivities: the recovering alcoholic or substance abuser, the liberated divorcee, the successful dieter, and so on. This resonates with arguments about the rise of a contemporary therapy culture, in which self-actualisation is promoted as a right, even a responsibility, of the moral citizen (Furedi 2004; Craib 1994; see also Chapter 3). A common underlying goal is the ‘ethical reconstruction of the excluded’ (Rose 2000: 335) through processes of responsibilisation, remoralisation and resocialisation. Individuals are encouraged to regard their fate as lying in their own hands, accept responsibility for their mistakes and free themselves from the shackles of deviant or unhealthy behaviour. Regimes of self-improvement and correction are dangled as a carrot, not a stick: far from punitive impositions, they are voluntarily sought out and adhered to in pursuit of liberation. Taking control of one’s own correction is viewed not as a punishment but as a privilege, a positive opportunity to boost self-esteem. Military careers Although army recruitment takes place coercively during times of war, and in some countries as statutory military service, during peace times, the decision to join the armed forces holds quite different significance. For many, this is a voluntary career choice pursued in the name of selfimprovement, with expressed moral aims of ‘character-building’ (Brookes 2003), ‘knuckling down’ and ‘making a real (wo)man’ of oneself (Hale 2008). With its connotations of strength, endurance and toughness, military training provides important symbolic resources (Zittoun et al 2003) with which to perform masculine identities (Agostino 1998; Connell 1995) and is perceived as a rite of passage to male adulthood (Klein 1999; Hale 2008).Through its alignment with the state, the

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military is regarded as a ‘respectable’ establishment that can keep wayward youth on the straight and narrow, and repair the damage caused by deviance and criminality. A large proportion of army recruits come from working class backgrounds and use the career path to perform composite class, gender and national identities (Sasson-Levy 2003).The idea of being willing to fight and die for one’s country is of course imbued with symbolic values of heroism and bravery that distinguish military personnel and veterans as objects of veneration (Thomson 1995). The corporeal effects of physical training undertaken in military service reshape the soldier’s body as an emblem of fitness, self-discipline and perseverance – akin to the symbolic meanings embodied by gym fanatics (Crossley 2006a) and anorexics (Bordo 1993). The physically strong, fit body is paraded as a trophy, representing months or years of hard work, discipline and commitment. For many, it is this process that gives military careers their appeal, as much as the end product itself: the idea of gaining control over one’s body, mastering instinct, spontaneity and laziness, and being able to follow instructions to the letter, day after day and without complaint. The servicemen in Hale’s (2008) study felt proudly that the physical and mental arduousness of the work had transformed their masculinities in ways that distinguished them from their civilian counterparts. They performed ‘representational labour’ (2008: 309) by constructing self-narratives about making the transition to a new identity. For example, Ronnie, a Royal Marine, said that he had developed ‘a pair of bollocks… I’ve matured a lot earlier than my friends’ (Hale 2008: 326), while army sergeant Graham reflected, It’s probably given me a tiny bit of hardship and actually having to overcome the hardship – … because some people, they don’t experience hardship you know. People are born with silver spoons… some people probably think that hardship is not being able to use their mobile phone (Hale 2008: 326–327). However, the disciplinary process is not restricted to the physical labour of drills and fitness regimes; the social context of army life also holds a unique appeal, through the forging of meaningful peer relationships. Thus another respondent in Hale’s study reflected on how being confined alongside others to endure a gruelling shared experience created deep bonds of intimacy that were equally important for ‘character building’: If you go through training with a batch of mates, um, it’s not the most enjoyable part of life and through that shared hardships. But

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I liked it because again, playing in a team. Because you have a mutual suffering if you like and without sounding over-hard here, it brings you closer cos it does. I mean guys get worn away to the minimum and everyone struggles at some point and you get together and help each other. So by the end of training, you know someone as well as anyone, probably as well as their girlfriends or whatever. Focus Group, Commissioned Officers, Royal Marine Commandos (Hale 2008: 321) Mechanisms of informal social control operate within the interaction context of military inmate culture. In his ethnographic account of an American army barracks, Westley (1968) observed that ‘the ebb and flow of army life was in response to many forces besides army regulation’ (1968: 201). Most notably, this meant the ways in which soldiers related to each other as a primary group (Cooley 1902), perceiving their common status and circumstances to engender shared values. Extracted from their civilian lives and forced into this strange new situation, the soldiers ‘clung to each other and to army discipline’ (1968: 206), finding comfort in routines and predictability (cf. Giddens 1984; Hale 2008). New recruits were socialised into the inmate culture, as more experienced members helped them practise the required rituals of selfpresentation: they would rehearse drills, test each other in preparation for skills and knowledge tests, check their uniforms and kit boxes, and generally support everyone’s identity performances. This ensured that the battalion presented an orderly, coherent team identity to their senior officers: they disciplined both body and mind under the governmental gaze of inspections and examinations. Interestingly, however, this status hierarchy was more open and negotiable outside of the immediate performative context of the working day. When relaxing out of hours, there was an unspoken camaraderie between the sergeants, officers and privates, as they colluded in ‘working the system’ (Goffman 1961a: 189). Alongside the formal system of bureaucratic rules, there was an informal negotiated order of rule-bending and fudging (Day & Day 1977) into which new recruits were socialised, and through which they learned what it really meant to be a member of this society. ‘Sergeants never seemed actually to break the rules but rather to bend them to their needs, often to facilitate action which would be obstructed by formal requirements’ (1968: 201). For example, in the sergeants’ mess area, men would discuss over breakfast the arrangements and resources they could request to make their duties easier that day, and concoct a suitable cover story: for example,

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trucks could be secured by persuading the motor pool sergeant to declare a vehicle out of commission and put it aside for the men to collect. This ‘staging talk’ (Goffman 1959) formed a significant part of the routine work of army life, and helped to make daily life run smoothly. Negotiation was further facilitated by an indulgency pattern (Gouldner 1955) of power, whereby senior officers would turn a blind eye to minor rule infractions by their charges, in the interests of practical efficiency and harmonious working relations. For example, coms (lower status soldiers) would take equipment and supplies from the stores without permission rather than going through the formal channels to obtain written authorisation from the lieutenant, and so the contents listed in the official inventory rarely matched what was actually in the stores at any point. Any discrepancies that were discovered could be written off as ‘lost in battle’, so that no awkward questions were asked. Similarly, the coms indulged their sergeant by arriving punctually for roll call, knowing that he would be blamed if they were late; in return, the sergeant would pretend not to notice any silent responses, or decline to call the name of a soldier he knew to be absent. However, just as Gouldner (1955) found, at times of tension and conflict between the interest groups, the same system could be mobilised as an instrument of power. Officers could pedantically insist upon conformity to the rules, just as coms could ‘work to rule’ to reduce the battalion’s efficiency, which resulted in a breakdown of trust and growing hostility. Westley therefore argues that it is the system of informal sanctions, repair mechanisms and mutual confidence, as much as formal procedures, that keeps organisations like the army running smoothly. In the naval context, too, we find inmates taking solace in the rhythms, rituals and routines of daily life. For seafarers, the ship functions ostensibly as a TI, insofar as it is a physically bounded institutional site, detached from the outside world of the mainland, which necessitates communal block living. Disciplinary regimes must be adhered to, just as in the army, in order to ensure that the ship’s work gets done, and there is a strict hierarchy of command. Social isolation can be a problem on large ships, insofar as crew rotations and unsynchronised leave periods mean that only superficial acquaintances can develop, while intermittent absences from home make it difficult to sustain older friendships (Thomas 2004). Seafarers are trained to be increasingly concerned about the risks to health and safety posed by cramped living conditions, and resign themselves to seeing ‘the world through a porthole’ for several months of the year (Bailey 2007). This in turn can

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create feelings of depression and anxiety, not only in seafarers but in their partners and children (Parker et al 1998). On the other hand, increasing awareness of these very issues has led to the design of contemporary vessels that are smaller, better equipped and more ‘homely’ in appearance (Bailey, ibid.). Seafarers can now use technologies such as email and mobile telephones to remain in more frequent and regular contact with their families (Thomas 2004), so there is greater permeability between seafarers’ work and home lives. Many seafarers report enjoying the periods of intense, productive teamwork involved in performing tours of duty, and are further rewarded by relatively high salaries (Thomas, ibid.). In this respect, the contemporary ship shows features of the RI, with members voluntarily pursuing the lifestyle in anticipation of its positive effects on their identities. This unique mix of TI and RI elements suggests the emergence of a new inmate culture with different techniques and strategies. Thomas & Bailey (2009) point to the active ways in which seafarers and their families respond to the temporal discontinuity caused by intermittent partner absence. Although tours of duty are getting shorter, seafarers – usually men – will spend three to four months away from home, followed by a similar period of leave, and so feel as if they are constantly transitioning from one environment to the other. Not only must they adjust individually to the different daily routines of work and home (seafarers work long shifts of up to 12 hours, without weekends or days off), but they must also struggle to reconcile these personal temporal rhythms with those of their families. Thomas & Bailey’s respondents spoke of the difficulties of juggling two different personae and sustaining a ‘stop-start relationship’ (2009: 619). A particular concern was that seafarers missed out on important milestone events of family life, such as children’s birthdays. Children symbolically represented the chronological clock time that had passed since they were last home, and embodied ‘lost time’ that could never be recouped. There was a feeling of ‘doing time’, like prison inmates (Wahidin 2006), while waiting for the next period of leave. Consequently, both seafarers and their partners perceived a disjuncture between the public calendars imposed by the ship’s schedule and the private calendars (Sacks 1987) that governed family relationships, and sought to find areas of overlap between the two. ‘Keeping time’ with each other while partners were at sea was facilitated by email and telephone conversations, which afforded each person a temporal, if not physical presence in the other’s life. The discipline involved in observ-

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ing these ritual practices was something that seafarers willingly accepted as providing a demonstrable link to life outside the institution. They felt ‘united in waiting’ with their families, and welcomed the exercise of mutual surveillance: I can get information a lot quicker, I can give information a lot quicker: ‘Why haven’t you done this?’, ‘Haven’t you done that yet?’, ‘No, I will tomorrow’. ‘Take the car in for a service’. Simple things like that, so you keep in touch with what’s going on at home (Senior Officer, cited in Thomas & Bailey 2009: 623). Regimented leisure Some RIs celebrate the pursuit of physical fitness as an end in itself. Most dutifully, we find the Territorial Army (TA), a volunteer reserve force who train in readiness for being called to serve in the British Army; in practice, this means undergoing the same physical training but over a much shorter period of time. Recruits normally train for two to three weeks per year, either in one intense block or as a weekly session, so that it can be fitted alongside a full time job; being in the TA is effectively a recreational activity. Watered down versions of the principles and values of military service – fitness, strength, endurance and camaraderie – have been applied to a range of youth-based organisations, such as the Boy and Girl Scouts, Sea Cadets, and the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme. There has been a resurgence of interest in these organisations since their radical image overhaul in the 1990s, with new uniforms, activity badges and a series of high profile leaders. The appointment of media celebrities as Chief Scouts, such as Peter Duncan in 2004 and Bear Grylls in 2009, bears the hallmarks of Weber’s (1914) charismatic authority, as the movement sought to repackage itself to appeal more to younger people. These programmes involve physical training in outdoor sports, teamworking and practical survival skills. They also have connotations of being morally wholesome and ‘character building’ (Brookes 2003), teaching values of self-reliance, responsibility, co-operation and leadership. Furthermore, the obligation to turn up each week, practise the skills and work hard for awards instils a sense of self-discipline, which is positively welcomed. In some institutional contexts, military-style training is undertaken intensively in physically and temporally bounded sites. These can be corrective boot camps for troubled youth, which serve an explicitly therapeutic purpose of behavioural reform (Dunkley et al 2009), but

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more often they are sought out for holidays or gap year opportunities. Pike & Beames’ (2007) ethnography of Raleigh International, a British youth development charity that runs ten week overseas expeditions, explored the motives young people cited for signing up for such a challenge. Their critical interactionist analysis suggested a discrepancy between the professed values of these inmates and their underlying dramaturgical motives of self-presentation. On the one hand, the teenagers spoke of wanting to ‘develop myself, become more confident’ (2007: 151), seeing the expedition as an opportunity for personal growth and self-discovery. They sought to cultivate four aspects of moral character (cf. Goffman 1967): courage (to take risks and step outside of one’s comfort zone), composure (building a stronger future self), gameness (being willing to persevere and overcome obstacles) and integrity (being honest, helpful and considerate to others). The discipline and physical labour of working together to ensure the team’s survival was perceived as highly emotionally rewarding, a rite of passage into adulthood. On the other hand, Pike & Beames suggest, these four qualities served a greater underlying purpose of making the young people appear more mature, well-rounded and employable: the expedition would ‘look good on my CV’ or ‘sound good at my [job] interview’ (2007: 155). The activities were undertaken not only for their intrinsic value but also performatively, to present a certain version of the self to imagined future audiences. The authors cynically remark that organisations like these provide an easy opportunity for young people to narratively reconstruct themselves so as to appear to be brave risk-takers, but that they only present these dangers from within a cautiously controlled, contained environment: expeditions are carefully designed and scheduled, risks are assessed and minimised, and medics are on hand at all times. Nevertheless, these inmates were not acting disingenuously; they genuinely believed that the experience was valuable, transformative and life-changing, but at the same time were aware that being seen as a particular type of person (worldly, experienced, well-rounded) would provide them with the cultural capital (Bourdieu 1973) needed to obtain career success. Thus they both felt committed and strategically performed the strength of their commitment. The display of this idealised self was an identity performance designed to distinguish themselves (cf. Bourdieu 1984) from an inferred other, less gallant sector of youth. Pike & Beames described Raleigh International as a TI, because of the way its inmates are removed, contained, disciplined and transformed, but in fact what they describe is an RI, because these processes have an

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agentic, voluntaristic nature. The young people had to learn to adapt to their new environment, detach from their ‘presenting cultures’ and manage without home comforts, but rather than experiencing this as a mortifying ritual of role dispossession (2008: 154), they actively embraced it as enjoyable, rewarding and character building. It is not only young people who find discipline in recreation. Altheide & Pfuhl (1980) discuss the meanings that athletic running has for some adults, who see it not merely as a leisure pursuit but as a way of life that defines their self-identities. Their participant observation, questionnaires and interviews with runners in the USA revealed that the activity symbolically represented a haven of privacy in an increasingly public, performance-driven culture. The solitary, meditative rhythm of running allowed individuals to spend ‘quality time’ alone, in pursuit of what they saw as a more authentic identity. Running was understood as a form of self-accomplishment on a number of levels: not only improving their physical health but also creating a sense of psychological and emotional fitness to deal with the stresses of everyday life. The runners believed that they had not simply discovered a new side of themselves, or added to an existing lifestyle, but rather created a new mode of being: [Running] is the most important thing in my life. It’s given me the freedom to be myself, to live a life I deemed not worth living. It has freed me from the hang-ups of youth. It has matured me and strengthened me. It is the most important thing I have ever done (Altheide & Pfuhl 1980: 132). Runners accounted for the transformation of their identities with a religious fervour (cf. Chapter 4) as an awakening to a new level of consciousness, and were almost evangelical about the benefits of their reinvented lives. They saw themselves not just as people who went running, but as runners: a master status (Hughes 1945) that engulfed and defined their self-identities (Schur 1971). Social activities, work and even family life sometimes took a backseat as these individuals prioritised their daily run as the highlight of their day. While not physically confined to a space (in fact, quite the opposite: the feeling of running across a terrain was experienced as intensely liberating), the runners felt totally committed to the activity around the clock, whether they were actually doing it, thinking about it, anticipating it or coming down from a running high. They spoke of having to run, as a positive addiction (Glasser 1976), and of feeling not only physically

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sluggish but spiritually bereft if they were prevented by sickness or injury. Running felt more ‘real’ than most other aspects of their lives, and was admired for its naked authenticity: Running is an activity that tends to make its participants more open and honest. In running, you can’t ‘fake’ it: no one can do it but you. It gives you a chance to see what you can do – to put yourself against some distance/speed, etc., and if you fail, reflect upon why, make corrections, and try again, knowing that eventually you’ll succeed (Altheide & Pfuhl 1980: 135). In this respect, running took on a moral significance: it was a character building experience that had to be worked at. As a processual, unfolding moral career trajectory, the runner’s identity was actively accomplished; becoming a runner required regular and dedicated practice. Indeed, for many, this was as satisfying as the elusive end product of fitness: By running every day, in all weathers, physically exerting themselves and in some cases enduring pain, the runners achieved a sense of mastery over their bodies and felt proud of their self-discipline: if I go out every day and I get a little strain, or I am cold, or my shoe rubs a little bit, or I run through the mud and it’s cold and all over me, the wind bashes you, and you’ve got six miles to go, every day, it’s conquering those little things... that helps you to find out about yourself (Altheide & Pfuhl 1980: 136). Another interesting outcome of this study was that although runners enjoyed the solitary nature of the practice, many had joined running clubs and liked to participate alongside others in competitions. There was a distinct subculture into which new members were recruited as they made themselves more visible on the scene, and fellow inmates socialised them into a set of local shared values: not only in setting the standards by discussing running speeds, times and targets, but also in talking about the emotional experience of running, which reinforced their enthusiasm for it. Members evaluated their own progress relative to these others in the peer group, and developed a sense of the culture’s norms and values from the informal social control exercised in this interaction context. Running alongside others also served a motivational function, the perception of well disciplined peers providing a greater impetus to train than they would have experienced alone. Like those in creative retreats (see Chapter 4), runners welcomed the

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competitive pressure of being surrounded by fellow journey(wo)men. Altheide & Pfuhl explain that ‘[o]ther runners are not ordinarily perceived as opponents, but provide the standard in terms of which a runner may assess his or her own performance’ (ibid.: 137). The runners therefore developed a social identity defined by their achievements in relation to the significant others (Mead 1934) in their reference group: when you are running along, you look around to see what the pace is like. And you see Johnny… and you know on a good day you can hang on to him… So there’s a measuring thing. [But] It’s not being against them (Altheide & Pfuhl 1980: 138).

Makeover miracles A third set of disciplinary RIs is those dedicated to transforming the physical appearance of the body in the name of beauty, fashion and ‘healthiness’. They may be institutional sites that facilitate the pursuit of these goals, such as fitness gyms, beauty clinics and spa resorts, or more amorphous collections of ideas, values and activities, such as the discourses and practices of dieting, which consume an actor’s consciousness throughout the day. These RIs occupy a unique position on the boundary between work and leisure, for although they involve ostensibly relaxing, even self-indulgent activities, pursued in one’s spare time, they simultaneously aim to bring the body into line with culturally normative standards as grids of perception (Foucault 1975). The paradoxical effect is to ‘discipline and pamper’ (Black 2004), as for example we speak of self-imposed ‘beauty regimes’. Diet and fitness Discourses of health and fitness pervade everyday life, creating a widespread and normalised belief that the body needs to be disciplined, toned, detoxified, neatly contained and checked through regular monitoring practices (Lupton 1995). Crossley’s (2006a) ethnography of a UK gym revealed how the primary motivation to pursue fitness coexisted with meanings of pleasure, relaxation, escape and sociability. Regular patrons saw the pursuit of a toned body as an ongoing project (Shilling 1993), detaching their disciplinary minds from the object to be governed. For example, they would engage in ‘motivations talk’ with fellow gym-goers, which established the standards against which they evaluated their own progress in ‘post-workout reflections’. Crossley asserts that the contemporary self both is and has a body, and can be

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subject and object simultaneously; we discipline our own corporeal forms through what he calls Reflexive Body Techniques, or embodied actions performed upon our own bodies (Scott 2010b). This energy is often channelled into a battle against fatness, as the symbolic anathema of self-control, orderliness and containment (Bordo 1993). A moral panic currently surrounds obesity as an alleged epidemic of public health (Monaghan 2007), for which various disciplinary regimes are recommended: fad diets (Hay, Atkins, Cabbage Soup, Maple Syrup), exercise schedules (specifying the number, duration and frequency of sessions per week), and government recommendations, from how much to consume (‘five a day’ fruit and vegetables, or the pyramid of food groups) to how much to sleep (the magical eight hours). Ironically, Monaghan suggests, these rules follow the principles of the fast food industry by providing ‘McDonaldized’ solutions: rational, standardised, calculated acts that, if followed to the letter, guarantee predictably good results. By consuming the advice in bitesize chunks and taking small steps towards an overall goal, regime adherents believe they are making gradual, systematic progress. For example, most weight loss programmes and slimming clubs devise a target weight for each individual, which allows them to chart their success (often literally) and reflect upon how far they have come; this makes it less likely that they will ‘fall off the wagon’ of self-discipline. By contrast, Throsby (2008) discusses the social and moral connotations of weight-loss surgery as an alternative to dieting. On the one hand, the six men and 29 women in her interview sample who had undergone the procedure and lost vast amounts of weight spoke of rapid and radical identity transformation, being reborn into a ‘new me’. The slimmer body emerged as a triumphant symbol of authenticity, as if the larger frame had been concealing this true self all along. Similar remarks have been made about women’s experiences of undergoing cosmetic surgery and other forms of body modification to alter their appearance (Davis 1995; Gimlin 2002). On the other hand, Throsby argues, weight loss surgery may be regarded as somewhat inferior to dieting insofar as it does not have the same connotations of selfdiscipline: surgery is viewed as a ‘quick fix’ solution that requires less of a sustained effort to maintain and for which the individual is not personally responsible (Bartky 1990). Throsby’s participants reported that when others found out about their surgery, they expressed an attitude of disdain, as if the person had ‘cheated’ or taken a ‘short cut’ to perfection. One woman’s friend laughed at her in derision: ‘You didn’t have one of those silly stomach stapling operations, did you?’ (ibid.: 127).

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This suggests that it is the process of self-transformation as much as the end result that is valued, because this implies discipline and commitment. Weight loss through steady dieting implies a prolonged, sustained exercise of willpower, through which the self is reconfigured as a disciplinary subject (Throsby 2008: 120), and which totally dominates the reinventive mind. Dieting is a technology of ‘indefinite discipline’ (Foucault 1975: 227) in that, like a recovering alcoholic, one can never say that one is definitively ‘cured’; to keep the weight off requires constant self-vigilance (Throsby, ibid.: 126). Similar comments have been made about the panoptical effect of slimming clubs, wherein the obligation to turn up each week and be publicly weighed creates an additional pressure upon the disciplined body (Heyes 2006). Fat camps An extension of this is the ‘fat camp’, a residentially segregated site to which people retreat to pursue weight loss in a totally encompassing physical and social environment. The residents of these camps are typically children, who, though sent there by their parents, share the desire for change; most volunteer or are persuaded to attend (Walker et al 2003). Weight loss camps are explicitly based upon the principles of a boot camp, and run with a disciplinary ethos, albeit somewhat tongue in cheek. There will typically be a regular daily timetable of weigh-ins, scheduled outdoor activities, nutritionally balanced meals and counselling, interspersed with designated periods of self-reflection, aimed at effecting long term changes in behaviour after residents return home. For example, the Wellspring Academy, which has branches throughout the USA, presents a typical daily itinerary: Stretch and morning walk Breakfast followed by self-monitoring Rock-climbing trip Lunch followed by self-monitoring Culinary training Mid-afternoon snack Game of football Dinner followed by self-monitoring Talent show http://www.wellspringcamp.co.uk/schedule.html These camps are frequently the subject of reality television shows, in which young people are followed over a period of weeks as they

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undergo this radical transformation. MTV’s Fat Camp, Channel 4’s Fat March USA, and BBC Three’s Georgia: 31 stone at 15 have been extremely popular with television audiences, who are positioned like guards in the Panopticon tower. We gain a certain amount of vicarious satisfaction from watching inmates change and develop along lines that are endorsed by the shows’ moral discourse: they ‘go from strength to strength’, become ‘a new person’ and find themselves ‘able to do all the things they wanted to do’, as a result of not only the dietary training they receive but also the unique social environment of the RI. There is a distinctly therapeutic, rehabilitative aim to the weight loss camp, with considerable attention paid to boosting children’s selfesteem, improving psychological welfare and addressing the emotional reasons behind eating behaviour (Walker et al 2003). Wellspring’s references to ‘self-monitoring’ after each meal suggest that inmates are taught to internalise a surveillant gaze upon their attitude to food, in order to reform their thoughts, feelings and behaviour. Peer interaction is also built into the design of the camps’ institutional arrangements, both physically and socially; this informal support can provide as much motivation to change as the formal diet and exercise regimes. Consequently, parents bear witness to transformations that reinvent not only the child’s body but his or her whole identity: It was a life time experience for John, he has grown and matured, he is less angry and he doesn’t get that easily upset, maybe because he has more self confidence and self esteem. You made an excellent job, you gave him a new image, a new self, and our family life has changed for the better too, since it was one of our major worries and a constant reason to fight with John. http://www.wellspringcamp.co.uk/parentcommentsaboutweightloss.html Another resident’s mother agreed that the ‘totally’ supportive atmosphere of the camp was a crucial factor in motivating her daughter’s determination to stick to the programme, even hinting that she had found this inmate culture tempting herself: When we arrived to drop Lisa off, we were immediately swept up in the good humour, enthusiasm and obvious warmth of everyone we met, and I left feeling sure that, if Lisa had any problems at all, she would be better than well looked after. And so it turned out. I couldn’t wait to hear from Lisa and every time I did she was even

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more enthusiastic than the last. When the time came to go to collect her, I found Lisa radiant, obviously fit, healthy and unrecognisable as the rather shy girl I had left behind. I was introduced to everyone, and invited to stay to lunch, which was positively sumptuous. Leaving was a terrible wrench for her. http://www.wellspringcamp.co.uk/parentcommentsaboutweightloss.html Reality TV As indicated above, these transitions may take place within the texts of the mass media. Reality television shows, which document the lives of supposedly ordinary people undergoing life-changing experiences, have become increasingly popular in the twentieth-first century, insofar as they tap into our fascination with the mundane. Kilborn (2003) argues that the appeal of reality TV shows lies in their voyeuristic element: we like to peer in and watch other people, whose behaviour provides a yardstick of moral standards. Either contestants seem refreshingly real, authentic and like ourselves (‘If they can do it, so can I’) or we relish in expressing disdain, thereby elevating our own moral status (‘I would never do that!’). Hill (2004) points to the paradox that the more entertaining such programmes are, the less ‘real’ they appear to viewers, as contestants tend cynically to be seen as disingenuously ‘acting up to the cameras’. Nevertheless, the shows seem to hold tantalising appeal to a new generation of people who seek to reinvent themselves in a sudden and dramatic way – not unlike the seductive allure of the new religious movements discussed in Chapter 4. This may reflect the rise of a wider celebrity culture (Cashmore 2006), in which values of individualism, achievement and competitiveness combine with a narcissistic desire for symbolic immortality (Giles 2000). Reality television conveys the message that anyone can be famous and that fame brings rewards, not only materially but socially, through peer esteem and admiration. Consequently, we find a new generation of ‘attributed’ celebrities, who are famous for nothing other than being famous, in contrast to the more traditionally ‘achieved’ or ‘ascribed’ status of older stars (Rojek 2001). Perhaps the most famous example of this is Big Brother, a reality game show based upon the dystopic vision of surveillance documented in Orwell’s (1949) novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. The Big Brother house is a residentially segregated, impermeable institution to which contestants voluntarily commit themselves for a number of weeks in the name of psychological experimentation, self-development and insight – as well

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as the less noble motivations of instant fame and a cash prize. Identity reinvention in this RI follows the pattern of a rite of passage (Turner 1967), in a temporally compressed form. There is first a rite of separation, as contestants enter the house, leaving their previous identities behind and imagining their future selves, followed by a transitional or liminal period, when one is ‘betwixt and between’ two social statuses, and finally an emergence of the new self that demands rites of reintegration back into the outside world. Fame is a moral career trajectory, which unfolds gradually and is mediated by social interaction in cultural sites (Giles 2000). This has an interesting effect upon the flow of disciplinary power in the Big Brother house. On the one hand, housemates willingly submit to the authoritarian gaze of this fictional, disembodied figure: like the guards in the Panopticon tower, ‘BB’ him- or herself is never seen and can only be accessed in abstraction, through a voice piped into the Diary Room. Despite the cautionary tone of Orwell’s novel, Big Brother contestants do not resent being under surveillance; in fact, they positively welcome the presence of the voice as a benign and calming, constant presence. They seek solace in the Diary Room as a Foucauldian confessional booth, and call upon Big Brother to intervene and adjudicate in arguments. For example, with ‘Nasty Nick’s voterigging duplicity in 2000 (Ritchie 2000) and the media fuelled ‘racism row’ (Holmwood & Brook 2007) between Jade Goody and Shilpa Shetty in 2007, housemates turned to what they saw as the impartial, fair and objective standpoint of the RI supervisor to provide advice. Other reality TV shows draw upon these disciplinary principles and celebrate the value of a harsh regime, albeit playfully. Many involve a period of confinement in a boot camp style environment, through which contestants undergo corrective training, which is portrayed as transforming their moral characters. The aforementioned ‘fat camp’ documentary series pride themselves on following the emotional journeys of the residents as they not only learn new patterns of eating but also forge new friendships, grow in self-confidence and so on. Likewise, the format of The World’s Strictest Parents (BBC Three, 2009–2010) involves a pair of sulky, incorrigible teenagers being sent to live with a host family in a different country, typically religious fundamentalists who run a household based upon strict rules of conduct and appearance, timetabled chores and a zero tolerance policy for disobedience. The teenagers’ moral career trajectories unfold with a familiar narrative, from an initial period of resentment and antagonism, through a tentative engagement with the new culture’s assumptive world and

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various ups and downs, until an eventual turning point (Strauss 1969) that breaks their will: a heart-to-heart talk with the host family or a letter from home, in which parents confess concerns that they had been unable to express to their recalcitrant offspring. These events form the dramatic denouement of the show, typically punctuated by tears and repentance; the teenager realises the error of his or her ways, and returns home a changed person, ready to pull their weight within the family. At the other end of the spectrum, shows like Dog Borstal and It’s Me or the Dog parody the boot camp format by applying it to pet animals, although the same message is conveyed: no nonsense regimes of behaviour modification work, and can transform the characters of wayward souls. Some makeover television moves away from the explicitly penal analogy to notions of enhancement and empowerment. Home improvement shows such as Channel 4’s Property Ladder, Grand Designs and Location, Location, Location convey the message that although we may feel contented with our lot, we might be happier if only we could change our living environments (cf. Baum & Hassan 1999). The same discourse of reinvention is mobilised, as the relocation or redecoration of one’s home is shown to enable self-actualisation: it is a chance to express one’s true identity, to release the creative inner voice and pursue a dream lifestyle. Interior design is defined within this rhetoric as an index of self-identity (Mass Observation 2006), and so to transform this performative expression is to change our understanding of ourselves as actors. Nevertheless, there is a subtler undertone of disciplinary regulation: the opportunity to reinvent has become a moral obligation, as if by ‘failing’ to home-improve one is being inauthentic, or denying one’s true potential. For example, Kirstie’s Homemade Home (Channel 4, 2009–2010), which extolled the virtues of locally sourced materials and traditional craftspeople, on the one hand depicted an idyllic lifestyle in a country cottage while on the other hand suggested that we too should spend our weekends hunting through West End skips, attending antique furniture auctions and learning the arts of glass blowing or blacksmithing. In these shows, the moral imperative to improve oneself is presented as a positive opportunity, inviting the governed subject to be complicit in his or her own surveillance (Rose 1989, 1990). A final set of reality TV shows address the aesthetic reinvention of the dressed body (Entwistle 2000), through nutritional and fashion advice. These employ a spectrum of disciplinary techniques, ranging from draconian dietary regimes to leisurely shopping trips, but all

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convey the same message. Overweight bodies and frumpy attire are framed as symptoms of low self-esteem, and so the transformation of one’s appearance is not superficial or frivolous, but rather an opportunity to liberate one’s authentic inner self. Gillian McKeith’s You Are What You Eat (Channel 4) is perhaps the most infamously harsh and militaristic of these programmes: an offender who has transgressed cultural norms of fitness (being overweight, unfit and eating the ‘wrong’ foods) is identified, paid a surprise visit by McKeith in a mock arrest, and carried off to her home for a period of reflection and reform. As a controversially self-defined doctor (Goldacre 2007), the show’s host presents herself as an expert in holistic nutrition, playing on the manner of an authoritarian leader by delivering a series of short, sharp shocks. First, the contestant is confronted with a table filled with a week’s worth of their current diet, as well as more graphic representations of its nutritional sinfulness (such as a row of sugar sacks or blocks of lard), as a Goffmanesque mortification ritual designed to shame and humiliate them. They then break down in tears before resolving to change their ways: enter McKeith with a strict regime of diet and exercise. By the end of the programme, the contestant is shown with flattering photography and a new outfit to emphasise their weight loss, and makes a statement to camera about how radically their quality of life has improved. Humility and deference are displayed to the authority of these regimes, as adherents proudly – almost sanctimoniously – advocate the rules they have internalised. For example, Trinny and Susannah, the sartorial gurus of What Not to Wear (BBC One) present a united front against unfashionable clothing as an assault upon dignity and selfrespect. Contestants are again pounced upon and taken away to a reinventive site: in this case a television studio, whose key feature is a booth with three-way mirrors. Another mortification ritual occurs as the inmate confronts an image of themselves stripped down to their underwear and receives a brutally honest, critical evaluation of their body, but this is willingly endured in anticipation of the ultimate outcome. Body parts are scrutinised for flaws, which are identified as shameful objects through derogatory terms (‘wobbly tummy’, ‘bingo wings’, ‘saddle bags’) to be disguised with technologies of discipline (‘control pants’ being an infamous example). This echoes feminist critiques of the beauty and fashion industries as vehicles of corporeal regulation (Bartky 1990; Black 2004). Contestants are taught the rules of fashion for their body type, which are drilled into them through rehearsal and repetition until they are internalised and reproduced

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unthinkingly. Aitkenhead (2010) therefore suggests that the show represents, ‘the perennial contradiction at the heart of all self-help reality television, which presents itself as therapeutic for its participants, yet must subject them to conflict to keep the viewers happy’. By contrast, the approach taken by presenter Gok Wan in How to Look Good Naked (Channel 4) is to celebrate and proudly emphasise the body in its current form, and to boost the self-confidence of the contestant through warm affection and exclamations of praise. The presenter’s camp, theatrical manner and alliterative compliments gives the show a much more uplifting tone, and Wan has been hailed by journalists as a radically transformative agent of feminist lay empowerment (Freeman 2008). Meanwhile, Trinny and Susannah have been criticised for their harsh, confrontational style, and indeed forced to reinvent this to portray more sensitively the ‘emotional journeys’ contestants make (Aitkenhead 2010). Nevertheless, this moral obligation to love oneself is delivered as fervently as discourses of correction, and demands an equally disciplined level of commitment to identity reinvention: As is the way with most makeover programmes now, the stylist isn’t expected to style but act as a psychologist… TV viewers are far more interested in nosing round a person’s life and seeing a happy, cod-psychotherapy conclusion than learning what trouser shape goes with what heel height. (Freeman 2008 http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/ oct/21/women-television) The very public spectacle of these reinventive journeys contrasts with the subject of the next chapter: secret societies and fraternities. Although the theme of disciplinary self-surveillance continues, we shall see how this can be pursued in insular, private communities, which appeal to members by virtue of their exclusivity.

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6 Secret Societies and Fraternities

A key feature of the Reinventive Institution is its insularity, something that has persisted but evolved from the design of the total institution. Secret societies have existed for centuries, but those that have survived or emerged more recently possess a unique character. Whereas these organisations were traditionally formed with instrumental aims, to protect the distribution of privileged information, with member fraternisation being a secondary effect, contemporary secret societies emphasise the value of social interaction as an end in itself. Joining the group, being socialised into its symbolic practices and learning how to ‘do member’ (Garfinkel 1967) are important motivating factors for new recruits, who enjoy the process as much as the product of acquiring special knowledge. Fraternal organisations are those designed explicitly with this aim in mind, and have become increasingly popular since the mid-twentieth century. We shall examine members’ experiences of college fraternity and sorority houses, service clubs and leisure-based societies that are predicated on the allure of exclusive membership, and whose secrecy centres upon protecting this cohesive inmate culture.

Secrecy and social life Simmel (1908a) was fascinated by the dynamics that emerged between the insiders and outsiders of social groups. His essay on ‘The stranger’ discussed the tensions generated by a would-be member who appeared in a position of proximity and distance simultaneously. The stranger was one who knew only the most general, publicly accessible information about the group s/he sought to join and so could participate in its activities only on a superficial level. However, if sufficient trust could be developed s/he might be made privy to confessions and indulgences 116

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of a more private nature. This idea was developed in ‘The secret and the secret society’ (Simmel 1908b), which explored the degree of mutual, reciprocated knowledge that existed between members of different kinds of group, and the effects of this upon interaction. These ranged from formal aggregations of people with a common role or status, for example at a business meeting, who might easily display only a limited amount of carefully presented information, to the intimate companionship afforded by best friends or partners, who risked almost complete self-disclosure. The secret society can be located towards the latter end of this spectrum, based as it is upon the bonds of friendship, brotherhood and, in some cases, love. Simmel argued that in such intimate relationships, actors possessed more knowledge than ignorance about each other, and based their interaction upon perceptions of whole persons as totalities, rather than upon isolated fragments of information. The aim was to gain an ‘authentic’ understanding of the other’s true self, through complete intimacy; there was an urge to be absorbed into the other, subsuming oneself within the new, collective identity. Fraternal intimacy operated as a greedy institution (Coser 1974), demanding the right to permeate every aspect of the individual’s identity and to be prioritised over all other social ties. Secrecy serves a primary function of protecting the distribution of private, special or highly valued knowledge (Hazelrigg 1969), but this has a secondary effect upon members’ identities and interaction. Simmel wrote of the ‘fascination of secrecy’, by which skills or knowledge of restricted availability became more appealing: the allure came not from the specific content of the information so much as the fact that it was hidden, mysterious and unknowable. Secrecy was a form of self-adornment, which conferred upon the individual a new dimension of identity and altered their perception of themselves. People were motivated to join secret societies by the desire to gain access not only to the information per se, but also to the insider status that such access implied. Furthermore, this process was mediated by the symbolic meanings individuals gave to the experience of fraternising with fellow members in an exclusive group (Simmel, ibid.). Recognising themselves to be in a unique, shared situation through their access to restricted information, they felt bound to each other by mutual obligation, formulating and observing their own strict code of honour. As Hawthorn (1956: 2) writes, ‘the members of a secret society are always conscious of belonging to their group and are always aware of the boundaries between themselves and

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others’. Aware of the risk of disclosure or betrayal, they are motivated to maintain harmonious relations based upon trust, respect and reciprocity. This need for absolute loyalty and commitment leads members to cultivate a collective group identity, strengthening their privileged position through a cohesive inmate culture. For Simmel (ibid.), the secret society was defined structurally, as an organisation dedicated to managing the distribution of restricted information. Although he did not define it as an institution (total or otherwise), he emphasised its closed and bounded nature in a manner that resonates with Goffman’s model of the TI (see Chapter 2). Its features included the mutual protection of members through concealment and invisibility; reciprocal confidence and trust; and codes of silence in relation to outsiders. Although the secret society operated autonomously and so was characterised by freedom, this was not the subjective experience of members: their bonds of loyalty and mutual obligation made it difficult to break confidence or extricate themselves from the local culture. As Hazelrigg (1969) notes, the secret society offers its members total inclusion, but at the expense of their individual autonomy; he likens the ‘greediness’ of the demand for absolute loyalty to the techniques of social control employed by totalitarian regimes. These groups tend to be segregated and secluded: selfcontained units that claim mastery over their members’ entire identities. Simmel also wrote of the ‘group egoism’ (1908b: 367) through which the secret society pursued its own goals without consideration of the wider society, its simultaneous inclusiveness (of members) and exclusiveness (of non-members) and its hierarchical chain of command. Power was centralised, regimented and exercised vertically downwards, as in the traditional TI. Hierarchy was therefore a key feature of the secret society, as was ritual, in the form of secret codes and symbols, signs of recognition, ceremonies of initiation and bonding, and routine practices that marked out members. Further exclusivity might be imposed by a distinction between outer and inner circles of the group, with access to the mystical granted only to the latter (Hawthorn 1956).

Traditional secret societies Perhaps the most famous and archetypal of secret societies is the Freemasons. This ritual brotherhood emerged in seventeenth century England, took hold across Europe and the USA throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and survives to a limited extent today (Jones

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1967a). Its members were and are almost exclusively white, middle class males, who, during the ‘Grand Lodge Era’ of the 1700s, drew up a constitution based upon moral values of honour, honesty and brotherly love, their first loyalty being to one another (Webster 1924). Freemasonry was based metaphorically upon the principles of stonemasonry, a medieval craft guild: new recruits learned the appropriate skills and knowledge through apprenticeship to established members, and organised themselves into lodges, or residential buildings where they ate, slept and fraternised (Dumenil 1984). The guild was used as a model of expert instruction, hierarchy and status that was tied to resocialisation: members sought promotion through the ranks of the organisation in order to earn the esteem of their fellow craftsmen. Freemasonry involved a career trajectory of stages, each marked as a symbolic step on the ‘ladder to heaven’ (Jones 1967a: 157), and the ultimate aim was to cultivate a wiser, grander, more spiritually wholesome new self. Unlike stonemasonry, however, these inmates were not really seeking to acquire particular technical skills, but rather to be part of the exclusive group who possessed this valuable, restricted information and understood the system of mysterious traditions. Just as Simmel argued, it was the secrecy of the specialist knowledge that appealed rather than its actual content; great emphasis was placed upon the mediation of access to this, through secret symbols, signs, passwords, handshakes, myths, rituals and ceremonies. Jones (1967a: 161) concurs that in the absence of any pragmatic or vocational motive for joining the Freemasons, ‘secrecy itself was a major attraction’. Recruitment was highly selective: potential new members had to be sponsored by two existing Masons, and took an oath of secrecy not to betray each other’s trust by revealing this information to outsiders. The seriousness with which the group took this vow of loyalty is indicated by its elaborate initiation ceremony, described by Jones (ibid.: 154–155). This would begin with a series of Goffmanesque mortification rites, which served symbolically to strip the neophytes of their previous identities: clothes and personal possessions were removed, a blindfold and running noose applied, and the individual would be taken under darkness to the door of the Masonic lodge. However, the would-be member was a willing participant in all of this, voluntarily discarding his or her former ties rather than being deprived of them against their will. In a display of subservience, the neophyte would kneel before the Worshipful Master, or chief officer of the lodge, who would pose a series of questions to be answered in a prescribed fashion. With the point of a dagger held against his chest, the individual would

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solemnly swear not to reveal any Masonic secrets to outsiders, on pain of death, at which point the blindfold and noose were removed. There followed a ritual dance before the candidate was presented with a set of stonemason’s working tools and uniform that served as symbolic identity equipment (Goffman 1959) for the role. Emphasis was placed upon the mutual performance of peer loyalty: the candidate demonstrated their total commitment, but equally, established members gestured their willingness to trust him. The effect was to consolidate relations between old and new members and increase the cohesiveness of the group, echoing Durkheim’s (1912) arguments about the function of ‘effervescent’ religious ceremonies in fuelling social solidarity. Other secret societies followed in this tradition, emphasising values of fraternity and loyalty. The late nineteenth century has been described as a golden age (Carnes 1989) in which such organisations flourished because of their emphasis on the Victorian moral values of virtue, honesty, courtesy, dignity and respectability. During this period, between 15–40% of American men belonged to a fraternal order, though there were few equivalents for women (Putney 1993). For example, the Knights of Columbus rose to popularity in New England at the turn of the twentieth century: founded by Irish Catholic veterans from the US Civil War, this evolved into a more secular order based upon notions of patriotic American manhood (Koehlinger 2004). The duty of a Knight was to be staid, orderly and chivalrous: ‘gentle to children, to age and to women, courteous to all whatever their station, clothing his words and deeds with politeness’ (Koehlinger 2004: 458). This organisation appealed primarily to middle class, heterosexual married men who, Koehlinger argues, resented and envied their wives’ status within the domestic sphere, and sought refuge in the company of other men. As we saw in Chapter 4, similar arguments have been made about the rise of men’s movements in the late twentieth century, whose celebration of brotherhood addressed an alleged crisis of masculinity (Craib 1994; Magnuson 2008; cf. Connell 1995). Putney (1993) identifies this as a more general feature of Victorian fraternities, whose members perceived women to have enjoyed a ‘female monopoly on virtue’, reinforced by liberal Protestantism. By contrast, fraternal ritualism entailed, a celebration of the ‘male’ virtues (strength, courage, etc.) and an assertion that men were morally self-sufficient, not needful of female redemption (Putney 1993: 183). Some organisations had a distinctly religious flavour that made their appeal more exclusive. For example, the Theosophy movement of the

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nineteenth century, while loosely based on Christian morality and left wing socialist politics, was organised like the Freemasons as a secret society that resided in Masonic lodges. Webster (1924) describes how this movement was composed of concentric circles, the innermost representing the most tantalisingly restricted membership. Meanwhile, the Rosicrucians, a group that originated from Germany based on the principles of the Jewish Kabbalah, spread to other parts of Western Europe and the USA in the nineteenth century largely on the basis of its mystical appeal. Jones (1967b) suggests that this society emphasised its exclusiveness to strengthen its appeal, but this turned out ultimately to be to its detriment. Nicknamed ‘The Inivisibles’, the group was so focused on its symbols (the rose and the cross), rituals and claims to supernatural powers that it was dismissed as charlatanism, and duly became the object of ridicule in popular culture. In the film Annie Hall (1976), Woody Allen makes a throwaway remark that ‘I could never get with a religion that advertises in the back of Popular Mechanics’, referring to the dubiously commercialised aspect of such organisations. Clawson (1989) similarly argued that fraternal orders have become increasingly profit-focused, entrepreneurial organisations, concerned with maximising their membership and financial stability. By the mid-twentieth century, therefore, patience with ‘traditional’ secret societies was wearing thin. This was exacerbated by their presumed association with world-rejecting religious sects and cults (see Chapter 4), whose closed and impermeable nature was regarded with suspicion. Perhaps the most notorious secret society in this respect was the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), a white supremacist organisation that emerged in the southern states of the USA to exact violence upon black, Jewish, Catholic and other minority ethnic groups, as well as American northerners and Republicans, in the wake of the US Civil War. Organised spontaneously at a grassroots level in 1865, the movement underwent three generational phases and persisted under successive charismatic leaders until the late 1940s, its popularity peaking in the 1920s. The Klansmen of the first generation rode around on horseback in gangs at night, wearing symbolic hooded costumes and committing acts of ritual violence in the name of revenge, profit, or simply excitement (Annan 1967). Murders, rape, lynchings and mutilation were routinely carried out by the klansmen, whose sinister dress and horde-like formation enhanced their terrifying reputation. Nevertheless, it seems that camaraderie and fraternisation were central to this group’s survival, too. Annan (ibid.: 270) describes the practical jokes that they enjoyed performing, playing on their ghoulish image, for example by producing a skeleton’s hand out of the sleeve to

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greet passers-by. The second generation, from 1915–1920, was much more engaged with non-violent, nationalist politics than militant terrorism, and prided itself upon its internal cohesiveness. The use of symbolic rituals was valued as a means of self-referentially performing the group’s exclusivity: the letter ‘K’ was given an almost sacred status, lending itself to the formation of neologisms such as Kloran (a book of ritual), Klavern (a local den) and Klonvokation (a KKK meeting). The latter came to be organised around a scripted rhetoric that echoed the Masonic rites, with an exchange of secret oaths, vows and catechisms (Annan 1967: 276–277). Thus it seems that in the case of the traditional secret society, whether the specific content of its rhetoric was politically resistant, conservative, ideological, spiritual or even commercial, a common secondary aim was to promote fraternisation among members.

Reinventing the secret society At first glance it seems curious that such an archaic form as the secret society should have survived into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The model that Simmel described seems apt to describe the above cases of religious segregation and political resistance, whose emergence during more turbulent historical eras may have been necessary to protect the flow of sensitive information. But in the relatively peaceful cultural climate of contemporary Western advanced liberal democracies, we might ask, what purpose do such movements serve, and has their function changed? Most pertinently, there appears to have been a shift in the secret society’s primary raison d’être, from the pragmatic, instrumental aim of restricting the flow of privileged information to one of enhancing social integration and fraternisation. There has been a flattening of the hierarchies found in traditional secret societies, as power has become more democratically distributed (Hawthorn 1956). Roucek (1960) makes a distinction between old and new secret societies, the former referring to political resistance movements, nationalist fervour, revolutionaries and conspirators, and the latter including undercover intelligence operations, secret police, but also (and most relevant to the RI), well educated, seemingly content individuals who nevertheless seek refuge in a community: The typical modern plotter is a respected citizen, perhaps a prominent public figure, the last person whose private life you would

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question. Political refugees from abroad, international adventurers, university students, journalists, ‘men of no country’ are always found in these societies (1960: 164). Roucek’s account fits with the picture painted by Berger et al (1973) of (late) modern individualism, wherein ‘homeless minds’ sought anchorage in institutional sites. It also resonates with Riesman’s (1950) arguments about a shift in the social character of contemporary Western cultures, from the ‘tradition-directed’ conformist, regulated by shame, through the ‘inner-directed’, guilt-ridden individual, to the ‘otherdirected’ actor, who was anxious, uncertain, and motivated by an ‘exceptional sensitivity to the actions and wishes of others’ (1961 [1950]: 22). Consequently, the total inclusion offered by the contemporary secret society may appear to potential recruits as an attractive end in itself, rather than simply a necessary means to an end. New recruits seek to join the secret society not only to obtain formal instruction but also to experience the inclusivity and camaraderie that develops when people segregate themselves in a closed community. As we saw in Chapter 4, many contemporary religious and spiritual RIs emphasise the value of peer socialisation as much as formal instruction, and isolate themselves in order more effectively to cultivate a collective identity. For Hazelrigg (1969), the defining feature of a secret society is its totality: the protective function of secrecy demands that ‘the interests and activities of all its members are totally encompassed’ (1969: 324). This greedy control of members’ lives is not merely tolerated but positively valued, because of the way in which they perceive each other and the outside world. The secret society regards its sacred ideas, objects and sentiments to be externally threatened, and so members take refuge in each other’s company; this is particularly likely under conditions of political oppression or totalitarian rule. Consequently, secret societies can take one of two routes. They can either become defunct and find themselves re-absorbed into the wider society, if their values blur with those espoused by the mainstream culture, or they can become increasingly self-contained and detached from the wider society, developing ‘aggrandizing tendencies’. In the latter case, Hazelrigg suggests that the more extensive the group’s secrecy, the greater is its tendency towards centralised authority through charismatic leadership, which gives members a sense of collective self-sufficiency and invincibility. Thus the long term fate of secret societies is either to fragment and dissolve or to become more impermeable, closed and insular.

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Erickson (1981) argued that secret societies no longer possess a singular, unified form but rather vary in their organisational structure, or what Goffman (1961a) would call their ‘institutional arrangements’. Whereas Simmel’s model assumed a rigid hierarchy and a vertical flow of power downwards, increasing the potential for internal tensions and conflict (Hawthorn 1956), Erickson argued that many contemporary secret societies have a looser structure of authority, based upon democratic negotiation between peers of equal status. This could be understood as a processual, interactionally defined ‘acquaintance structure’, which members can drift in and out of and perceive to be permeated by their other roles and identities in the outside world . Furthermore, secret societies need not be designed as strategic operations through rational, deliberate planning, as Simmel had implied, but rather could be constructed in a more ad hoc, organic fashion by members at a grassroots level. To illustrate this, Erickson identified six empirical cases that reflected different degrees of openness and permeability, which corresponded to more or less hierarchical distributions of power. At the most extreme, Simmelian end of the range was an underground resistance army in Auschwitz (Garlinski 1975), whose aim to communicate highly sensitive intelligence necessitated a rigid, formal hierarchy with a centralised chain of command, distinct levels and branches; information was so strictly controlled that members could not even identify each other. Next came the White Lotus sect of Peking (Naquin 1976), a millenarian religious group with a similarly clear hierarchy, headed by a charismatic leader; however, the members of this sect knew the names and identities of those in the levels immediately above and below them. Third was the Lupollo Black Mafia (Ianni 1974), a criminal organisation that relied on both a clear hierarchy and dense ties across its branches. The fourth case was the San Antonio heroin market (Redlinger 1975), which had only four levels – consumers, retailers, wholesalers and dealers/importers, each of whom was seen to have an equally important role to play in sustaining the operation. The members of this network were recruited from the same local community, and often interacted during the course of everyday street life; they might also move from one subdivision to another over the course of their drug using career (cf. Becker 1963). The fifth level was represented by Plant’s (1975) study of a group of marijuana users in Cheltenham, England, who were recruited from a pre-existing friendship network and saw their drug taking activities to be closely associated with these other social roles. The branches of this network were not clearly defined

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and lacked insulation from each other, with the effect that secret information leaked out easily and flowed rapidly between members. Finally, at the loosest end of the spectrum came a Norwegian resistance movement during the German occupation of World War II (Aubert 1965), which, despite its political sensitivity, employed an egalitarian, democratic system of communication based upon a single stratum of members; these individuals organised themselves in small cliques and friendship groups rather than hierarchical branches, and regarded each other as peers of equal status. These latter forms of secret society point to the importance of the inmate culture into which new recruits are socialised, and to the horizontal flow of power across an institutional structure. Service clubs Contemporary secret societies therefore appear to serve a more explicitly social function, which, depending on the wider cultural context from which they arise, may be more or less intertwined with a formal ideology. For example, Chen (2005) discusses the secret societies that have emerged in contemporary China in the post-Mao communist period, in response to various structural problems that arose from economic liberalisation, namely unemployment, poverty, relative deprivation and political corruption. Under these conditions, new criminal subcultures developed that possessed some of the characteristics of secret societies: while operating as illegal underworld operations, their hidden nature also served a socially integrative function by appealing to economically marginalised, disenfranchised groups. A factional consciousness within the wider Chinese culture encouraged those who felt relatively deprived to join organised criminal gangs, which, though having a disruptive relation to the dominant political regime, were internally cohesive. By contrast, Putney (1993) describes the rather more conservative men’s service clubs that have become popular as fraternal organisations devoted purely to leisure. These include community-based social clubs and businessmen’s luncheons, such as Rotary International, the YMCA and Kiwanis International. Putney makes a distinction between older fraternities, formed prior to the American Civil War (such as the Freemasons, Odd Fellows and Red Men), and these newer ones, formed since. There has been a shift away from strictly prescribed rituals, symbolism, oath-swearing and general solemnity, he argues, towards more informal conviviality. Fraternal clubs emerged in the 1920s, appealing to lower grade white collar and working class men (Clawson 1989), though based

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upon claims of universal brotherhood. Unlike the lodge halls of the older fraternities, they were less rigidly hierarchical and exclusive, priding themselves on their democratic structure. Putney suggests that these service clubs were politically neutral and designed to provide an escapist retreat from modern capitalism: ‘Whereas capitalistic development brought with it urbanization and alienation, fraternities offered communal solidarity and a sense of belonging’ (Putney 1993: 182). Likewise, the secret societies that survived from the older period were those that relaxed their obsessive ritualism and made a determined effort to promote members’ friendships and mutual support. Meanwhile, the traditional lodges, which remained primarily religious and unconcerned with leisure, were perceived as cold and impersonal: membership and attendance rates declined as they were seen to be ‘unacceptably out of step in an increasingly secular world’ (Dumeril 1984: xiv). Service club membership increased rapidly over the twentieth century, recruiting mainly businessmen and professionals. Instead of being based in residential lodges that required members’ total physical and social confinement, service club meetings were held just once or twice weekly, in community-based club premises. There was less of an obligation upon members to commit themselves physically and temporally, or to segregate themselves from their families, and so the clubs fitted in more easily with work and domestic commitments. They were enjoyed as a leisure activity that enhanced rather than consumed one’s lifestyle. Meanwhile, equivalent groups were formed for women, such as the Red Hat Society, whose members don the eponymous headwear as a symbol of frivolity. This organisation has no political or charitable goals but rather promotes fun and friendship between older women as a valuable end in itself. This is expressed through Society rituals and events, such as tea parties, wherein members are encouraged to make sisterly bonds that will endure for life (Solomon 2004). The atmosphere in these club meetings is often ebullient, with a Durkheimian ‘effervescent’ feel that motivates members to remain loyal. Putney writes of drinking games, rousing singsongs, inspiring guest speakers and tongue-in-cheek rituals, such as administering mock fines, which served as a means of informal social control. He attributes the rise of these societies to Riesman’s (1950) ‘other-directed’ social character, who was concerned primarily with networking and making acquaintances, cultivating his or her identity through associations with others. He cites the founder of the Rotary Club, Paul Harris, as confessing that, ‘my prospects for success depended almost entirely upon the acquaintances I was to make and how I was to serve them’ (Putney 1993: 187). Far from

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the reclusiveness of the traditional fraternal lodge, therefore, service club members were concerned with developing interpersonal skills: the ‘ability to be a “team player”… [with an] eagerness to blend in… making him subservient to the common herd’ (Putney 1993: 188). The Magic Circle Another example of a contemporary secret society is the Magic Circle, a British organisation for amateur and professional magicians that was established in London in 1905 (http://www.themagiccircle.co.uk/). On the one hand, the Magic Circle exhibits many of the features of a traditional secret society: it is based upon the restricted communication of an especially valued set of skills and knowledge, which require a high level of dedication and commitment to obtain, and its membership is small and selective: candidates must make a formal application, pay a fee, be recommended by two existing members, and undergo a rigorous entrance interview. The society is relatively non-hierarchical, but has an exclusive superordinate group, the Inner Magic Circle, whose closed membership of 300 admits only those who pass a higher level ‘degree’, assessed by thesis and examination. The society’s motto is the Latin indocilis privata loqui (‘not apt to disclose secrets’), and those who break this vow can be expelled in disgrace (ibid.). On the other hand, the Magic Circle is a highly sociable and outwardlooking group, whose members enjoy regular fraternisation in designated sites of interaction. Its London headquarters, the Centre for the Magic Arts, is an award-winning entertainment venue that is open to the public, hosting various meetings, concerts, auctions, theatrical performances and corporate events, as well as boasting its own library and museum to showcase the heritage of magic and the occult (http:// www.themagiccircle.co.uk/about-the-club). It sponsors a spin-off organisation, the Young Magicians Club, which has less rigorous conditions of membership and aims primarily to get young people interested in magic as a leisure pursuit; this has been boosted by the commercial success of the Harry Potter books and films as well as celebrity endorsement by children’s television presenters (Wallace & Hall 2001). Within the main Magic Circle, members are encouraged to bring guests to the annual dinners, awards ceremonies and social events and to visit the club’s museum, in order to raise its public profile: there are regular ‘Meet the Magic Circle’ evenings, involving introductory talks and demonstration stage performances. This reflects a central paradox of the modern secret society: on the one hand, it seeks to retain its mystical, elusive image and the

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perceived value of its hidden information, but on the other hand, there is a pragmatic need to increase its membership and public visibility, to make it commercially viable. As an institution, this kind of secret society is based less upon the flow of written communication, low key fraternisation and concealed identities, as Simmel described, and more upon the open avowal of commitment to an art form through which members enjoy cultivating – and proudly displaying – a new dimension of their social characters (cf. Riesman 1950). The Magic Circle has inspired the formation of local institutions, also RIs, which provide short courses for amateur magicians. For example, Jeff McBride’s Magic and Mystery School in Las Vegas holds workshops on such topics as the philosophy and psychology of magic; sleight of hand techniques; music, movement, lighting and choreography; stagecraft, show production and character development; and business skills and marketing – topics that reveal again the tension between the mysterious allure of magic as a craft and the pragmatic, instrumental aspects of operating in a capitalist society. For devoted followers, there are master classes, holidays and retreats on such esoteric topics as balloon twisting, quick costume change, street magic and mentalism. As with the religious and spiritual retreats discussed in Chapter 4, great value is placed upon social interaction between members, with informal peer learning being valued as much as formal instruction: Our aim is to create a safe space for serious play and discovery, and a learning experience like nothing else in the world. We know that each student’s friends and family play an important part in the educational and creative process. http://www.magicalwisdom.com/infopages/view/philosophy Feedback from students pays further testimony to the value of fraternisation with like-minded others in a unique social world, wherein fellow inmates reinforce the special status of being a magician: The camaraderie is good. There is no competition among us. We do things together, laugh, hang out, dine together and perform magic. In this way pleasure and business are joined. Because Jeff cultivated an environment of camaraderie, companionship, and support at his home, many students strongly connected with other members of the class. The most magical part of the weekend was the growth of this connection. It wouldn’t have developed

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if an authoritarian pedagogue stood before us lecturing dogmatically about doing better magic. It happened because we all interacted as equals, and ended up leaving as friends. http://www.magicalwisdom.com/quotes

College fraternities Perhaps the most (in)famous of contemporary sites in which elements of the secret society are reproduced is the college fraternity house. Although educational RIs are discussed separately in Chapter 8, it is worth examining as a peripheral issue the mechanisms of peer socialisation that some such establishments use to create insular cliques. College fraternities typically reside in chapter houses – residential lodges that combine the functions of sleeping, eating, social and leisure activities and formal meetings – and students learn to identify themselves with their chapter’s collective identity. Traditionally, these are named after Greek letters: the first US fraternity was Phi Beta Kappa, formed in 1776 at the College of William and Mary, Virginia, and the trend became increasingly popular over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Hughey 2008). Initially, fraternity membership was restricted to male students – usually also white, middle class and heterosexual – but there has since been a rise in mixed sex, women only, black and other minority group organisations, as well as an overall increase in fraternity membership since the 1980s (Gumprecht 2006). The first women’s college fraternity, Kappa Alpha Theta, was established in 1870, and as similar groups developed with an explicitly feminist agenda, they came to be known as sisterhoods, or sororities (Turk 2004). The Greek letter system remains mostly commonly associated with North American universities, and indeed can seem quite alien to scholars outside of that cultural context (Delamont 2005). Nevertheless, the general principle of organising students into houses, teams or other residentially segregated groups is one that has historically been widely used in boarding schools, university halls of residence, mutual aid societies and so on. Fraternity houses serve to initiate freshers, or new students, into the culture of an academic institution by providing them with a localised reference group, who are responsible for passing on the informal rules and norms of life within that setting. They form an institutional site through which members undergo a rite of passage, in order to reinvent themselves as students: this involves separating oneself from former ties to home towns, old friends and (to some extent) the family home, before cultivating a new student identity

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(Karp et al 1998). The chapter house provides a holding ground for individuals in the liminal period between these two phases (Turner 1967), when they are suspended between the two identities. In some cases, the physical site of the fraternity creates a secretive enclosure that encourages distinct, oppositional inmate cultures to develop. Chapter houses tend to be located along separate streets within the college campus, which in itself may be situated in a geographically isolated area or college town within the city (such as Berkeley in the USA or Oxford in the UK). The houses may be marked off from each other through physical and symbolic boundaries (fences, paths, contrasting decorative styles), and shrouded by trees to create a sense of privacy, individuality and isolation. Gumprecht (2006) describes how college towns not only possess a unique character through their demographic profile – being relatively young, affluent and middle class, they may be viewed as ‘cities of youth’ (Lofland 1968) – but also through the smaller communities that emerge within it. He gives the example of Ithaca, New York, which displayed three distinct residential districts, recognised by staff and students alike. ‘Fraternity Row’ was a street lined with chapter houses where the majority of freshman students lived, the ‘Student Ghetto’ was an affectionately named rental district in which more senior students lived, alongside ‘independents’ who chose not to live in a fraternity house, and the ‘Faculty Enclave’ was where the teaching staff lived, both seeking to avoid and being avoided by the students. Each of the three residential districts had its own character and set of values with which it sought to distinguish itself from the others: for example the independents were proud of their decision not to engage with the dominant student culture, and strove to perform a grungy, bohemian identity through the display of totemic symbols, such as a dilapidated sofa on the porch, beat-up cars on the lawns, and houses in various states of disrepair (Gumprecht 2006: 244–245). Those in the fraternity houses were equally defensive of their chapters’ identities: fraternity membership conferred upon them an elite, exclusive social status within the student body. This seemed to make them more sociable: for example, they participated more in extracurricular activities such as the student government, newsletter, athletics teams and cheerleading squad. While each fraternity chapter has its own distinct identity, and may develop a specific set of symbols, rules and rituals, these are merely nominal attributes, designed to allow each group to define itself relative to the others – a form of distinction (cf. Bourdieu 1984). In a manner again reminiscent of Durkheim’s (1912) theory of religion, it is

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immaterial which particular ‘totems’ (names, symbols, buildings, etc) the followers celebrate; what matters is that they do so collectively, and thus develop a cohesive group identity. Whichever chapter house an individual is assigned to, the effects are the same, as they learn how to become a student and perform that role in a manner that is legitimated by their peers. This is a process of occupational socialisation, similar to that noted by Wenger (1998) in relation to vocational ‘communities of practice’: new recruits seek to understand not only what to do (in terms of formal instruction and skill acquisition), but also how to do it (in terms of identity performance, display and selfpresentation). Inmates are concerned with performing their identities to one another in socially approved ways, aligning themselves with the avowed totemic values of the group and seeking validation that they are ‘doing member’ (Garfinkel 1967) in accordance with local sanctions. Studies of American college students in the mid-twentieth century sought to make sense of this, using ideas from Symbolic interactionism and social psychology. Newcomb’s (1961) examination of Bennington College, a liberal arts college in Michigan, pointed to the process of ‘acquaintance building’, through which students living in a shared halls of residence came to form relationships with each other. He echoed Simmel (1917) in highlighting how interaction dynamics alter with group size and composition as well as over time, as trust develops. Newcomb followed a cohort of 17 male students over one academic year and repeated the study with subsequent cohorts, finding similar results. He identified a shift in the students’ ‘system of orientation’, from individualism to collectivism. That is, the young men arrived with a strong sense of personal identity formed through their unique life experiences, home town associations, family and friendship ties, which marked them out from other students in the residence. At first, they clung defensively to these former identities, but over the course of the year, they came to relinquish them in favour of new bonds with their housemates, cultivating a collective group identity. Newcomb analyses this in terms of social psychological processes of interpersonal affiliation: mere proximity to each other was enough to facilitate mutual attraction. The students sought to minimise and downplay any differences between them, emphasising their similarities and ‘common fate’. Interestingly, Newcomb suggests that this interactional process was facilitated by the institutional structure of the college: drawing on functionalist theories of pattern maintenance (Parsons 1951), he argues that the fraternity is a microcosmic social system with a tendency

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towards stability, and that individual actors are merely cogs in this wheel. Becker et al’s (1961) ethnography, Boys in White, used participant observation and structured interviews to chart the changes in identity experienced by medical students at the University of Kansas over the four years of their degree course. This study pointed to the way in which the students learned through not only formal instruction but also informal, socially mediated processes of peer interaction. They learned both how to be a physician and how to be a medical student, within this local inmate culture. Becker et al describe this as a sequential career trajectory, through which social identities emerge over time and are mediated by interaction. In their freshman year, the students’ orientation to the subject matter shifted: first they felt overwhelmed, before reasoning that ‘you can’t learn it all’ and becoming instrumental about finding out ‘what they [the faculty] want us to know’ (Becker et al 1961: 158). In the later years, they assimilated ‘sincerely’ (Goffman 1959) to the curriculum, being focused on their forthcoming identity as a physician and wanting to absorb medical knowledge. However, acquiring this ‘academic perspective’ (ibid.: 274) entailed certain patterns of interaction. The students sought to retain a formal distance from the faculty members, whom they perceived as authoritative experts, while enjoying more informal relations with each other and the house staff (residents and interns). They were constantly aware of performing their identities to the faculty, whether in formal assessments or in social encounters around campus, where they strove to be on best behaviour. In a paradoxical twist upon impression management (Goffman 1959), one student, Tom Crane, spoke of trying to be invisible to the senior surgeons who were instructing them, lest they make a mistake when demonstrating a procedure: ‘I don’t want to make any impressions on anyone. I don’t want anyone to know who I am’ (ibid.: 284). Some fraternities have been created in a spirit of resistance to subvert the conservative bias of the traditional college clique, particularly its perceived ethnocentrism and heteronormativity. College fraternities have been traditionally dominated by male, white, middle class, Christian, heterosexual students, and perceived to exclude various ‘other’ groups (Gumprecht 2006), who seek out their own spaces. Here we are reminded of the agentic nature of RI inmates: this is not merely a defensive response to discrimination and exclusion, but rather a positive reclamation and celebration of alternative lifestyles. For example, Black Greek Letter Organizations (BGLOs) have become an increasingly

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powerful force of resistance, both on college campuses and in online virtual communities. Hughey (2008) describes how members of an online BGLO used the forum to construct and perform their racialised identities in opposition to what they saw as the bourgeois white majority. Perceiving themselves to share a common fate based upon sufferance, success and authenticity, they drew a symbolic boundary between themselves as ‘brothers’ as distinct from non-black ‘others’, reversing the direction of the pejorative exclusion they had experienced. Similar dynamics of resistance can be found in terms of gender. Turk (2004) describes how college sororities emerged in the late nineteenth century, combining a focus on academic study with an explicitly feminist agenda: their aim was to provide a space for women to share ideas and critique each other’s work, as they had been excluded from male college fraternities. Turk argues that over the twentieth century, members’ motivations for joining sororities shifted from the political reclamation of academic subject matter to the social benefits of companionship. As with other secret societies, the specific nature of the restricted knowledge became almost an irrelevance in contrast to the value of group cohesiveness and solidarity. However, fraternisation remains important to non-marginalised groups, too. Anderson (2008) documents the inclusive ethos of the Troubadors, a male fraternity chapter in an American university, which posed a challenge to hegemonic masculinity (Connell 1995). Whereas the traditional Greek letter system had been criticised for perpetuating racist, sexist and homophobic values (Martin & Hammer 1989; Sanday 1990), this group sought to distinguish itself from such stereotypes and cultivate a new image for the male college fraternity, based upon notions of inclusivity and tolerance. The 67 Troubador members Anderson studied came from ethnically diverse backgrounds and displayed a range of sexual identities, of which the members were not merely accepting but positively celebratory. This chapter prided itself on a wider, more inclusive interpretation of masculinity as something that incorporated respect for women and gay men, racial parity, and emotional intimacy between male friends. This was cultivated through a cohesive social network that was at once insular and protective of its members, yet permeable to the outside world. An ethos of respect for others was central to the transformation of the notorious ‘frat boy’ into the ‘sensitive new age man’. As one student, Alex, explained: It’s about being a gentleman, polite and respectful… We expect our brothers not to partake in that macho jock mentality. We want to

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stand out as being intellectual and athletic, but also as being kind and respectful (Anderson 2008: 609). These values were communicated and consolidated through the RI’s institutional structure and organisational culture. At a national level, the Troubadors had passed a bylaw forbidding sexual discrimination in chapter activities, and this ideology had trickled down into members’ actions and consciousness. They actively sought to recruit freshmen from a diversity of backgrounds, while in day-to-day conversations, they monitored and sanctioned each other’s conduct. In particular, they frowned upon any misogynistic discourse or homophobic remarks, such as the use of the word ‘gay’ as an insult or derogatory terms like ‘fag’, ‘bitch’ and ‘slut’. Disapproval was expressed not only from one individual to another, but also to various audiences of members and non-members. This served as a performative enactment of the chapter’s distinct collective identity to themselves, each other and the external ‘generalised other’ (Mead 1934). One member, Jon, identified this as ‘an educational issue’ (ibid.: 610), while another, Mick, agreed that, if we don’t want people to think that we are a bunch of homophobic jerks, then we can’t give them reason to suspect such (Anderson 2008: 610). A similar dynamic could be observed in relation to the Troubadors’ understanding of male friendship. The bonds between the members were emotionally intimate, and ritually reproduced through talk in interaction that defied conventional assumptions of male stoicism. For example, Anderson describes a conversation in which Alex, an athletic, heterosexual man, confided in his brothers about having been raped by a woman. Instead of deriding him with jokes and dismissive banter, as one might expect from the ‘frat boy’ stereotype, the other members responded with sympathy, and hugged Alex as he cried. More generally, the brothers took care to respond to one another’s disclosures with supportive interchanges (Goffman 1971) that kept the vulnerable actor in face (Goffman 1967). For example, when Max confided that he had experimented sexually with another man, the frat boy recourse to homophobia was replaced by a positively accepting comment of, ‘Really. That’s cool, what did you do?’ (Anderson 2008: 615). Thus an ethos of ‘inclusive masculinity’ not only legitimated but positively encouraged the disclosure of personal secrets, anxieties, fears and troubles, and this was seen to strengthen the formation of a new male identity.

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Hazing rituals One of the most distinctive features of life in a fraternity, and of gangs, clubs and secret societies more generally, is the use of hazing rituals to initiate new members. Hazing is a rite of passage (Turner 1967) that entails the individual undergoing a painful, humiliating or unpleasant experience at the hands of their prospective peers, in order to test the strength of their commitment. A secondary effect, however (and to the sociological imagination, the ultimate one), is to promote group cohesion, solidarity and interdependence between old and new members of an institution, thus strengthening its collective power (Firestone & Harris 1999). Those who endure the physical or mental ordeal performatively display personal qualities of willpower, stoicism and loyalty: this is a gesture of deference (Goffman 1967), through which the neophyte suppresses his or her individuality and shows subservience to the group. Indeed, Goffman himself used to ‘haze’ his colleagues and graduate students with unexpectedly rude comments, in order to determine whom he would trust as a confidante for his dramaturgical musings. Thomas Scheff (2006) recalls how Arlene Daniels’ witty retort earned her a place within his inner circle, while he himself failed the test and was relegated to outsider status. Hazing rituals often take place during fraternity house ‘rush’ parties or pledge functions, to which freshmen students are invited by their prospective housemates. They must perform a humiliating feat before this audience of peers, who scrutinise and judge the individual’s strength of character. Typical hazing tests include drinking games, risk-taking stunts, early morning runs across campus, having one’s face or body branded, and having to repeat humiliating phrases (De Albuquerque & PaesMachado 2004; Gumprecht 2006). Consequently, hazing has earned college fraternities some bad publicity in popular culture. Films such as Animal House parody the insular, impermeable world of the fraternity with its seemingly bizarre rules, as well as the potential chaos instigated by members’ bawdiness and lack of self-control during hazing games. Rush parties are notorious for drunkenness, and fraternity houses are subject to moral panics about binge-drinking (Gumprecht 2006). DeSimone (2007) suggests that most freshmen arrive at university as non-drinkers, but undergo peer socialisation into this as a form of deviant behaviour. Their primary motivations for joining fraternities and sororities are social, he argues: wanting to feel protected in this strange new environment, they are susceptible to peer pressure and overestimate how much they must drink to keep up with their dorm-mates.

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This in turn fuels the popular stereotype of the secret society as a cult-like group that brainwashes its members (see Chapter 4). Concerns about the risk of serious injury and in some cases death, centre upon the difficulty members may have in distinguishing between legitimate formal training and superfluous, perverse rituals (Pershing 2006: 485), and the susceptibility of new recruits to undue influence. Sanday (1990) documents the disturbing trend of gang rapes that plague male fraternity houses, arguing that this has been normalised by a culture of male sexual aggression, misogyny and the objectification of women’s bodies. Mass media reports about dangerous or foolhardy ‘pranks gone wrong’ (Hodges 1995; Korry 2005) focus on the pressure inmates feel to demonstrate their devotion, resulting in a momentary loss of self. The difficulty in acquiring evidence of violent abuse is attributed to the secretive nature of these institutions, with their studiously observed codes of silence. For example, the 2007–2008 Gloucester High School ‘pregnancy pact’ involved 18 British schoolgirls allegedly colluding to become pregnant simultaneously through the insidious pressures of their peer group. In this small, traditional, Catholic town, such behaviour was especially deviant, and so the pact was denied by both the girls and the mayor, Carolyn Kirk – which only added to the speculation that a real scandal had been ‘hushed up’. The principal’s opinion, endorsed by journalists, was that this was a secret club of sorts, into which lonely, disaffected, small town girls were lured by the promise that this rebellious act would earn them friendship, kudos and admiration from their peers (BBC Three, 22nd March 2009). Given this notoriety, it is important to interpret the meanings new recruits give to hazing rituals, and why they are willing to undergo such a humiliating process. This can be understood when we consider the target group as an insular, secret society, to which the individual seeks to belong. In submitting to hazing, the actor is not passively enduring their conditions, but rather strategically and actively ‘doing member’ (Garfinkel 1967) by demonstrating their commitment to the group and its values. They forfeit autonomy and control over their fate voluntarily, in exchange for being granted membership of the exclusive group and its associated status: the restrictive, challenging and selective nature of this process gives the group the ‘fascination of secrecy’ (Simmel 1908b) and makes the idea of gaining entry seductively alluring. Therefore hazing in the RI is not just an act of coercive mortification, but rather an interactive ritual through which a whole team of actors (old and new members alike) symbolically enact to each other their insider/outsider boundaries.

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In the US college context, Jones (2004) describes the hazing rituals employed by Black Greek Letter fraternities. As would-be members pledged allegiance to their chapter, they underwent a particularly brutal initiation ceremony to test their loyalty; this violence was not only legitimated by existing members, but also accepted by the neophytes as par for the course. Despite official warnings from the university and national fraternity headquarters, the chapters continued to subject initiates to hazing rituals through a tacitly understood secret pact, which made it difficult for the authorities to impose controls. Candidates faced a series of ritualised, sequential stages, which mirror the initiation ceremonies of the Freemasons, Ku Klux Klan and other secret societies. They were robed and blindfolded, led to a designated site to swear an oath of loyalty, listened to a recitation of member duties and learned the fraternity’s secret signs and symbols; finally, they were taken to a separate site in which a severe beating was administered and stoically endured. Jones argues that the purpose of this ritual, and the reason why members willingly submitted to it, was to supplant the neophyte’s identity with a new ‘fraternal self’. Paradoxically, however, the pre-scripted and rehearsed nature of the ritual ceremony suggests that such subjectivities are discursively constructed in advance and independently of each individual candidate: a ‘one size fits all’, ‘ready to wear’ generic template or ‘McSelf’ (see Chapter 3) that provides a collective identity. It is not only young students who are subjected to hazing. De Albuquerque & Paes-Machado (2004) describe a six day feat endured by ‘rookies’ or new recruits to the Brazilian Military Police Academy. This began with a predawn awakening, as senior cadets invaded the freshman dorms and disorientated them with shaking, screaming and whistleblowing. There followed a series of embarrassing, degrading and shameinducing pranks over the following days, which served as mortification rituals (Goffman 1961a). These included being made to crawl around campus, perform sit-ups and push-ups, hold and inflict violence on a live cockroach, utter meaningless phrases and eat with their mouths open. Finally, they were stripped naked and ‘branded’ with urine, talcum powder, mud and paint. By reducing the students to the status of infants and exercising complete control over their movements, the senior cadets symbolically stripped the rookies of their previous, civilian identities and rendered them powerless. They lost all markers of individual selfhood and became featureless, uniform, blank slates, waiting to acquire new identities. Here we can see how hazing unfolds as a rite of passage, involving stages of separation, liminality and re-integration, which marks an

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individual’s transition from one role status to another (Turner 1967). This serves an integrative function for inmates as the members of a collectivity: once accepted into the group, they enjoy a sense of camaraderie and can take for granted the trust and loyalty of their peers. In the above example, this social solidarity immunised the rookies against the harsh police training, helping them to prepare for their future role. When asked whether they would prefer not to undergo the hazing process, 29 of the 31 students interviewed were in favour of retaining it, and a common view was that it helped to ‘produce a relaxed atmosphere and closer relations between freshmen and senior recruits’ (De Albuquerque & Paes-Machado: 187–188). The effect upon their longer term identities and social ties was dramatic: From now on, their new family is right here; they are meant to feel heartily welcomed and sheltered by their classmates and instructors at the police academy (De Albuquerque & Paes-Machado 2004: 188). Moreover, these inmates were not merely docile bodies (Foucault 1975), for they were actively involved in what they saw as a game, performing the role of the subservient junior whilst anticipating the benefits that such a performance would accrue. Although hazing ‘ritualizes the initiation of bodies into the military police spirit, taming them and transforming them into machines that are suited to the institution’s needs’ (De Albuquerque & Paes-Machado 2004: 186), the rationale for this is described this as a ‘pedagogy of affirmation’ (ibid.: 183), in which recruits are not expected to remain completely silent. They anticipate the benefits of compliance and make an instrumental decision to play along. Although they are initially ‘mortified’, they subsequently regain their dignity and are ultimately admired and respected by their peers for having endured the process. Actors may display an attitude of role distance (Goffman 1959) from their hazed character, and be critically reflective of what they have learned about the institution’s power structure. For example, one rookie, Aline, explained that this had helped to prepare him for life in the police, by cultivating a persona of subservience, I’ll never forget [it], and that was where I learned, at the beginning of the course, that this here [the Academy] strips me of my dignity all the time, just see how the officers treat us, they are rude to the

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recruits. For them, the only people who aren’t worthless are the officers (De Albuquerque & Paes-Machado 2004: 187). It is not only new inmates but also their peers and seniors who experience changes of self-identity through hazing. Staff may find it meaningful that they have been deemed sufficiently ‘qualified’ to administer the abuses, insofar as this implies status. De Albuquerque & Paes-Machado (ibid.) found that senior cadets regarded the institution’s delegation of responsibility to them as a sign of trust, and felt proud to have risen through the ranks to this level. By administering the hazing rituals, these trainees became reflexively aware of how they had progressed beyond fresher status themselves, and had undergone the transformation into police officer: ‘hazing gives seniors that pleasure: being addressed as a superior, even when playacting, as the holder of a powerful rank, an authority – in short, an officer’ (De Albuquerque & Paes-Machado 2004: 180). This can involve an element of deindividuation, a psychological process observed by Haney et al (1973) in the Stanford prison simulation experiment. This famous study revealed the effects of situational factors, such as the hierarchical structure of an institution, upon behaviour. People employed in authoritarian positions can become so immersed in the role that they forget their personal values and attitudes, and can be persuaded to behave in ways that they would normally have found morally reprehensible (Zimbardo 2007). When accounting for their behaviour, the senior police cadets in De Albuquerque & Paes-Machado’s study spoke proudly of what ‘we’ did and what values hazing represented to ‘us’ as a collective. They had internalised the institutional rhetoric to the point of reproducing it in their own discourse, subsuming their individual identities beneath the institutional identity. Gender plays a subtle but important role in hazing as a form of legitimised, symbolic violence that is found particularly in male-dominated organisations. Pershing (2006) discusses this in the context of the US Naval Academy, which trains Naval and Marine Corps officers for the US Department of Defense and has a small minority of women students. Pershing describes the service academy as a TI, insofar as members live, sleep and work together and remain isolated from the civilian community for several years; however, the students’ voluntary entry, career ambitions and focus on upward mobility through military training suggests that this is more akin to the rationale of an RI. For example, Pershing emphasises the traditions and rituals passed down through a peer-mediated ‘indoctrination system’ (2006: 471). Freshmen, known as fourth classmen or just ‘plebes’, are mentored by junior and senior

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upperclassmen, who teach them not only the practical and technical skills of the job but also take responsibility for socialising them into the culture of the organisation. The 40 graduate officers Pershing interviewed revealed similar experiences of hazing, regardless of gender: these included being made to memorise and recite trivia, verbal harassment, insults and ridicule, and degrading or humiliating practical jokes and pranks, such as having one’s head dunked down the toilet or being made to walk around the dorm with their knees high, chanting ‘Go Navy. Beat Army’. However, the male and female recruits differed in their appraisal of the hazing process. Women were less likely than men to condone physical abuse and injury, and were more critical of severe verbal hazing. They also experienced more feelings of loneliness, feeling excluded from the male friendship networks that dominated the academy’s traditional culture, and found it harder to develop close bonds with their fellow recruits (Pershing 2006: 484). Consequently, the women students perceived themselves to occupy a ‘double outsider’ position by virtue of their plebe and female statuses (ibid.: 486). Nevertheless, the officers in this study concurred that hazing served two useful functions of promoting solidarity within the freshman rank, and sorting out the more from the less committed recruits. Almost by definition, those who had remained in the institution and subsequently graduated felt that their status had been enhanced by having survived a harsh selection procedure: they proudly defended the hazing ritual as an important rite of passage, and described it euphemistically as a ‘leadership development tool’ (Pershing 2006: 482). In this respect, they legitimated and perpetuated the culture of symbolic violence that pervaded the institution. This was mediated by a system of self-regulation and peer surveillance within the academy’s inmate culture. Officers were encouraged to monitor not only their own but each other’s behaviour, and to report any misconduct or norm violation to the upperclassmen or staff. However, this obligation conflicted with the close bonds and solidarity that had developed within the freshmen ranks and the loyalty they felt towards this group. Just as in the traditional secret society, the members felt bound by an informal code of silence not to ‘grass up’, ‘snitch on’ or betray the trust of their peers; to do so resulted in more negative sanctioning than the transgressions of the original deviant. As one graduate recalled, If you’re a plebe, you would never turn in a first classman. If you reported something, all the other firsties [seniors] in the company

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would be pissed off that their friend had been snitched on. All the firsties would have made the plebe’s life even harder. It was hard enough. They would have yelled and screamed at him every day. They never would have let him forget what he did (Pershing 2006: 486). Ironically, therefore, while being trained formally to obey orders, practise discipline and submit to authority, the inmates learned informally to condone deviance, support each other and develop a strong, cohesive culture. To a significant extent, it is this subtler, secondary feature of the secret society that conveys its norms and values and allows its survival. As with other types of RI, members’ identities are shaped not only by the contents of its official rhetoric but also by the social processes of interaction involved in the routine daily work of reproducing ‘institutional arrangements’.

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7 Therapeutic Clinics

Of all the types of institution discussed in this volume, perhaps the most explicitly and self-consciously reinventive are those which have a therapeutic ethos. Psychiatric treatment was of course the goal of the asylum, Goffman’s archetypal TI, but whereas this structural form has declined, there has been a growing recognition of the wider, societal pervasiveness of mental and emotional distress (Bendelow 2009). This chapter focuses on a particular set of institutional sites that offer peermediated help, with or without the backing of mainstream psychiatry. Therapeutic communities, self-help groups and other semi-voluntary organisations function to provide social and emotional support for those who self-define as troubled souls (Gubrium & Holstein 1995) and who seek to find meaning in their madness. In these institutions, recovery is framed as a journey of self-discovery, to be experienced both as a personal triumph of identity work and as a public, socially negotiated career trajectory. The patient is redefined as a client, who makes an active choice to subject themselves to scrutiny from peers as well as professionals. Their conduct is evaluated and judged not only in itself, as psychiatrically symptomatic, but also as an index of their social and moral status relative to other members in the group. This has implications for the inmate’s self-identity as something that is both discursively constituted and interactively managed.

Therapy culture The rise of therapeutic RIs reflects a wider shift in social understandings of personal misfortune. Furedi (2004) argues that notions of emotional 142

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wellbeing have come to pervade more and more areas of everyday life, as we contemplate life events in terms of their consequences for our long term mental health, identities and social relationships. Quasi-therapeutic terms have entered into common parlance, so that we feel qualified to self-diagnose as being stressed, traumatised, depressed, addicted and so on. Moreover, the vocabulary of mental disorder is expansively applied beyond the realm of clinical pathology to essentially ordinary ‘problems in living’ (Szasz 1961), such as divorce, bereavement and work dissatisfaction (Castel et al 1982). Notions of self- limitation, vulnerability and victimhood are discursively invoked by a ‘therapeutic imperative’ which teaches that personal hardship indicates a flawed or incomplete self, and that we have a moral duty to ourselves to resolve these deficits. Furedi points to a rise in the demand for therapists, counsellors and other mental health professionals, identifying the USA in particular as a ‘therapy culture’. Despite its rhetoric of individual rights and responsibilities (Craib 1994), therapy culture creates an image of diminished subjectivity and agency. Furedi asserts that it cultivates a survivalist outlook (2004: 129), through which we believe that we have no responsibility for or control over our life experiences. The turn to therapeutic healers implies a blind trust in abstract systems of expertise (Giddens 1991), which promises to provide not only information, answers and access to resources, but also comfort, solace and the abnegation of personal responsibility. This echoes the critiques of medicalisation, wherein the encroachment of medical power and knowledge into more and more areas of everyday life was seen to engender a culture of dependency upon biomedical institutions and professionals (Illich 1975; Zola 1972; Conrad & Schneider 1980). More recently, critics have pointed to the prominence of mental health care services as a vehicle for this process. Castel et al’s (1982) analysis of the ‘psychiatrization of everyday life’ anticipated Furedi in observing how emotional experiences that were previously regarded as normal, natural and inevitable were being recast as psychological disorders for which assistance should be sought. Psychiatry’s role in the medicalisation of social deviance continues to be illustrated by the invention of new and disputed diagnostic categories, such as Social Phobia and Social Anxiety Disorder (Scott 2006; Lane 2007). James (2007) identifies ‘affluenza’ as a culturally pervasive sense of dissatisfaction and malaise, which afflicts particularly the well educated middle class.

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TI-embedded RI units In Chapter 3, we saw how decarceration in the late twentieth century led to the closure of traditional asylums and a shift towards outpatient, community-based care. While this was deemed suitable for the majority of patients with less severe, intermittent or chronic mental health problems, there has remained a need to provide inpatient care for those experiencing acute and psychotic symptoms, who are perceived as more vulnerable. Most of these people reside on psychiatric wards within general medical hospitals, where their treatment regimes combine medication with individual psychotherapy. Some, however, are invited to join specialist units that have a more collectivist ethos, in physically separate residences, ‘halfway houses’, or ward subgroups that pursue a distinct programme of activities. There has been an attempt to transform the inpatient experience from one of mere containment to a more humane process of ‘psychosocial rehabilitation’ (Carneiro 2008). This involves giving more consideration to the social context of the patient’s recovery, in particular their co-residence and interactions with fellow inmates, insofar as this can be used as a means of transmitting therapeutic ideals. Such units may also seek to teach patients social and practical skills that equip them for life on the outside, circumventing the risks of release anxiety (Goffman 1961a) and the revolving door phenomenon (Lauer & Brownstein 2008). Members of these RIs-within-TIs find themselves in a liminal state (Turner 1967) between being a powerless inmate and an ex-patient with full civilian rights. They must navigate a careful path amongst their fellow inmates and the staff, demonstrating that they are both complying harmoniously and behaving independently enough to be eligible for release. As we saw in Chapter 5, inmates may be ‘encouraged’ to participate in therapeutic programmes within conventional TIs in order to demonstrate their readiness for discharge, and so conformity to the rehabilitative regime becomes more about identity performance than about genuine transformations of character. While these units may permit and even encourage challenges to authority, such as decisions about the organisation and scheduling of treatment regimes (Roth 1963), the way in which residents perceive their institutional arrangements may give limited scope for actual resistance and deviance in practice (Bloor 1998). Offender Rehabilitation Programmes The physical location of a therapeutic RI within a TI can increase the likelihood of tension between the institutional imposition and agentic

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self-authoring of new identities. McCorkel’s (1998) study of Project Rehabilitate Women (PRW), a drug rehabilitation centre within a women’s prison, revealed interesting dilemmas of self-presentation, as the inmates learned to juggle two sets of identity work, as prisoners and addicts. On the one hand, the programme was delivered through harsh, disciplinary instruction, in such a way as to reinforce the women’s understandings of themselves as passive prisoners. Mortifying rituals were used to ‘break down the addict’ by dismissing their former lifestyles and reducing them to this master status (Hughes 1945): one staff officer scathingly told an inmate, ‘you’re not all that because you a fucking dope fiend is what you is’ (McCorkel 1998: 237). While on the unit, prisoners surrendered control of their schedules, clothing and even physical deportment, which were defined as signifiers of their addict status. There was a graded hierarchy of progression along the moral career of recovery, through which inmates had to demonstrate their eligibility for release. They were made to perform all of their daily tasks and routines, as well as therapeutic discussions, in communal spaces while under scrutiny, with every aspect of thought and behaviour subject to surveillance. As one woman put it, There’s nowhere to go where somebody doesn’t see you. You’re never alone – I mean never! You always got to be on your toes. They’s always watching (McCorkel 1998: 237). On the other hand, these inmates demonstrated agency and resistance by seeking to author their own ‘recovering addict’ identities. This was achieved by the symbolic construction, ownership and use of ‘critical space’ within the prison unit, which created an enclave of privacy and camaraderie within the wider public space of the institution: in the absence of traditional distancing strategies, residents construct ‘critical space’ as an alternative means to subvert institutional control mechanisms and to creatively acquire the resources necessary to articulate definitions of self that are distinct from staff constructions (McCorkel 1998: 227). For example, the women appropriated a small group room, which they called ‘the crackhouse’, to symbolically retain part of their ‘dope fiend’ status. They spoke of ‘going to the crackhouse’ when they needed to escape or to be themselves, and so it functioned as a backstage retreat (Goffman 1959). The women gathered here to gossip and complain

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about the institution, but shared a tacit understanding that anything disclosed would go no further, which generated a defiant camaraderie: ‘Sharing doubts with sympathetic others allows residents to re-establish their own definitions of self’ (ibid.: 244). This was a performance of role distance, but one that was shown only between themselves; it was not witnessed by the staff as an act of rebellion, nor was it intended to be. Limited by the TI’s focus on their deviant master status (Hughes 1945), clients could not engage in a critical dialogue with the staff to negotiate the co-authorship of their new identities. McCorkel’s study suggests that there is only limited scope for resistance by the underlife of such RIs-within-TIs, because of the ultimate, immovable reality of the TI’s institutional arrangements: the construction of critical space implies the absence of possibilities for negotiation, since its enactment involves subversion rather than the mediation of formal structure. In everyday life, then, critical spaces are those that are stolen, not borrowed (ibid.: 249). Eating Disorder Units This tension between inmates’ passivity and agency is further illustrated by studies of modern eating disorder units. Within the NHS and other publicly funded health care systems, inpatient treatment tends only to be available for those with anorexia nervosa, because of the immediate physical dangers of starvation, whereas conditions like bulimia, compulsive overeating and Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (ED-NOS) are given outpatient treatment or remain undiagnosed (B-EAT 2009). The institutionalisation of people with anorexia has traditionally occurred within TIs: psychiatric wards and eating disorder units within general hospitals. Eckerman (1997) observes that the architectural design of these reflects Bentham’s model of the Panopticon, as an icon of surveillance (Foucault 1975; see also Chapter 3). Rooms are typically arranged like cells around the nurse’s station, exposing every aspect of the patient’s conduct to constant, pervasive monitoring and rendering them passive. Indeed, the gendered, hierarchical structure of such units, with male psychiatrists and female nurses, has been criticised for reproducing the dysfunctionally pathogenic family dynamics associated with anorexia (Malson 1998). Furthermore, the disciplinary power exercised through these regimented routines, with their focus on weighing, measuring, calorie counting and so on, has been criticised for reducing the patients to Foucauldian ‘docile bodies’ and failing to consider the social, mental and emotional dimensions of eating disorders (Warin 2005). Adherence to such regimes

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may even embed the anorexic role deeper into the patient’s identity: Gremillion (2003) drily observes that enforced commitment may counteractively produce ‘better practiced anorexics’ through their stay in hospital (2003: 10). However, greater recognition and cultural awareness of the diversity and increasing incidence of eating disorders has fuelled a demand for more person-centred, holistic and humane treatment programmes. Since the late twentieth century there has been a rise in the provision of designated eating disorder units and specialist treatment centres, which aim to create a more ‘homely’ atmosphere and make use of the social relationships formed between patients as a vehicle for recovery. Notable examples include the Rhodes Farm Clinic in London, which caters for children with anorexia and is run from the home of its medical director, and the Renfrew Center Foundation, which runs residential communities for eating disordered adults in various sites across the USA. While such clinics may be private sector, fee-paying services, they operate within the wider context of biomedical health care, conceptualising eating disorders as mental illnesses that are amenable to a combination of physical treatments (refeeding/weight gain and medication) and talk-based therapies. Nevertheless, residents enjoy a voluntary or semi-voluntary status (young people may be admitted by their parents or guardians), and there is a long waiting list for places. These newer clinics embody the idea that institutions can be sites of agency, empowerment and meaning-making, even for those otherwise deemed sick or incapable (Saris 1995). This reflects the impact of feminist theories, which asserted that eating disorders were an agentic strategy of resistance against patriarchal notions of normative femininity (Chernin 1983; Orbach 1986; Bordo 1993). The anorexic individual has been recast from a passive sufferer to a knowledgeable, embodied agent, capable of reflecting and acting rationally upon her or his own condition. Recovery, too, has been reframed as a longer term process of self-reflexive biographical identity work: individuals are to be given the therapeutic tools to understand how and why they came to need and use the illness, and how they might rechannel this agency in pursuit of health. Warin (2005) conducted participant observation and interviews with 46 people with eating disorders (all but two women) in Vancouver, Edinburgh and Adelaide, some of whom who had lived in these semivoluntary units. Here, she argues, inmates learned to disrupt and reconfigure institutional space as a means of demonstrating their autonomy. In particular, they sought to transform shared, public spaces into private and intimate ones, to reduce their sense of exposure to the panoptical, clinical

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gaze (Foucault 1963). For example, Elise had been allocated a single room as a reward for complying with the unit’s ‘bed programme’, a Goffmanesque ward system (see Chapter 2) which marked her progression along the trajectory of recovery. In contrast to the other women on the unit, who shared an eight bed ward, Elise regarded her bedroom as a home, and decorated it with personal items to display her tastes (cf. Maleuvre 1999). This served as an identity performance, not merely defensively pointing back to her former, civilian self, but also celebrating how far she had come in recovery and anticipating her future self: Elise’s room, for example, was heavily decorated with posters of Silverchair on the walls and doors, many cards and letters (some from a friend with anorexia whom she had met in hospital and who was also a participant in my research), photographs of school friends, craft pieces, puzzles, a radio cassette player, a television, candles, gifts from visitors including dried bunches of hanging flowers (arranged in a line above her bed). Her parents had brought in her pillows and duvet from home, adding the final touch of transformation (Warin 2005: 105). Other residents reported more active strategies of resistance and rebellion, echoing Goffman’s (1959) comments about ‘secondary adjustments’ to incarceration (see Chapter 2). Perceiving a divide between the clinic staff and themselves, the inmates colluded to share techniques and strategies of ‘making do’ (De Certeau 1984) or ‘working the system’ (Goffman, ibid.), such as, ‘hiding food in the ceiling panels, draining apple juice into bed pans that were taken away and disposed of by the nurses, and spreading butter between newspaper sheets or duvet covers’ (Warin 2005: 107). However, such acts held a different meaning for these women compared to Goffman’s inmates, who had acted instrumentally and fatalistically, seeking only to make their stay more comfortable. Warin’s participants gleefully reported how they took pleasure in breaking the rules and tricking the staff, scuppering attempts to weigh, monitor and control them. This strategic ‘agency play’ (Desjarlais 1996) served as a means of re- appropriating the power of self-authorship. Thus while nominally committed to recovery, the inmates sometimes sought solace in – indeed, positively celebrated – their anorexic identities. This is supported by Rich’s (2006) interviews with young women at the Rhodes Farm clinic, who saw themselves not as passively suffering from anorexia, but rather as actively accomplishing it: they devised resistant prac-

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tices like ‘skanking’ (hiding food) or ‘tanking’ (drinking large volumes of water before a weighing). Rich adds that these techniques were shared between residents through peer socialisation, echoing Gremillion’s (2003: 10) cautionary remarks. Ultimately, however, such residents are limited in their ability to transform the structures of power in which they are embedded. Gremillion (ibid.) observes that even when eating disorder patients break the rules in this way, their deviance is reinterpreted in line with the institution’s therapeutic protocol, as a healthy sign of recovery. That is, by demonstrating independent thought and agency, inmates defy the pathogenic stereotype of the anorexic as a ‘good girl’, overcompliant and too obedient, and are congratulated for ‘finding a voice’ and regaining their autonomy. The staff seek not to produce a ward full of docile conformists, but rather to cultivate the residents’ capacity to stand back from and critically evaluate their former selves. Thus despite attempting to adopt an oppositional stance to the institution, their behaviour becomes subsumed within it, as further evidence that the treatment programme works. This represents an ironic twist upon the oft-cited study by Rosenhan (1973), whose ‘pseudo-patients’ admitted to psychiatric wards with (fake) schizophrenia diagnoses found every aspect of their conduct interpreted as symptomatic. Whereas Rosenhan’s TI inmates could not escape the imposition of a sick and troubled self, Warin and Rich’s RI inmates could not avoid being framed as recovering: authentic identities in the making. As Goffman cynically remarked, in order to be deemed eligible for release, the inmate must ‘insightfully’ take, or at least affect to take, the institution’s view of him or herself (1959: 143). Shyness clinics A third variant of the RI-within-a-TI is the shyness clinic, a resource for those who identify as extremely shy and perceive this to be a barrier to their emotional health. This is a reflection of the medicalisation of shyness (Scott 2006), whereby behaviour that would previously have been normalised is now defined as symptomatic of a mental disorder – Social Phobia or Social Anxiety Disorder – to be treated and potentially overcome. Clients attend regular sessions of social skills training, individual psychotherapy and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) over a period of weeks or months, usually on an outpatient, private and feepaying basis. Most of these sessions take the form of group discussions and workshops, whereby the social process of participating (the obligation to turn up to group, interact with fellow shyness sufferers and mutually self-disclose) is seen as integral to recovery.

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Shyness clinics vary in their approaches. Some, like the London Shyness Centre, employ a New Age philosophy with a range of complementary and alternative therapies designed to nurture and support the client holistically. Others are based upon cognitive psychology, conceptualising shyness as a pattern of negative, irrational thoughts that can be unlearned if only the client will work hard enough. Here a discourse of individual moral responsibility is employed, for example in Anxiety Network International’s (2001: 4) disclaimer: ‘We do not want you to come until you are ready, willing and motivated to get better!’ The Social Anxiety institute in Phoenix, Arizona, similarly offers an intense course of CBT workshops for six days per week over three weeks, and requires clients to complete a ‘pre-therapy email program’, and follow an audio therapy series alongside the sessions to consolidate through ‘repetition and reinforcement’ the cognitive skills that they are taught. A stern admonishment warns clients that this course is not for the fainthearted: it is vitally important you have taken the appropriate time and learned, read, and practiced the cognitive therapy before you come to the International CCBT group. If you haven’t done this, the three weeks will be a waste of time and money on your part. (http: //www.socialanxietyinstitute.org/international.html) Many of these private clinics are essentially commercial enterprises, which rely upon careful marketing to ensure a steady stream of clients. Their promotional materials offer the tantalising outcome of selfreinvention, as the client is hygienically cleansed of their supposed personality flaws and turned into an authentic, self-actualising individual. There is a quasi-religious tone here with a promise of salvation, as the clinics offer radical transformations of the soul. For example, Walter Friedman claims of his San Franciscan clinic, we provide you with a short-term, twenty session group programme which can change your life. Our promise to you is: ‘We will help you to make dramatic and long-lasting improvements in your selfesteem, in your ability and willingness to socialise with others, and in your inner emotional state’. (Friedman 2008 http: //www.shyclinic.com/the_programme.html) However, some shyness clinics adopt a more challenging stance visà-vis mainstream psychiatry and medicalisation. The original Shyness Clinic was established as a research institution by Philip Zimbardo, and

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later Lynne Henderson, at Stanford University, where it continues to be run by a new generation of colleagues. This clinic aims to navigate a path between helping clients to deal with the negative effects that shyness can have upon social situations without pathologising them as individuals. There is some consideration of the idea that shyness is a social problem as much as an individual one, and that its problematisation is culturally and historically specific (cf. Scott 2006, 2007). Henderson & Zimbardo (2009) refer sceptically to the alleged ‘epidemic’ of shyness as ‘diagnostic of societal pathology, within a public health model’ (2009: 10) and argue for a form of therapeutic intervention that empowers people to adjust to a shyness-intolerant society without compromising their own integrity, and thereby to live as ‘successfully shy’ individuals (Carducci 1999). They envisage everyone as existing on a continuum of social competence, but argue that these positions are not fixed, as individuals can progress and evolve by learning different skills. Managing shyness therefore becomes a highly meaningful journey of self-discovery and emancipation. The ‘Social Fitness’ model nevertheless concedes that the onus of responsibility for change lies with the individual, and employs a rhetoric of disciplinary power (Foucault 1975). Military-style drills promise to convert the social deviant into an obedient conformist, as the clinic offers: … education and training in positive social behavior, exercises to convert maladaptive thoughts, attributions and self-concept distortions to more adaptive cognitive patterns, and training in effective communication skills, including healthy assertiveness and negotiation. People move from social dysfunction, withdrawal, passivity, and negative self-preoccupation to adaptive functioning, increased social participation, a proactive orientation, and empathy and responsiveness to others… (Henderson & Zimbardo 2009: 11 http://www.shyness.com.html)

Therapeutic communities A second group of therapeutic RIs represents a deliberate attempt at detachment from the institutional context of mainstream psychiatry, posing a challenge to its conventional structure, function, leadership patterns, staff-patient relations and distribution of power (Morrice 1979). Therapeutic Communities (TCs) are residential, site-specific homes for those with mental health issues, addictions and personality disorders, and are run in a participatory, democratic manner with clients

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working alongside staff to negotiate aspects of their treatment. In particular, there is an emphasis on group-based, milieu therapy and cooperation on practical tasks, rather than reliance on medication; clients and staff may share a living space, and co-operate on the organisation of the institution’s daily running (Whitely 1970). The aim is not merely to treat psychiatric symptoms, but rather to effect a holistic transformation of the individual’s self-identity that will enable them to live harmoniously alongside others. The organisations pride themselves on housing ‘democratic citizens’ rather than block patients, and responding to the social and moral implications of their behaviour (Talbot & Miller 1971). Ideologically, TCs represent a critique of the hierarchical authoritarian structures of the traditional asylum and a search for more humane alternatives (Manning 1989). The movement began in the 1930s with London’s Tavistock Clinic, finding its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, in the wake of the anti-psychiatry movement (Laing 1965, 1967; Szasz 1961) and the anti-institutional critique (Stanton & Schwartz 1954; Wing 1962; Prior 1993; see Chapter 3). R.D. Laing saw schizophrenia as a rational strategy of withdrawal from bizarre patterns of family interaction, a wilful act of praxis aimed at defending one’s autonomy by presenting a false self to the world (Scott & Thorpe 2006). People who had been labelled mentally ill were taught that they were in fact hypersane, and that only by indulging in their madness could they liberate their true selves. The role of the therapist, then, was to nurture the individual’s journey through madness as an existential voyage of selfdiscovery. Notable projects included Laing and Cooper’s Kingsley Hall and Joseph Berke’s The Arbours, which inspired the Henderson Hospital (Rapoport 1960), Austen Riggs Center (Talbot & Miller 1971) and Paddington Day Hospital (Spandler 2006). However, Manning (1989) suggests that by the late 1970s, the charismatic authority of the original anti-institutional leaders had become routinised in mainstream, bureaucratic practices (cf. Weber 1914): therapeutic community work has lapsed into an over-determined view of the nature of the person, and hence of the possibilities of therapeutic intervention… particularly in the face of repeated problems or patients – ‘we have seen this before and know how to deal with it’ (Manning 1989: 74; 220). The four key principles of the TC, according to Morrice (1979; cf. Rapoport 1960) are permissiveness, democratisation, reality confrontation and

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communalism. Permissiveness entails a greater tolerance of rule-breaking behaviour than in the traditional TI, as clients are encouraged to ‘act out’ and ‘work through’ difficult emotions. Democratisation occurs through the flattening of the conventional hierarchy of mental health professionals and an erosion of the boundary between staff and patients: the two groups enjoy equal status in decision-making and share responsibility for the daily running of the community. Reality confrontation takes place in group psychotherapy and milieu therapy sessions, whereby residents analyse the significance of recent interactions that have taken place within the community, and are encouraged to challenge each other’s interpretations. The aim is to reveal the defensive games and strategies people use and to ‘tell the truth with love’, like a family member. This reflects the fourth principle of communalism: members see themselves as a cohesive unit, sharing not only practical tasks and responsibilities but feelings, thoughts and transformative experiences. Their encounters are informal and spontaneous, with meetings that take place outside of the therapy rooms being regarded as of equal if not greater therapeutic benefit, by virtue of their ‘genuine’ nature. There is a downplaying of difference and divisions between members, and an ongoing attempt to build relationships of trust and rapport. However, the translation of these principles into practice may be compromised by the interaction dynamics that arise from such a complex redistribution of power. Despite operating outside of mainstream psychiatry and being relatively democratic, the TC retains a basic distinction between staff and clients in terms of their respective healthy and unhealthy statuses, seeing only the latter as in need of therapeutic reinvention (Whiteley 1970; Larsen 2007b). Clients are limited in their ability to influence decisions about certain aspects of their treatment, such as medication, the treatment options available, and when they are ready for discharge (Morrice 1979). The TC model may be more suited to certain types of client, such as those with acute schizophrenia, who experience distress and seek a safe, holding environment, while those with conditions such as depression and anxiety disorders may remain more critically detached (Whitely, ibid.). Charismatic leaders can create cliques and divisions within the community, with the effect that a once cohesive inmate culture dissolves into conflicting subgroups (Whitely, ibid.). Residents may then not cohere as a single-stratum but rather form a self-imposed hierarchy on the basis of their disorder labels, orientations to the staff and stages of recovery (Hoffman 2006). For example, milieu therapy groups can be experienced

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as uncomfortably confrontational, even degrading, in their demands for self-disclosure and exposure to peer scrutiny (Burnett 2001). Therapeutic community residents therefore occupy an ambiguous status, being at once voluntary, agentic clients participating in a democratic, user-led community, and patients who are ultimately regarded as sick, inadequately recovered or otherwise compromised in their capacity to influence the treatment process. Furthermore, the inmate culture in which they are embedded can shift from being a supportive kinship network to a divisive, confrontational hierarchy. There may be a tension as residents negotiate trajectories of reinvention, being simultaneously the authors of this process and the objects of surveillance whose storied lives are institutionally rewritten. Progressive commitments and peer integration The effects of this are illustrated by empirical studies that chart TC residents’ changing relationships with staff, fellow inmates and, ultimately, themselves. Mahoney (1979) provides a reflective account of his time at the Henderson Hospital in London during 1972–1973, when he was 22 years old. Like many residents, his entry to the institution was only quasi-voluntary, having been suggested by concerned friends and family in his lay referral system (Freidson 1960), and he approached it with scepticism. Perceiving the other residents as ‘really’ mad and himself as relatively sane, he performed role distance (Goffman 1959) by refusing to socialise with them for fear that their madness might be contagious. He describes watching the other residents from the position of the stranger (Simmel 1908a), straddling an ambiguous position between the inside and the outside. However, throughout his time with the community, this resident’s perceptions gradually shifted as he made progressive commitments to the deviant identity (Becker 1963). After cautiously accepting the friendly advances of one or two inmates, he gradually began to warm to the new peer group as a whole, and to see himself as part of this community. He developed a ‘vague sensation of wanting to be helpful… we were all in the same boat after all… fellow social undesirables’ (Mahoney 1979: 80). This adjustment was fuelled by the encouragement of physical and emotional communication, for example group hugs and crying in therapy sessions. Here, individual feelings were redefined as the property of the group, a collective responsibility to manage. Mahoney adds that seeing his fellow residents so often and in so many different mental and emotional states throughout the day, meant that they came to develop bonds of affiliation based upon proximity

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and exposure (cf. Newcomb 1961). Indeed, he conjectures that the mundane aspects of everyday interaction were as important as the formal therapy sessions in effecting a sense of personal development and therapeutic progress. Here again we see the significance of informal socialisation in the RI: peer monitoring occurred during community downtime, when members checked in with and expressed mutual concern for each other’s welfare: The groups themselves weren’t the places that things ‘happened’. They gave cerebral insight and stirred feelings up, but it was during the unstructured times of the day, weekends, night-time, down the pub etc. when the intellectual insights of the day or the week or the month percolated down to the ‘gut’. ... Because of the expectations raised and the fixed notion that we were going to ‘do the business’, i.e. sort out our own and everyone else’s problems, within the meetings you were on your therapeutic guard, expecting, even welcoming, criticism or unfavourable analysis of your behaviour from your fellow members. … the fact that we were living together made our relationships much more ‘real’ and valuable than if we had only met each other for a few hours a day in our therapeutic roles (Mahoney 1979: 86). Consequently, Mahoney began to identify himself as ‘one of them’ and to accept, even enjoy, his newfound group identity by fraternising with his fellow inmates. He found himself rising through the ranks to positions of greater leadership and status, for example by chairing community meetings and organising games. Despite the stigma he had anticipated, he found it liberating to surrender to the effervescent current of the group (cf. Durkheim 1912): ‘the worst had happened, yet I felt freer, more relaxed, less on my guard’ (Mahoney 1979: 85). Eventually, his allegiance shifted so completely that he came to venerate the community as being superior to the outside world, and defended the boundary from the inside: We were a miniature army complete with uniform, codes, rules and degrees of status. The outside – work, work-mates, legal restrictions, conventions, morality, family, career, the future – all meant nothing. Outsiders’ rules didn’t apply to us, only to the sheep, the mugs, the grey people who couldn’t see the con, the lie. The ‘I’ became a ‘We, yet the ‘We’ reinforced and perpetuated the ‘Them’. Part of our kicks was to shock, horrify and bewilder everyone on first contact…

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We drew an absolute distinction between Family and outsiders. We had all the resources we needed within the gang (Mahoney 1979: 77). Mahoney’s remarks here about perceiving the community as a surrogate family echo the discourses cited by spiritual RI members (see Chapter 4), as well as resonating with the themes of exclusiveness, secrecy and brotherhood found in fraternity chapters (see Chapter 6). Despite a lack of physical confinement, inmates may feel equally bound by group loyalty and concern for their fellow journeymen: there is a sense of dutiful obligation to seeing through to completion the recovery trajectories of the whole cohort, not just oneself. Indeed, as Burnett (2001) observed in his study of a concept-based therapeutic community, newly defined recovering selves (in this case ‘cleaned up’ drug addicts) can feel so immersed in the routines and discourses of the institution that they experience release anxiety (Goffman 1961a) about the prospect of reentering the civilian world, and describe the process of readjustment as a time of culture shock (Poulopoulos & Tsibouki 1998). Fateful relationships with staff These feelings of dependency can develop even in non-residential therapeutic communities. Larsen (2007a) conducted an ethnography of OPUS, a biopsychosocial early intervention service in Copenhagen for people who had experienced first episode psychosis. Larsen argues that alongside the experiential crisis evoked by severe mental illness itself, the process of recovery also effects a transition in the individual’s sense of self, insofar as treatment provision is mediated by a social network of peers who provide ‘symbolic healing’. The OPUS programme lasted for two years and combined lowest effective dosage medication with individual counselling, family therapy, group therapy and social skills workshops, in addition to practical and financial assistance in the areas of housing and employment. The aim was to intervene early, to prevent the client’s further deterioration and ensure that they could return to ‘normal’ functioning; the social context was intended to provide a supportive holding environment that would nurture the client’s recovery. Peer mentoring was important, and members were perceived as knowledgeable agents just waiting to be empowered. Instead of being dependent on professional experts, they were taught the requisite therapeutic skills both to self-analyse and to help each other: In the [family] groups clients and relatives were educated about mental illness, and through concrete problem-solving exercises rela-

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tives, mainly parents, but occasionally also siblings, grandparents or partners, were advised how they could support the client. In the social skills training (SST) groups staff were identified as ‘trainers’ (trænere) and the aim was, aside from educating clients about medical notions of mental illness, to train them in using cognitive and behavioural coping techniques. The intention was that clients would use this knowledge and skill in their everyday lives to better identify and control their symptoms to prevent psychotic relapse and improve their quality of life (Larsen 2007a: 339). Larsen argues that the interactional dynamics of the groups altered clients’ self-perceptions. For example, Martin was initially sceptical about attending the family groups for fear of his personal and sexual problems being brought out into public discussion, but came to enjoy the social skills workshops for precisely this level of intimacy and the trusting relationships he was encouraged to develop. Other clients reported changing relationships with the staff, as for example Claus’s initial scepticism towards his case manager gave way to admiration of him as someone who had turned his life around: as their relationship developed, he experienced that the case manager could help him in many ways, not only by planning and arranging his education, but also by acting as a confidant with whom he could share his worries and concerns. When I spoke to him shortly before his two years were up in the intervention he described what it had meant to him: ‘I think that I have been guided in the right direction. Like if you imagine that I was in a black tunnel, and I then got a light to follow… that there is a life after the psychosis, and things like that. Because when I was discharged [from the psychiatric ward] everything was just black for me, you see. And I was suffering from delusions and racing thoughts [tankemylder] and things like that. And OPUS has helped me to… to see that there was a way out… I have regained the belief that… or not ‘regained’, but, you see, there is also another life than the normal, what you call ‘normal’, you see, this about having a permanent job, and things like that’ (Larsen 2007a: 341). Larsen (2007b) notes that these mutable staff-client relationships were ‘fateful’ (Goffman 1967) not only for individuals’ experiences of recovery but also for the institutionalisation of different recovery

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trajectories. The staff identified two likely prognoses or paths of therapeutic resolution for clients, depending on the latter’s perceived engagement with the clinical programme. ‘Episodic psychosis’ optimistically anticipated the possibility of full recovery, while ‘chronic schizophrenia’ anticipated a lifetime of comprehensive adjustments to living with a mental illness. Larsen argues that these were not simply clinical judgements but socially and experientially fateful labels, communicated to patients in the course of their encounters with staff. They created a ‘mythic world’ (Dow 1986) that shaped clients’ processes of identity work as they negotiated new visions of themselves, their conditions and their futures. Supplantation of the lifeworld As ‘totally’ encompassing, greedy institutions (Coser 1974), TCs shape not only clients’ individual relationships with staff but also their more general perception of social reality (Bloor et al 1988). In phenomenological terms, they create a symbolic lifeworld (Berger & Luckmann 1967) of shared meanings and motivations that have an internal logic within the context of the institutional programme and are upheld by its members. Patients do not merely reside in the institution but have aspects of this residency (their living, sleeping and eating behaviour) scrutinised alongside their conduct in therapy sessions. This may create an all-encompassing, intense, claustrophobic environment: [Therapeutic work] can transform any mundane event in the community by redefining that event in the light of some therapeutic paradigm... to so redefine an everyday event as an occasion or a topic of therapy sets it apart and transforms it, much as the profane is transformed into the sacred by religious belief and ceremony... Any and every event and activity in the therapeutic community is potentially open to such redefinition: there is no nook or cranny of resident life that is not open to scrutiny and potentially redefinable in therapeutic terms (Bloor et al 1988: 5). Here we find another parallel with the experience of immersion in a religious RI (see Chapter 4), insofar as the TC takes on a mystical charisma that charms and seduces potential converts. Drawing on Durkheim’s (1912) theory of religion, Bloor suggests that the community develops a reified, sacred status in the eyes of its members, which is constructed by and dependent on their beliefs and actions. This was illustrated by Wiley’s (1991) ethnography of Quaesta, a

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private residential therapeutic community for people with schizophrenia who had become disillusioned with conventional psychotherapy. Located in an affluent area of California, the community combined luxurious living quarters with countercultural ideals and practices, such as mysticism, hypnosis, meditation, rebirthing and psychedelia. It followed a strictly controlled regime of timetabled activities, including group therapy, ‘special issue’ groups (on such themes as addiction, sexuality and separation) and community meetings, interspersed with nurturing recreational activities such as cooking, gardening and artwork. This community attempted to create a ‘moral milieu’ to transform the client’s self through a sequence of four stages, echoing Goffman’s (1961a) moral career. Phase One entailed bonding to the community, Phase Two involved assuming responsibility for one’s past behaviour, Phase Three was a transitional stage of preparing to live autonomously and Phase Four was the final stage of enlightenment and self-actualisation. Wiley follows Bloor in arguing that the community challenged inmates’ understandings of the social world and their place within it, supplanting one phenomenological lifeworld for another. A new set of norms, values and moral codes was created and upheld by the members through their enthusiastic participation in the group activities. The therapeutic milieu provided a new way of seeing that was both at odds with and superior to the civilian world. For example, in group sessions, feelings are the central legitimate focus of talk. If this were done in the everyday world, it would be regarded as inappropriate, in bad taste, or intrusive. In this community, emotion and feeling talk were of the essence (Wiley 1991: 146). The charismatic authority of the founder was repeatedly communicated to the residents through motivational speeches and informal storytelling, which elevated him to a mythical status. This power was then transferred to the community itself, which was venerated as a symbolic expression of his values. Members came to worship the TC as a sui generis reified structure (Durkheim 1893), or microcosmic society, which they called ‘The Culture’. Therapy sessions regularly cited the institution’s goals and values as a source of guidance and self-evaluation. Eventually the residents began to personify The Culture as an analyst, and believe in its powers as an entity that was greater than the sum of its parts. For example, the therapeutic groups were valued not only for their pedagogic content but for their uplifting, effervescent ceremonial

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nature (cf. Durkheim, ibid.) The individual’s troubled soul was framed as the responsibility of the community, which cultivated a dependency upon it: the individual journey to the soul becomes the concern of the community. The space of the community provides a home for the lost or disturbed soul of the resident.. . Quaesta offers a culture or shared value system that provides meaning, and a context for a strong, caring and responsive community… There is a sense of mutuality at Quaesta, a feeling that ‘we are in this together’… Your belief system disappears (Wiley 1991: 147). Peer sanctioning This group cohesiveness can intensify to the extent that excessively harsh and punitive actions are normalised as acceptable ways of sanctioning members. Burnett (2001) notes that the grievances of newer TC residents are often dismissed by senior peers as signs of pathology rather than taken seriously, in the same way that traditional TI patients found their ‘normal’ behaviour interpreted by staff as symptomatic of their diagnoses (Rosenhan 1973). In Wiley’s study, residents who challenged the philosophy of The Culture were regarded as uncooperative and rebellious, and subjected to peer-mediated punishments. There was a graded hierarchy of sanctions, ranging from confrontation in community meetings, through being confined in isolation, to being physically restrained or tied to objects in one’s room; a notable variant was to tether the recalcitrant inmate to a supervising senior member by a nylon rope. The docility with which members submitted to these punishments as appropriate and justifiable echoes the processes found in fraternity house hazing rituals (see Chapter 6), whereby the allure of joining or remaining in an exclusive community blinds members to the (un-)reasonableness of its ways. However, this is not necessarily a matter of passive brainwashing. Wiley suggests that the Quaesta residents sought actively to make sense of and even justify these measures, through strategically produced accounting procedures, such as excuses and justifications (Scott & Lyman 1968). This supports Lukes’ (2005) three dimensional theory of power, which emphasised the meaning-making work agents do to make sense of disciplinary techniques as being in their own political interests and ultimately liberating (Rose 1990). For example, this dissident resident reflected on her time ‘on-the-rope’ as having been an integral part of her therapeutic journey, something that was, if not vol-

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untary, then at least highly meaningful in helping to complete her transformation: I think I have a better understanding of my problem and a feeling that it can work out. I understand more about what confrontation is all about and I’m beginning to understand that people here are helping me…. I’m learning to use the structures to help me. You know, I’ve learned that when they stick me on the rope it’s to try to help me understand what’s going on with me and work through the issue…. So, I look at that more favorably and I’m more willing to work on the issue than I have been, you know. If they didn’t put me on a rope and keep me right there I’d probably run away from the issue (Wiley 1991: 151).

Self-help groups A third type of therapeutic RI is the self-help or support group, set up and run by and for people who experience a condition. While such groups may have a leader-facilitator, this tends to be a recovered or recovering member from their midst, rather than an externally appointed clinician, and so they operate on the basis of presumed equality. Selfhelp groups are voluntary formations with a loose organisational structure and an ad hoc division of labour. They are typically community-based, run independently of mainstream medical institutions, and may utilise therapeutic programmes that are oppositional to biomedicine. As Crossley (2006b) notes, the twenty-first century has seen a rise in the number of mental health service user-led groups and movements, whose members unashamedly identify with their disorder labels. However, this is only one narrative framework: members may draw upon alternative discourses of survival, patienthood and consumerism, and move between different ways of interpreting the meaning of their experiences (Speed 2006). Members’ motivations An important question is why individuals elect to join recovery groups rather than going it alone. In the absence of external pressure or obligation, members’ motivations for joining voluntary associations may pertain more to anticipated social benefits than to clinically defined recovery. Many mental health service users attend self-help groups alongside conventional treatment in traditional TIs, and perceive them to provide a different type of help (Rossol 2001). This may simply

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entail fraternisation, as there is great comfort to be gained from feeling that one is not alone in enduring misfortune, that others are ‘in the same boat’. The group provides a micro-level community with its own norms, values and morality, which gives members a reassuring sense of belonging and Durkheimian solidarity. This in turn can have a symbolic healing effect, in providing the alienated lost souls of late modernity with a shared route back to spirituality (Wuthnow 1994). Members can draw upon the narratives provided to discursively rewrite traumatic life experiences, interpreting them as personally meaningful journeys towards a new self (Mason-Schrock 1996). As Furedi (2004) observes, the pervasive language of therapy culture provides collective scripts that turn social problems into emotional ones, which individuals are encouraged to resolve through talking cures (Shattuc 1997) and informal talk-in-interaction (Antaki & Widdicombe 1998). The self-help group provides support for not only the physical and emotional aspects of recovery, but also the changes to social identity that this process implies. As we have seen, the reinvention process is a status passage (Glaser & Strauss 1971), involving a sequence of progressive commitments to an emergent new identity (Becker 1963). However, self-help groups demonstrate that these adjustments can be social as well as personal (Rudy 1986), as fellow members guide the individual through a socially sanctioned rite of passage (Turner 1967). As Rubin et al (1993) argue, the ceremonies that mark career progression take place both privately and publicly, involving practices of both self- and social ratification. In dramaturgical terms, the peer group acts as an audience that either validates or disconfirms the actor’s claims to a new identity; identity reinvention is a matter of not only individual self-presentation but also collective team performance (cf. Goffman 1959). People may then join support groups in anticipation of a sympathetic audience reaction that will enable them to perform and adjust to their reinvented identity. This is evidenced by studies of transgendered individuals who have sought to adjust to the changes in social relationships evoked by gender realignment. Garfinkel’s (1967) classic study of Agnes, a male-to-female transsexual, documented the strategies she used to ‘pass’ (Goffman 1963a) as female when encountering interaction partners who were not aware of her history. More recent studies have pointed to the fatefulness (Goffman 1967) of different audience reactions for determining whether and to what extent transgender people find their performances validated, which has wider implications for social inclusion and citizenship (Hines 2007). For example, Gagne & Tewksbury (1997) argued that in the process of coming out, transgendered individuals

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find different social networks and communities more or less supportive (cf. Schilt 2007; Factor & Rothblum 2008). In self-help groups, members described initial feelings of anxiety and intimidation giving way to relief as they encountered reactions of acceptance and encouragement to celebrate their new identity. This was demonstrated by performative rituals, which actively did the work of validation, rather than merely citing it rhetorically. For example, members were encouraged to cross dress to attend meetings, and instructed on techniques of passing, such as developing a more ‘feminine’ voice and adopting a convincing demeanour. However, it is important to note that there may still be moments of tension and conflict between such community members insofar as implicit or explicit status hierarchies arise. For example, Masquesmay (2003) found that within a Vietnamese LGBTQ support group, discussions focused on the experiences of bilingual lesbians, leaving others such as bisexual women and FTM transgendered members feeling marginalised. Some critics argue that the pervasiveness of therapy culture encourages people to cling to the notion of recovery as a long term self-narrative, extending beyond the level of local experience to the life course as a whole. Hayes (2000) suggests that some people move from one selfhelp group to another for a succession of different lifestyle problems, effectively addicted to the idea of addiction – or rather, to the process of recovery from it. They become serial career addicts, who never finally make it back into the ‘healthy’, civilian world because of their anxieties about having to be able to cope without the supportive peer group. Furedi (2004) writes of ‘victim addicts’ who engage in ‘traumatourism’: regarding themselves as being at the mercy of a series of misfortunes, they appeal to notions of victimhood and vulnerability to substantiate their claims upon therapeutic services. This invokes a discourse of rights-oriented individualism, which serves rhetorically both to justify the need for help and to deny personal responsibility for one’s circumstances. It is a curious paradox that the victim addict can be at once agentic, self-serving and assertive, and a passive victim of social circumstances. The position allows them to take responsibility for healing themselves but not for inflicting the original damage. In this respect, the recovering self generated by the support group can become a deeply entrenched self-identity. Twelve step programmes This is apparent in the operation of ‘twelve step’ recovery programmes, a model of self-help for addiction based upon the idea of graduated

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withdrawal from substances, behaviours and relationships that are perceived to be damaging. Symbolic Interactionist studies of twelve step groups have shown how ideas of progress are collectively negotiated through the rituals of therapeutic interaction. The recovering self can be understood not as a fixed entity but as an ongoing process of becoming – for example, an (ex-)alcoholic (Denzin 1987). The moral career trajectory is shaped by the social reactions of the peer group, insofar as they perceive changes in the individual’s conduct and orientation and evaluate his or her readiness to progress through a series of sequential stages. This begins with admitting one’s own powerlessness to control the addiction and surrendering to a higher force (traditionally God, but in secular organisations, increasingly, the peer group itself, as a Durkheimian micro-society), then critically examining and making amends for one’s past mistakes and misdemeanours, learning to live without the addiction and finally being able to help others as a group leader or advocate. Recovery is framed as a life sentence and a state of constant becoming: one can never claim to be fully recovered but rather must remain aware of the potential for relapse. Addiction is personified as the ‘trickster within’ (Weinberg 1996), who is lurking and seeking opportunities to lure the vulnerable subject back. This resonates with the vision of reinvention espoused by RIs more generally: the inmate’s former self is not something to be mortified by external agents, but rather is wilfully discarded and kept at bay by constant self-reflexive identity work. The ability to abstain from the ‘destructive’ behaviour is framed as a moral choice, for which the individual must take responsibility; the recovering self is symbolically detached from the addictive part, and required actively to manage this deviant alter ego. Nevertheless, institutional dependency is simultaneously encouraged. The trusting and emotionally intimate nature of the support group is emphasised as a safe haven, the ideal place in which to undertake this work. Anonymity and confidentiality are established as ground rules to encourage honest self-disclosure, mirroring a feature of the secret society (see Chapter 6): members may exchange the most intimate information during meetings but pretend not to recognise each other if they meet outside this context. The twelve step model originated from the formation of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) in the 1930s, but has since been applied to a plethora of newly defined addictions, from smoking to shopping, gambling and Internet use. There are also similar support groups for the third parties affected by an individual’s addiction, such as Al-Anon for the family and friends of alcoholics. Furedi (2004: 122) writes critically of this ‘fetish of addiction’ as involving ‘the medicalisation of bad habits’, whereby

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lifestyle behaviours that would previously have been regarded as merely deviant are recast as mental or emotional disorders of impulse control (Rossol 2001). Here again, the addict is discursively framed as a passive subject, a vulnerable victim of circumstances; yet s/he is expected to take responsibility for seeking help. Another paradox is that while addiction is rhetorically constructed as a pathology, it is simultaneously normalised as a common ‘problem of living’ (Szasz 1961) to which we are all prone. As popular culture perpetuates the image of the ‘addictive personality’ as a blameless victim of a sick society (see for example James [2007] diagnosis of cultural ‘affluenza’ and Wilkinson’s [1998: 112] comments on the ‘addictive culture of workaholism’), the stigma associated with going to AA or similar has been somewhat reduced. Meanwhile, we have become adept at using the language of addiction to interpret aspects of everyday behaviour: jokes about being a ‘chocoholic’ or ‘shopaholic’ have entered into lay parlance as vocabularies of motive (Mills 1959) to account for socially sanctioned deviance. Self-help group meetings are ritualistic, repeating similar features and a common structure that is repeated week after week (Hoffmann 2006). For example, there may be a ‘two minute check-in’, whereby members briefly update each other on how they have been since the last meeting, which highlights any issues of concern for discussion. This also serves a performative function, as members display mutual concern by listening to each other, symbolically gesturing their commitment to the team (Goffman 1971). There may be a reading from the group’s official publications, which provide a set of guidelines for pre- and pro-scribed behaviour and allow members to evaluate their progress: the Big Book of Alcoholic Anonymous, the Big Yellow Book of Gamblers Anonymous, or the Social Fitness Manual of the Shyness Clinic, all share a gospel-like quality that is totemically venerated by staff and clients alike (cf. Durkheim 1912). Finally, there is a more extensive period of information sharing, whereby members take turns to give a personal testimony of how they came to be there, their current state, and reflections on their progress towards recovery (Rossol 2001). This takes the form of a Foucauldian confessional (Foucault 1976), the ritualistic process of release, acceptance and forgiveness being as meaningful as the specific content of the information exchanged. Members attend carefully to the matter of ‘telling a good story’ (Hoffmann 2006) with a familiar, convincing narrative that will be validated by their peers: While some members are better storytellers than others, this attribute is not enough to be recognized as having a good recovery program.

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Members’ speech events must also capture the normative and ‘stereotypical’ structure of speech events in order to be well received by others (Thune 1977). Members with a good story who embody ‘good AA’ can acquire a celebrity-like status as these ‘circuit speakers’ are asked to tell their recovery stories at local, regional, or national AA meetings (Hoffmann 2003). Thus, in a somewhat strange twist of fate, the sordid trials and tribulations that members experienced during their active alcoholism enhances their status in sobriety (Hoffmann 2006: 677). Rossol (2001) shows how the ‘compulsive gambler’ identity is coconstructed in meetings of Gamblers Anonymous (GA) through the mobilisation of clinical terminology, which reduces all members to the status of an addict. Medicalisation is accomplished at the micro level by downplaying the diversity of patient-clients and homogenising their experiences as symptomatic. This is a phenomenological reconstruction of social reality (Berger & Luckmann 1967) that teaches members a new vocabulary of motives (Mills 1959) with which to narrate their experiences. Thus Rossol’s participants’ accounts of how they became compulsive gamblers followed the same pattern: they spoke firstly of experiencing feelings of compulsion, then of ‘chasing’, or a long term game of recouping previous losses and getting even, then of seeing their behaviour escalate until it evoked a crisis in their occupational or family lives, and finally of capitulating when a loved one intervened to confront them. Rossol argues that this narrative structure is reproduced during GA meetings through the course of members’ interactions, as they engage in three main stages of mutual biographical reconstruction. Firstly, the meanings of present and the current selves are reframed in medical terms: compulsive gambling is an illness, members are sick, and their addictive behaviour is symptomatic. Secondly, there is a discounting of members’ backgrounds by shifting the focus to their present, common state as institutional inmates. If they dwelled too much upon personal experiences, his participants were told, ‘you’ve got to let go of that. You’re here now’ (Rossol 2001: 329), and frequently reminded of how the programme would affect ‘us all’. Thirdly, the past is actively reconstructed by the reinterpretation of members’ past experiences: any memorable life event is incorporated into the narrative of recovery and attributed a symbolic meaning in relation to the final outcome of the story. These three interactional processes cohere to rewrite members’ identities, from both their own perspective and that of their peers.

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Performative support Therapeutic RIs shape not only the new self that inmates acquire, but also the way in which they present themselves during the process of its acquisition. Insofar as membership is voluntary, and the shared definition of the situation is that this is a harmonious, nurturing environment, there is rarely any overt hostility between individuals. Instead, social control operates more informally and subtly, through such mechanisms as gossip (Gellman 1964), resigned tolerance (Mäkelä et al 1996) and members’ socialisation into preferred modes of identity performance. There is an expectation that everyone is positively committed to their own and each other’s recovery, and that all criticism should be constructive. Moreover, the master status of ‘addict’ (or recovering self) that members humbly adopt is presumed to have an equalising effect: everyone is reduced to the same vulnerable status and no one can claim to be superior to anyone else. Support group members are therefore concerned not only with the instrumental purpose of disclosing, sharing and acquiring information, but also with the dramaturgical implications of self-presentation and impression management (Goffman 1959). Furedi (2004) suggests that despite the lip service paid to ideals of open disclosure and absolute honesty, support group members perform skilful, reflexive strategies of emotion work (Hochschild 1983). Feelings that comply with the programme tend to be talked about and validated, while those that challenge it are kept to oneself in anticipation of disapproval. Performative regulation operates through such informal sanctions, which are accepted as legitimate. These disciplinary techniques will often be experienced by members as benign, if not positively helpful, in suggesting new ways of managing oneself. For example, in their study of Alcoholics Anonymous, Pollner & Stein (2001) point to the importance of humour in guiding the transition from an alcoholic self to a recovering self. The intensely serious atmosphere of meetings would be interspersed with moments of hilarity, as members laughed about their previous misdemeanours. They expressed attitudes of shock and disbelief, standing back from and critically reflecting upon their addictive tendencies with the benefit of hindsight. Humour enabled members to experience their identities as dualistic, by creating a division between their current and former selves and positioning the first as a mature and rational partner. Moreover, by telling jokes, making self-deprecating remarks and teasing one another, they dramaturgically enacted this division, demonstrating to each other that they had ‘moved on’.

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In some cases, however, members are more discomfited by the group’s disciplinary processes. Hayes’ (2000) interviews with members of Debtors Anonymous revealed how they experienced labelling and stigmatisation, which led them to perceive their indebtedness as shameful. Even though many had joined the group in the manner that Furedi described, with the claim of victimhood (the economic recession was blamed as an external agent that had got them into debt), this attitude was challenged and supplanted by the teachings of the twelve step programme. Normalisation turned to pathologisation as they learned that they were responsible for an addiction to spending, and that to overcome this would entail much soul-searching and reparative identity work. Hayes suggests that the ‘debtor’ label was attributed to individuals through the process of ritual shaming. Meetings were organised as confessionals, with members taking turns to give personal testimonies of their experiences with debt. This was intended to be an empowering release of responsibility, but it was experienced by some as a deeply humiliating degradation ceremony (Garfinkel 1956). As Hayes remarks, ‘twelve step group members are expected to publicly shame themselves under the guise of recovery’ (2000: 42). Nevertheless, the reactions of some to this process remind us of RI inmates’ capacity for agency. Anita, for example, actively resisted taking on the addict label as a master status (Hughes 1945), despite her history as a self-help careerist. She reflected on the way in which her various addict selves had been constructed by the therapeutic discourses of these groups, and perceived her ‘real’ self to be this detached critic: an agentic ‘I’ to the array of reconstructed ‘Me’s (cf. Mead 1934): I have defined myself as a human being by, Hi. I’m [Anita]. I’m an alcoholic, a drug addict, a debtor, and a chronic underearner. That’s self-abuse…. [At twelve-step meetings they say] it is important that we put the addiction first. I don’t agree with that…. I battle it. I am still saying, I’m a deprivation addict and a compulsive underearner, but I don’t like it (Hayes 2000: 42). This suggests that the publicly shared definition of reality may be undermined by members’ private interpretations of what is really going on, implicit status claims and jostles for power. Hoffmann’s (2006) ethnography of an AA group shows how the organisation’s professed commitment to democracy made it difficult for members to sanction each other: their Big Book proclaimed that, No AA [member] can compel another to do anything; nobody can be punished or expelled… They repeatedly say ‘We ought’… but

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never ‘You must!’ … [and] ‘We have no rules, only suggestions’ (Hoffmann 2006: 672). Nevertheless, members did seek to eradicate perceived deviations from the programme, such as ‘inappropriate’ emotions (anger, selfpity, jealousy), cognition (thoughts about drinking and egocentric attitudes) and behaviour (resorting to drinking, being dishonest, or otherwise deviating from the twelve steps). Hoffmann identifies three modes of criticism that were levelled at perceived deviants, in order to bring them back into line. Humour was used, as Pollner & Stein (2001) described, with members jibing each other to mask an underlying tension. Direct criticism occurred only rarely, when a person transgressed one of the group’s core principles: for example, Glenda was chastised by two fellow inmates for presenting herself as a victim and ‘making excuses’ rather than taking responsibility for her drinking. More commonly, however, criticism occurred through subtle, non-confrontational gestures that gently showed the individual they were stepping out of line. For example, when Jill spoke for too long, other members would signal their frustration and annoyance by leaving the circle to refill their coffee cups or go to the bathroom. Further tension may arise if members perceive power divisions between themselves. Hoffmann (ibid.) argues that while groups like AA may flatten the more obvious hierarchies of wealth, education and social class, other factors can emerge as significant markers of status. In particular, a member’s length of time in sobriety is regarded as an indication of their commitment to recovery; more established members assume a veteran status, based upon claims to superior knowledge of the programme and expertise in its delivery. As in any RI, there is an expectation that individuals will be sincerely (Goffman 1959) committed to the programme and the institutional rhetoric, rather than merely complying instrumentally. This demands a skilful identity performance: self-help group meetings provide a stage onto which members project idealised selves and demonstrate their relative progress (Jenson 2000), seeking social as well as self-ratification (Rubin et al 1993). This is evidenced by accounts of the social reactions inmates encounter as they strive to perform as authentic, obedient adherents of the regime – however they may feel inside. Weinberg’s (1996, 2005) ethnographic study of a skid row drug rehabilitation programme in Los Angeles points to the dramaturgical stress that arises when there is a contradiction between members’ avowed commitment to recovery and fellow inmates’ perceptions of their true attitudes – in Goffman’s (1963a) terms, a discreditable stigma. Weinberg asserts that in rehab and detox

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centres, interactional tension occurs more often between clients than between staff and clients, because having committed time and energy to the programme, members feel angry and frustrated with those who seem not to be pulling their weight. Weinberg’s participants saw themselves as tough and unforgiving: ‘coming from the curb’ or being used to street life, their natural inclination was to mistrust others and be suspicious of their motivations. Ironically, however, this street morality fitted well with the programme’s emphasis on emotional intimacy: ‘failing to trust – that is, to disclose one’s authentic thoughts and feelings to one’s “brothers” in the program – was [seen as] a failure to embrace one’s own recovery’ (Weinberg 1996: 141). These inmates placed a great emphasis on the notion of authenticity, or being ‘real’ in their relations with each other, and frowned upon anyone who seemed not to be committed to the programme. In this respect, Weinberg argues, the members performed emotion work (Hochschild 1983) not only privately, by managing their own self-presentation, but also publicly, by managing and sanctioning the emotions shown by others. On the one hand, they strove to display their own authenticity by engaging with the clinic’s emphasis on self-disclosure and selfscrutiny, constantly asking themselves whether they were giving a convincing performance by appearing to stick to the programme. On the other hand, they sometimes doubted the sincerity of fellow inmates, and exercised ‘institutional emotion management’ to distinguish between those who were more and less committed to the programme: [Members] actively intervened to foster or suppress each other’s emotional displays so as to bring them more completely into line with what they believed was characteristic of the local appearance of personal authenticity and successful recovery (Weinberg 1996: 157). Weinberg identified four techniques that the members used to enact and appraise authenticity. Ideology avowal involved citing the programme rhetoric as if it were a personal set of values, in the hope that others would believe they were speaking ‘from the heart’. Ideology exemplification involved talking about life events and experiences in relation to this discourse, in order performatively to provide evidence that the programme worked and that they were right to believe in it. A third strategy was to bracket out scepticism towards others’ performances, taking them at face value: for example, staff counsellors would accept a client’s apology for inappropriate behaviour while secretly regarding it with skepticism. By contrast, the fourth strategy of emotion management

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involved calling each other on perceived insincerity, as illustrated by this excerpt from a personal growth workshop: Matt [a second phase program man] said, ‘Okay Terry. I don’t want you to take this in the wrong way, but, back in New York, we had a word for people who went through their programs and never had no problems at all, didn’t relapse or nothin’. We called that skatin’, and I don’t want to scare you or accuse you of nothin’, but the people that skated, in my experience, they fell harder than anybody else. They graduated. But it didn’t last, man.’ Terry replied, ‘Are you sayin’ I’m skating?’ Matt, ‘I ain’t sayin’ you’re doin’ anything….’ Doug [a second phase program man] interrupted Matt with, ‘That’s what I’m saying. You are skating, man!’ Terry answered, ‘Well I don’t mind you sayin’ that. We’re all entitled to our own opinions…’ (Though smiling, Terry looked quite uncomfortable and a long pause ensued.) Paul added, ‘You look really uncomfortable right now, Terry. You don’t like hearin’ these things, do you?’ (Weinberg 1996: 152) Paik’s (2006) ethnography of Project Arise, a drug rehabilitation programme in Los Angeles, also highlights members’ strategies of selfpresentation, but emphasises co-operation rather than conflict. He reveals how crucial it is to the smooth running of support groups that members act as if they are personally committed to recovery, and everybody else is equally committed. This involves a pretence awareness context (Glaser & Strauss 1964): everybody knows that these performances of conformity are just that – a front – and that individuals may feel privately disengaged, but they tacitly agree not to mention it, keeping each other in face (Goffman 1967) so that the show can go on. Conformity to the rules may constitute a cynical identity performance (Goffman 1959), whereby the actor remains distant from the role that s/he is playing and acts instrumentally, to secure either positive reward (acceptance and inclusion) or negative sanctions (the avoidance of conflict).

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Paik describes how staff and clients co-operated in therapeutic encounter groups by using interpretive practices (Gubrium & Holstein 2001) to assess each individual’s level of commitment to the programme. They sought to establish whether or not clients were successfully reconstructing themselves as a ‘recovering dope fiend’ and taking on the desired institutional self. For example, the practice of ‘slips’ entailed members writing down observations of each others’ deviations from the programme and posting them anonymously to the staff: a form of mutual surveillance. Some clients engaged in this willingly, seizing the idea of ‘snitching’ on a fellow inmate as a way of making themselves appear relatively obedient. More often, however, clients felt uncomfortable about breaking ranks in this way, and sought to avoid tension. Although individuals might be challenged for displaying ‘wrong’ or ‘inappropriate’ emotions (those that did not fit with the programme or indicated a lack of engagement with it), they were always given the opportunity to redeem themselves through narrative work, which was supported by their fellow inmates. For example, one participant, Andrea, was confronted by the group about her angry outburst at Ken, a counsellor, the previous day. Initially she encountered hostility from her peers, who rose to his defence. However, when she accounted for this by ‘confessing’ that the anger was really displaced sadness about the loss of her son, and broke down into tears, the atmosphere within the group changed to one of moral support, as she was seen to have confronted her ‘real issues’. She was then applauded for ‘getting with the programme’ and taking the first step on a therapeutic journey: The group continues to do more emotion management, thereby reaffirming this distinction between the angry dope-fiend self and the recovering-dope-fiend self that Andrea needs to develop. Some residents bring up her son to further distinguish between these two selves. Isaac: ‘Sometimes I don’t know if you are a woman or not. You have this anger that comes out so viciously.’ Floyd: ‘Be a woman. Represent what you got to represent. You’re on state parole, don’t go back to prison. Don’t do that to your son – you’ll be farther away from him than before.’ [As soon as Floyd says ‘your son’, Andrea starts to get agitated again.]. Jorge: ‘You are this close to getting your son back – I know you love him.’ Jorge is the first person to say something in a somewhat pos-

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itive manner – the others’ hostile tone did not seem to sit well with Andrea who is looking nervously around the room. Ken (staff) interjects: ‘I refuse to let you play the victim role. Everything is someone else’s fault. I refuse to let you do that. I will be consistent – you are on contract [program punishment]. Staff will back me up’ (Paik 2006: 226–227). In order to receive this approbation, however, Andrea was expected to perform humility by apologising and substituting the group’s interpretation of her behaviour for her own. Just like Goffman’s (1961a: 143) asylum inmates, she must ‘“insightfully” come to take, or affect to take’, the institution’s view of herself: Andrea says that everyone’s indictments – except Ken’s – were valid and she apologized to Stella for behaving that way. She said to Stella, ‘I was mad at you – well you know why but still I shouldn’t slam doors like that.’ She then addresses the entire group: ‘I know I have an attitude problem but what can I say? I’m working on it. I really am.’ Andrea sounds as if she is about to cry; her voice is not angry or spiteful at all. She sounds like she is trying to stay calm and in control of her emotions (Paik 2006: 227). From this we can see how powerful a mechanism performative regulation is in governing the reinvention process. Once socialised into an RI’s programme rhetoric and its incumbent inmate culture, individuals devise identity performances of obedience and conformity. Insofar as this audience accepts the sincerity of the performance, or is willing to bracket out their scepticism, they will respond with supportive gestures of protective facework (Goffman 1967) that validate the individual’s claim to the new identity. In some cases, however, doubt is cast on the authenticity of their professed commitment to the regime, resulting in challenging or unsupportive interchanges between group members. The morality of the inmate culture is re-enacted, initially strategically for the purposes of dramaturgical circumspection (Goffman 1959), to pre-empt the audience’s judgements and keep oneself in face, but eventually sincerely, as an internalised disciplinary force. Inmates begin to comply with a therapeutic programme because they genuinely want to – or at least, have convinced themselves to believe that they genuinely want to. In the next chapter, we see how this confusion of motives escalates in a group of RIs that aim to cultivate members’ talents and abilities: how could this be anything other than benignly beneficial?

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8 Education and Enrichment

This chapter explores academic hothouses: organisations designed to develop the talents and abilities of carefully selected ‘rising stars’, in preparation for professional careers and vocations. Students in elite boarding schools, prestigious universities and performing arts academies are expected to show more than the usual level of commitment to their work and to study with particular intensity, beyond conventional working hours. These institutions are predicated on a set of shared ambitions, oriented towards a future identity: students anticipate cultivating a new self, who is not only intellectually developed but radically transformed as a whole person. Going away to college represents an opportunity for self-discovery and self-actualisation, a chance to become ‘who I want to be’ (Karp et al 1998). At the same time, these RIs provide unique social environments, insular local worlds created by the interactions between students, staff and institutional arrangements. Inmate cultures develop as new recruits learn how to be a student, trainee or apprentice – roles defined by their potential – and compete to be the best in their field.

Talent and labour ‘marketability’ The mass expansion of state-funded education over the last century has meant that unprecedented numbers of young people are going on into further and higher education as a matter of course. In the UK, there is an estimated two million students at 130 Higher Education Institutions, or HEIs (Ramsden 2005; Directgov 2009), although this figure may soon decrease in response to the new government’s public spending cuts (discussed below). Meanwhile the USA boasts nearly 5000 colleges and universities and over 18,000,000 students; 24.4% of 174

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the population aged over 25 have a Bachelor’s degree (US Census Bureau 2009). Left wing policies of inclusivity and widening participation have combined with neo-liberal discourses of meritocratic achievement to convey the message that every individual has the potential to cultivate their unique talents and abilities. This meets the challenges of a post-industrial, service and knowledge-based economy (Drucker 1993), where creative intelligence, IT literacy, communication skills and social confidence have come to be seen as the bare minimum requirements for effective workforce participation. Graduate employability has become a social problem insofar as students can no longer expect to use their discipline-specific training to acquire a ‘job for life’ in a relevant sector (Brown & Hesketh 2004), but rather must learn to adapt to the demands of flexible employers in an unstable labour market. Individuals have become critically aware of the ‘value added’ (Mayston 2009) by different educational paths and how this translates into measures of human capital (Becker 1993). Tomlinson (2007) points to the ways in which young people construct their career biographies through application forms, CVs and job interviews, and are concerned about how their ‘marketability’ will be appraised. However, these identity performances begin much earlier, within academic training institutions, as students learn to present themselves as passionately dedicated to their field.

Boarding schools Totally boarding As noted in Chapter 2, Goffman (1961a: 15) identified five types of TI, the fourth of which was those designed to enable the collect pursuit of an educational or work task. Residential schools fall into this relatively small category of TIs for which membership is voluntary (chosen or at least consented to by the pupil) and aimed at the positive cultivation of a future identity rather than the punitive erasure of a past one. However, they retain a traditionally totalising structure in that these are physically bounded buildings that incarcerate the student, and voluntarism is limited: children have little say in which school they attend and can be coercively restrained if they attempt to leave without authorisation. Boarding schools have traditionally been associated with the affluent upper classes of British society. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the practice of sending children away to be educated became increasingly common, as parents variously sought to improve

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their child’s life chances by widening his or her intellectual and cultural horizons; to build character and toughen up young boys (Jackson 1990); or to restore order to the family home by removing ‘troublesome’ and disruptive individuals (Duffell 2000). Today there is an estimated 100,000 children attending boarding schools in the UK, most of which are in the independent sector as private, fee-paying establishments. Entry is often selective, on the basis of academic performance and/or ability to pay (though many such schools offer reduced fees and scholarships), fuelling the popular image of the boarding school as an elite institution. The ‘institutional arrangements’ (Goffman 1961a) of the traditional boarding school retain many features of the TI, regarding the control of pupils’ domestic living and social behaviour. Boarders work, sleep, eat and spend their leisure time within the school buildings, and are residentially segregated – not only from the outside world, through geographically isolated campuses and physical barriers such as walls, locked doors and railings, but also from each other, by the division of the student body into houses, year groups and friendship cliques. The traditional house system assigns individuals to one building, where they live under the supervision of a housemaster/mistress, matron or residential advisor; pupils are encouraged to cultivate a house identity and loyalty to this peer group. There is a clear hierarchy of members, from the headteacher through senior, junior and administrative staff through to prefects, older and younger pupils. Control is exercised over embodiment through the requirement that normally private, bodily functions are carried out in public, from the collective sleeping arrangements imposed by dormitories, to the long dining hall tables and shared bathrooms. Even the micro level movements of the body are subjected to regimentation (Foucault 1975) through rules about arriving punctually to class, sitting up straight, wearing one’s clothes and hair appropriately, and so on. Boarding school pupils are subjected to block living arrangements, as their movements are collectively controlled and managed: wearing a uniform, eating the food provided, being moved around the grounds en masse and using standard institutional bed linen, combine to strip the pupil of the identity equipment they would otherwise use to assert their individuality (cf. Goffman 1961a). The inmates’ behaviour is tightly scheduled around the clock, creating a predictable daily routine of designated times for sleeping, waking, washing, eating, studying and socialising. This model of the boarding school as stark, austere and coercively restrictive has been widely represented in popular culture. In the twen-

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tieth century, the growth of the film industry, children’s literature and other mass media created a stereotypical image of the boarding school that lent itself to cliché and parody, for example in Ronald Searle’s St Trinian’s books (1948–1953) and their subsequent films (1954–2009). The school story is a distinct literary genre that began in the late nineteenth century and reached its heyday in the mid-twentieth. Famous works of fiction such as Tom Brown’s Schooldays (Hughes 1857); The Nicest Girl in the School (Brazil 1909); Enid Blyton’s three series on Malory Towers (1946–1951), St Clare’s (1941–1945) and The Naughtiest Girl (1940–1952); and Elinor M. Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School (1925–1970) series defined the ingredients of the archetypical boarding school: stern matrons and housemistresses, classroom pranks, homesickness, dormitory battles and midnight feasts, all neatly packaged within a morally instructive narrative, through notions of camaraderie, good sports and ‘jolly hockey sticks’ (Rice 2003). As well as schedules and rules, boarding school life tends also to be characterised by ritual. Particularly in the UK, where elite school membership has historically been linked to high social class, the more established independent schools pride themselves on their distinctive identities, which are expressed through the continued observance of traditional rituals and celebrations. For example, Eton is a famously prestigious independent boys’ school, with a reputation for hothousing Oxbridge candidates, and remains steeped in tradition. Past students become ‘Old Etonians’, enjoying the prestige conferred upon them by this alumni status, and the school prides itself upon creating a distinct breed of morally upright gentlemen. As the current headmaster, Tony Little, puts it: Our primary aim is to encourage each Etonian to be a self-confident, inquiring, tolerant, positive young man, a well-rounded character with an independent mind, an individual who respects the differences of others. By the time he leaves the school, we want each boy to have that true sense of self-worth which will enable him to stand up for himself and for a purpose greater than himself, and, in doing so, to be of value to society (http://www.etoncollege.com/ Introduction.aspx). Eton’s house structure lends itself to distinct and cohesive cohorts, each headed by esteemed personnel: a staff housemaster, but also students elected as House Captain, Games Captain and prefects. Each house has an official name and a nickname, by which boys are labelled with

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different sub-institutional identities, such as ‘King’s Scholars’ and ‘Tugs’, for pupils on scholarships. Inter-house competition is encouraged, particularly through sports, to build teamwork, loyalty and strength of character. The school has its own archaic names for rituals, traditions and ceremonies, which lend a secretive, insular quality to even the most mundane aspects of daily life. For example, the three terms are known as ‘Halves’ (Michaelmas, Lent and Summer), evening house meetings are called ‘Prayers’ (despite being secular and social in function), and teachers are ‘Beaks’ (because they, like the pupils, wear a full uniform of tailcoat and tie during classes). Boys are rewarded for outstanding pieces of work with a ‘Show Up’ or ‘Send Up’: not, as the names would suggest, a form of ridicule, but on the contrary, a mark of positive recognition, such as a letter of commendation from the headmaster or the storage of one’s work in the college archives. There is also a long tradition of sporting teams and competitions, particularly rugby and rowing; the Eton Wall Game is a football-rugby hybrid devised by the boys themselves and practised through a celebrated series of high profile matches. The claim of such boarding schools to secure students’ holistic development is further emphasised by Roedean, a British girls’ school of equivalent status to Eton. Although many of its pupils progress to the most prestigious universities, the school prides itself on fostering a wider sense of efficacy and independence: Underpinning a robust private secondary education is our unshakeable conviction that each girl’s achievements must be seen in the context of her own personal development and happiness. We do not believe in a one-dimensional hunt for academic glory; we believe that education should build self-assurance and curiosity to explore the wider world (http://www.roedean.co.uk/senior-school/). Christ’s Hospital, a coeducational independent boarding school in West Sussex, has a philanthropic reputation for fee subsidising and waiver, which has extended its membership to a broader demographic. Nevertheless, this school also prides itself on the continued observance of quirky rituals and traditions, in which pupils willingly indulge to enjoy a sense of uniqueness. For example, they perform a ceremonial march into the dining hall every lunch time, accompanied by a marching band. The school has a strong tradition of performing arts, boasting its own music school and courtyard theatre; students are encouraged to join extracurricular classes in music, art, drama or public speaking. This is intended to effect a more holistic change in the child, as education is con-

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ceptualised as a ‘total’ experience extending beyond the academic sphere. This aesthetic pedagogy is punctuated by regular student-led concerts throughout the year, performed for parents and other visitors. These ‘institutional ceremonies’ (Goffman 1961a: 89) serve not only as an effervescent celebration of the school’s values (cf. Durkheim 1912), but also to narrow the social distance between staff and inmates. As Goffman (ibid.) noted, on such occasions, the institution’s normal rules and restrictions are temporarily lifted for a period of licensed carnival (Bakhtin 1968) as both strata indulge in ‘role release’ from their respective statuses, and relax the hierarchical divisions between them: ‘These practices express unity, solidarity, and joint commitment to the institution rather than differences between the two levels’ (Goffman 1961a: 90). Through these rituals, staff and inmates co-operate as a performance team, to represent the institution as a whole; they put on a show both literally and dramaturgically, by presenting their insiders’ world to civilian outsiders. The Christ’s Hospital boarding houses are designed to be small, cohesive and homely, each containing only seven children, a matron and House Parents. The latter adopt a pastoral as well as disciplinarian role, acting in loco parentis to the children by supervising their homework, eating meals and socialising with them outside of lesson times. A peer mentoring policy is also employed to foster social solidarity across year groups: we have three sets of pupils who have special responsibility for pupils new to the school: each new pupil is assigned a nursemaid who is a pupil in the year above and is therefore very close in experience; during the first few weeks the nursemaid takes the new pupil to each lesson, meal, sporting or other activity until they know their way around the site. Also, each new pupil is assigned a BFD, big, friendly Dep, a sixth former at the top of the house, who will see them and talk to them on a regular basis. In addition, each of our School Monitors is assigned to a boarding house with particular responsibility for the new pupils (http://www.christs-hospital.org.uk/ school-life-boarding.php). By contrast, the darker side of boarding school life has been highlighted by autobiographical accounts, particularly of boys’ independent prep schools. Stephen Fry’s (1997) Moab is My Washpot recalls how he took pleasure in deliberately and repeatedly breaking the school rules by breaking out of bounds, stealing and lying. Such deviance was

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sanctioned by the harsh and punitive regimes of institutional life, through a combination of formal and informal measures: fearsome masters administering corporal punishment, alongside senior boys fagging (recruiting junior pupils as servants), bullying, and in some cases sexually molesting younger boys. Rather than these practices being seen as coercive, however, Fry suggests that they were accepted and normalised by the school’s inmate culture: You won’t find me offering the opinion that beating is a good thing or recommending the return of the birch… but try to understand that when I think about being caned for repeatedly talking after lights out, or for Mobbing About in the Malt Queue, and other such mad prep-schooly infractions, I feel far less passion and distress than I do when I think about the times I was put into detention for crimes of which I was innocent. If it should so happen that you could prove to me that one of the masters who beat me may have derived sexual gratification from the practice, I would shrug my shoulders and say, ‘Poor old soul, at least he never harmed me.’ Abuse is exploitation of trust and exploitation of authority and I was lucky enough never to suffer form that or from any violation or cruelty, real or imagined (Fry 1997: 109–113). Similar arguments have been made about the legitimation of violence within boarding schools (Jackson 1990; Benelli 2002). Poynting & Donaldson’s (2005) study of Trinity Grammar, an elite boarding school in Sydney, Australia, revealed that bullying, sexual abuse, violence and brutality were accepted as a normal routine part of school life. Ruling class boys were socialised into a culture of hegemonic masculinity, which encouraged them to display their identities in certain stylised ways. For example, they would performatively assert their heterosexual status by ‘acting hard and talking tough’ (Jackson 1990: 202): making sexist and homophobic remarks, joking and bragging about their bullying tactics, and showing a laissez-faire attitude to a string of rapes, which they dismissed as ‘minor, unfortunate and atypical incidents’ (Poynting & Donaldson 2005: 325). In a letter to The Australian newspaper, the father of one pupil testified, He was beaten regularly and unmercifully by senior boarders, always on the back, upper arms and legs where the bruises would not show. Once he was tied between two ladders and beaten with a cricket bat. On another occasion he was tied in a laundry bag and left all night

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[in winter] on the school oval. He was subjected to systematic bullying to a level that could only be described as torture. The housemaster, himself an old boy, turned a blind eye to all this (cited in Poynting & Donaldson 2005: 329). Peer solidarity was reinforced by an implicit code of silence which forbade the boys from ‘dobbing on’ each other to the staff, and so episodes of bullying and sexual violence were concealed, downplayed and normalised. Hegemonic masculinity was built into the institutional structures of the school through its informal mechanisms of social control: a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ culture amongst staff and a ‘no dobbing’ code amongst the boys: The institution itself in some ways responded like a blustering, bullying schoolboy – but with adult ruling-class power and organization to back it up. It began by delaying, minimizing and controlling the disclosure of the wrongdoing. It attempted to cover up the incidents and denied the existence of an established tradition that gave rise to them. Then members of the school community began to play down the nature of the misdeeds… Despite occasional rebellion, boys in groups tended to support rather than undermine this regime. ‘Hints of non-conformity were suppressed by the boys themselves, and their informal culture was at every point bound up with, and supportive of, the ethic of the school’ [Tolson 1977: 35] (Poynting & Donaldson 2005: 329–336). Reinventing boarding Scandals such as these are mercifully rare, but have added fuel to the fire of concerns about the psychological effects of institutionalisation upon young people. Miller (1997) argues that the pressure to maintain a reputation of academic brilliance can be intensely stressful. Schaverien (2004) adds that the feeling of being sent away from home can be experienced as a traumatising rupture, far outweighing any notion of privilege; the premature independence fostered by an enforced separation of family and school life can cause emotional deprivation. Watt (2003) concurs that while smaller private schools may successfully enhance an individual’s intellectual achievements, the pressures of living in a hothousing environment can lead to higher rates of depression, suicide attempts and violent behaviour. The contemporary boarding school has been redesigned to address these concerns and create a more nurturing environment. For example,

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whereas in Goffman’s TI, inmates would be secretly shown the ropes by more established members in defiance of the official rules, boarding school staff now explicitly encourage the cultivation of cohesive relations amongst their charges. Buddying systems assign pupils to peer mentors, whose role is to socialise them into the informal rules of the school, as in the above example of Christ’s Hospital. Greater contact is allowed between children and their families through more frequent and regular opportunities for visiting, while new categories of inmate have been devised as an alternative to the full boarder: children can elect to be a weekly boarder (who stays during the week but goes home at weekends), semi-boarder (who stays for meals but sleeps at home) or day boarder (who attends only lessons). This implies a reconfiguration of students’ institutional identities: in each case, the daily schedule becomes progressively less ‘greedy’ or all-encompassing in its demands upon one’s time, and there is greater permeability between the institutional and home worlds (Goffman 1961a). Attention has also been paid to the physical structure of school buildings, particularly the design of dormitory space. In the UK, the Department of Health (DoH) (2002) issued a set of National Boarding Standards reminiscent of the 1991 Woolf Report, which addressed the human rights of adult prisoners to enjoy a reasonable level of comfort in their living conditions. Boarding school residents are now entitled to at least 2.3 m2 dormitory floor space, with a minimum distance between beds, and limits on the number of people sharing bathroom facilities (DoH 2002). Many schools have replaced the traditional hospital ward layout (two rows of identical, open plan beds) with curtained cubicles, each of which must have its own window (ibid.). This is intended to give pupils a modicum of privacy and allow them to indulge aspects of their individual personalities: items of identity equipment such as duvet covers, posters, toys and photographs are more typically permitted than forbidden. Once again, the boundary between the resident’s former and current lifeworlds is deliberately blurred, with a conscious attempt to make institutional life more ‘homely’. Other boarding schools have been designed with the explicit aim of transmitting a particular set of values. Hays (1994) discusses two contrasting examples – Quaker and military boarding schools – to reveal how, despite their very different ideologies, they both serve the same functions of affirming and reinforcing students’ institutional commitments. The three Quaker schools Hays studied endorsed the values of American liberalism, with an emphasis on ‘nurturing the inner light’ of individuals to act for the greater good of the community, through core

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virtues of equality, simplicity and peace; meanwhile the three military schools represented more conservative values, by framing morality as something to be taught or imposed through disciplinary regimes (see Chapter 5). Despite their contrasting sets of moral traditions and virtues, however, both types of schools aimed to transform their pupils into obedient, conformist and socially integrated beings who would ‘maintain standards’ and uphold the institution’s social order. Both sets of students learned to become members of a moral community and to celebrate the social solidarity engendered by this collective identity (cf. Durkheim 1893). A small but significant minority of independent schools have adopted a distinct pedagogic approach based upon ‘progressive’ teaching methods. The educational philosophy of Waldorf or Steiner schools prizes individual creativity, freedom and personal development over academic achievements, and aims to nurture the development of the child as a unique, holistic being. There is an emphasis on experiential, sensorybased learning and artistic self-expression, cultivated through classes in performing arts, role play exercises and workshops in music, dance and drama (Kraftl 2006). A famous example is Summerhill, a British school founded in 1921 by A.S. Neill, which continues to operate as a democratic community: staff and pupils negotiate the construction and implementation of rules, and lesson attendance is voluntary. The school’s philosophy is that children learn best through ‘freedom without license’, choosing their own activities with an emphasis on play and creativity: ‘Imagine a school where kids have freedom to be themselves, where success is not defined by academic achievement but by the child’s own definition of success’ (http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/). In a paradox common to the RI, this school promotes individual fulfilment and self-actualisation, but as goals to be pursued through the means of social solidarity, group process and egalitarian relationships. Pupils are housed with peers of a similar age and encouraged to form bonds with their fellow housemates and staff. Order is maintained through thrice-weekly ‘council meetings’, in which members report on each other’s behaviour and vote to agree upon appropriate responses. Peer-mediated surveillance is also evident: a collectively written rule book hangs in the dining hall, listing 172 rules with corresponding penalties (e.g. fines of 50p for spitting, or £2 for graffiti), reminding pupils of their social obligations and casting an all-seeing eye over the proceedings (Stanford 2008). However, even such ‘reinvented’ schools can impose totalising constraints upon their inmates’ identities. It is ironic that the pressure to

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be a unique, creative and talented individual is prescribed according to an institutional curriculum: one must be one’s best, but only in certain terms, defined and legitimated by the school’s culture. For example, Evans et al (2004) suggest that elite independent girls’ boarding schools create a culture of bodily insecurity and abnormal attitudes to food, which can turn into an all-encompassing battle with eating disorders. Their interviews with young women who had experienced this revealed the contagious and insidious nature of the process. Although these students were being hothoused for their academic abilities, they displaced the principles of self-discipline, achievement and passionate dedication onto the realm of the physical, through what Bruch (1973) called ‘the relentless pursuit of thinness’: growing girls can experience… liberation as a demand and feel that they have to do something outstanding. Many of my patients have expressed the feeling that they are overwhelmed by the vast number of potential opportunities available to them… and (that) they have been afraid of not choosing correctly (Bruch 1973: 73). These girls learned how to become anorexic through being immersed in a local culture that legitimated and normalised the identity. Regulative principles and localised moralities were conveyed through institutional routines and practices, and came to discursively constitute the member’s embodied self-identity. As Evans et al put it, ‘Many sufferers come to see anorexia as a horrifying yet desired practice, a resource which, if drawn on over time, becomes deeply sedimented as a habitual way of thinking and acting’ (2004: 136). The school environments created an anorexic lifeworld, based upon two codes of behaviour: perfection and performance (Evans et al, ibid.). These informal codes operated alongside the formal pedagogic codes transmitted by the school’s official curriculum (Bernstein 2000) and were equally powerful in their effects. The idea of perfecting the body was normalised insofar as it reflected a wider neo-liberal discourse of health promotion, healthism and dietary regulation (Lupton 1995; Gabe 1996); the body was framed as a malleable object to be tamed and controlled through disciplinary regimes of diet and exercise. The thin body was read as a symbolic marker of selfcontrol, willpower, self-discipline, social status and moral worth (Malson 1998). Thus one interviewee, Lauren, explained that, it made me feel special, it made me feel that I was more important than everybody else, and I think in some ways that was why I couldn’t

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get rid of it at school… Because you have ‘the dominants’, ‘the leaders’, ‘the thinkers’, I was just ‘the anorexic’, that was who I was. And when this other girl at the school became anorexic, I felt that I had been pushed out of my place and I was furious… It [anorexia] shows that you have a strength that others don’t, because let’s face it, not many people have the ability to starve themselves to death (Evans et al 2004: 137). Perfectionism was closely tied to performance, as it was important not only that bodily control was achieved but that this achievement was recognised and validated by a critically evaluative audience. Codes of performance were evident in the ways in which the girls sought to display the ‘right’ kind of body to their peers, in order to be accepted into certain cliques. As the quotation above shows, being anorexic was a venerated status that was competitively fought over and at risk of being usurped. There was a desire not merely to be thin but to be seen as thin, to win admiration. Another respondent, Lydia, remarked that, There’s a lot of bitchiness, and of course there’s a lot of ‘oh, I look so fat’, you know there’s a lot of that going around. You know, you have to look perfect or you’re not going to look good, and the popular girls are just going to look at you and go (derisive noise), and you know you don’t really want that… you don’t want to be noticed as the fat person, you want to be noticed as the stunning, skinny person (Evans et al 2004: 137).

College life For many, higher education represents an important milestone of academic and personal development. Going away to college is a status passage (Glaser & Strauss 1971) or movement from one social identity to another, which remakes the self in relation to the past and future (Hewitt 1996). It is a symbolic coming-of-age ritual that represents the beginning of autonomy and independence as an adult after ‘flying the nest’, and an opportunity to differentiate oneself from family and friends (Blos 1962; Bassoff 1988). Ethnographic studies have explored the ways in which students use these institutions as a safe environment in which to experiment with new identities, by associating with different peer groups who foster or encourage the expression of authentic selfhood. For example, students may come out as lesbian,

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gay, bisexual or transgender while at college (Chase 2001) or join religious clubs and societies on campus (Magolda & Ebben 2007). Status and socialisation Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) wield a great amount of power in shaping the formation of their members’ identities. They act as agents of socialisation, preparing individuals for a particular occupational identity and membership in an academic community of practice (Wenger 1998). Kamens (1974) argues that each HEI possesses a normative authority to produce the ‘ideal’ student, as defined by its individual charter. This discursively reconstitutes students’ subjectivities by transforming their perception of the institution as a reified entity: constituent members, rules and practices are identified metonymously as embodying the ‘character’ or ‘spirit’ of the place, and celebrated totemically (cf. Durkheim 1912). For example, faculty at prestigious American colleges may be revered as sacred, ethereal guardians of wisdom, while grades are believed to define a student’s potential to ‘make it’ (Kamens, ibid.). Students may also identify with their coterminous peer cohort, and perceive a distinctive shared identity to emerge from belonging to the ‘class of…’ a particular year (Vinitzky-Seroussi & Zussman 1996). In the late twentieth century, some neo-Marxist commentators suggested that students had become more ‘class conscious’ of their shared situation and assertive of their rights within the institution, for example by challenging their grades and entering into disputes with staff (Horowitz 1987). At the same time, it was argued that students had become less active in traditional, emancipatory politics (Giddens 1991), focusing more upon the social experiences offered by college life as a period of extended youth (Chace 1999) and enjoying a certain complacency of status. However, this equilibrium has recently been disturbed by a tide of political activism in the UK that arose in response to the (re-)privatisation of higher education in the context of an economic recession. The new centre-right coalition government announced public spending cuts to degree courses in the arts, humanities and social sciences, which would force universities to charge much higher tuition fees, effectively preventing those from lower income backgrounds from attending them. This evoked a succession of protests by students and staff, culminating in a mass demonstration in November 2010, when 52,000 people occupied the streets outside the Conservative Party headquarters in London (The Guardian, 10th November 2010).

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Different types of HEIs hold distinct symbolic meanings for their members. In the USA, the term ‘university’ refers to research-led institutions (public or private), which incorporate several ‘colleges’, but the latter term also applies to community and liberal arts colleges. The most prestigious universities are typically private and renowned for being elite and highly selective: those forming the ‘Ivy League’ (Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Columbia, Brown, the University of Pennsylvania and Dartmouth College) are particularly recognised as pressurising hothouses of academic brilliance. Alongside these are the equally prestigious ‘Public Ivies’, such as the Universities of California, Michigan, Virginia and North Carolina, and other universities that offer single subject degrees, with an honours programme option for the more ambitious. Acceptance into these schemes is difficult and competitive, typically requiring a high Grade Point Average (GPA), which adds to the pressure of achievement that university students perceive (Becker et al 1968). Single honours students see themselves as apprentice scholars in a particular field, and may feel passionately committed to this vocational identity. By contrast, liberal arts colleges deliver a multi-disciplinary curriculum that aims to cultivate ‘all-round’ personal development. There is greater emphasis on faculty-student interaction and mentoring, often through co-residence in boarding houses, and the aim is to provide a supportive, nurturing environment. Consequently, while less intellectually demanding than traditional universities, these RIs may be ‘totally’ pervasive in their transformative effects. The Seven Sisters is a group of liberal arts colleges in the northeast USA (Radcliffe, Wellesley, Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Smith, and Vassar) that traditionally catered for women only (though some are now co-educational), and were originally conceived to ensure equality of opportunity to benefit from the college experience. Some liberal arts colleges are recognised as having parity of status with Ivy League universities as the ‘Little Ivies’ (Amherst, Wesleyan, Williams), while others are celebrated on their own merits as ‘colleges of excellence’: Barnard, Bates, Middlebury, Reed and others have been dubbed the ‘Hidden Ivies’ (Greene & Greene 2000). Transitional identities Going away to college is a status passage, which begins with a period of anticipation. Karp et al (1998) interviewed 23 upper middle class high school seniors in Boston, Massachusetts, during the summer after graduation. Finding themselves ‘at a juncture in their lives when they were

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on the cusp of a major status change’ (Karp et al 1998: 256), these students felt ambivalently self-aware about the range of possible selves (Markus & Nurius 1986) or hierarchy of identities (Stryker 1981) from which they had to choose. On the one hand, they were excited about the idea of getting away, starting over, differentiating themselves from past associations and making new friends, but on the other hand, they were apprehensive about the prospect of becoming financially responsible, detached from their supportive home networks and at risk of loneliness. Leaving home for college meant confronting an infinite array of paths to reinvention, through identity affirmation, reconstruction or discovery: The students saw college as the time for discovering who they really were. They anticipated finding wholly new and permanent life identities during the college years… going away to college [represented] an opportunity to discard disliked identities while making a variety of ‘fresh starts’ (Karp et al 1998: 258). For example, some students perceived an opportunity to rid themselves of a previous stigmatising label that had defined them, and to construct a new persona through fashion, extra-curricular activities and new friendship groups. They hoped ‘to edit, to revise, to re-write certain parts of their biographies’ (ibid.: 264), and have a second chance at being themselves. As with all RIs, inmates’ previous identities were not coercively mortified but willingly discarded, as a positive choice: It’s sort of like starting a new life. I’ll have connections to the past, but I’m obviously starting with a clean slate… Because no one cares how you did in your high school after you’re in college. So everyone’s equal now (White male attending a public high school). (Karp et al 1998: 264) The institution took on a symbolic significance as a site in which to practise life politics (Giddens 1991), by confronting such ontological and existential questions as ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What do I want to do with my life?’: I was a little put off because of the bizarre nature of the [essay] question [for one college]. One of them was like ‘Who are you?’ You know, that’s part of the reason why I’m going to college ’cause

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I don’t know who I am…. The ‘Who am I [question]’ really turned me off, especially at this age in my life. I have no idea who I am. Well, I have an idea, but I’m going to college to answer that question (White male attending a public high school). (Karp et al 1998: 266) These students went through a process of ‘anticipatory socialisation’, mentally rehearsing the transitions they might undergo and seeking to make sense of this within a narrative of reinvention. Every stage in the process of preparing for college life was understood as a symbolic gesture of autonomy and self-determination. The students talked about their choice of college as a reflection of who they really were, the values they held dear and the types of people with whom they sought to align themselves. Some selected a college whose student body was composed of ‘people like me’ (Karp et al 1998: 261) and into which they felt they would comfortably fit, while others sought consciously to escape such associations: At some other colleges like you get a little nod or a hi or something, but usually they steer clear. At Boston College, one guy actually came up to me and he was like talking to me, and… I was just shocked at how nice all these people were… In like the little cafeteria I was just standing there and they’re like, ‘Oh, are you lost?’ I mean the people there have been the friendliest I’ve seen anywhere. (White female attending a private high school). (Karp et al 1998: 262) A similar process was noted by Kinney (1993) of younger students in the USA, who experienced the transition from middle to high school as an opportunity to shake off derogatory labels. Whereas in middle school, there were distinct cliques, such as the ‘nerds’, ‘trendies’, ‘dweebs’, ‘jocks’ and ‘brainiacs’, in high school, students enjoyed greater freedom in defining their identities more idiosyncratically. Kinney notes in particular the erstwhile ‘nerds’, who took advantage of their newfound anonymity to reinvent themselves, by either ‘going mainstream’ and integrating themselves into the culture of ‘normals’, or ‘going their own way’. The students’ perceptions of their peer group thereby changed from their being exclusive and divisive to being inclusive and cohesive. The high school was imagined as tolerant and welcoming by virtue of its size and diversity: an institutional site in which every individual could find his or her niche.

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Ironically, while professing to have become less concerned with how their peers regarded them, these students also celebrated the way in which their new reference group led by inspirational example (cf. Bauman 2000). This reflects the power of the inmate culture to define and shape members’ emergent identities, even via discourses of individualism. For example, one junior student revered her new friend, Ann, precisely because she encouraged her not to be dependent on friends and to ‘just be herself’: I sort of idolized her… I think that it was her independence that influenced me more than anything else and that I admired more than anything else, and that’s when I stopped feeling like everyone was making fun of me all the time and that I had to have people around me all the time… Ann really helped me stop worrying so much about how people – what people thought about me, what they are saying about me… It wasn’t so much that I had this supportive relationship with her; it was more that I could be on my own the way she was on her own. I feel like I’m becoming very ordinary, but I also think that is because I am becoming more realistic about it – about who I am (Participant cited in Kinney 1993: 33). Performing studiousness Symbolic Interactionist studies of American college life (Hughes et al 1958; Becker et al 1961; Becker et al 1968; Davis & Olesen 1963; Davis 1968; Gusfield & Riesman 1968) have explored the process of academic socialisation. Howard Becker and his colleagues’ (1961, 1968) ethnography of the prestigious University of Kansas compared the student cultures that emerged in medical, arts, humanities and social science departments. In Boys in White (Becker et al 1961), they documented how male medical school students progressed along a career trajectory from being teenage boys to professional ‘medical men’. This four year degree course was a status passage through which students learned not only the manifest content of the curriculum but also the dramaturgical skills required to play the role of the apprentice doctor. Becoming an accepted member of the medical school therefore involved, a series of instructions, ceremonies and ordeals by which those already in a special status initiate neophytes into their charmed circle… [it] involves not only learning skills and knowledge but

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learning how to play the part of the physician in the drama of medicine (Becker et al 1961: 4). Central to this was a shift in the students’ orientation to work, as they made secondary adjustments (Goffman 1961a) to the institution’s informal rules and practices. Over time, they came more realistically to appraise the amount of work that was required and the direction and level of effort they would need to make. Becker et al identified a shift from an initial perspective of intimidation and awe, when students believed they needed to absorb everything they were taught, through a provisional stage of realising that this was not possible, to a final perspective of instrumental pragmatism, seeking to find out ‘what they want us to know’ in order to pass their exams. This was interpreted as a sign of growing agency, as the students were actively and autonomously engaged in their methods of learning. This ‘latent culture’ (ibid.: 143) of alternative norms and values was transmitted by and through the peer group. Alongside the time students spent undergoing formal training in labs and classes, they made an equal commitment to seeing each other informally, at mealtimes, dorm parties, while hanging out in the lounge, and at regular ‘bull sessions’ in which they would discuss, compare and sometimes ridicule their experiences of student life. It was in these routine daily encounters that their informal learning took place, as they reinforced each other’s commitment and underlined the seriousness of the role: Coming down the stairs from a lecture Al Jones said to the observer, ‘You know, what you ought to do is to come and see us in the evening. You just don’t really know what it’s like until you come in the evening. Last night we got out our books and got all ready to study, and then it came to us how much there was to do and we were so scared we couldn’t do anything. We had to get up and make coffee and walk around’ (Student cited in Becker et al 1961: 97). In Making the Grade, which concentrated on other departments of the university, Becker et al (1968) argued that students developed a shared ‘universe of discourse’ (ibid.: 28) that shaped their orientation to college life. This included their motivations for being there, views on the significance and value of academic work, and perceived standards of achievement. It culminated in an overall ‘GPA perspective’, which defined the students’ sense of personal worth and peer esteem. The GPA is a staple component of American college culture that is regarded

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by students as highly fateful. It is calculated as a cumulative, ongoing evaluation of the student’s success across individual courses, taking into account their attendance, participation in class and assessment marks. Although actually ‘flunking college’ (with a GPA under 1) was rare, most students were concerned with the finer gradations between GPAs 2.5–4 (grades A–C): I said to Harry, ‘How are things going with you?’ He immediately replied, ‘Oh, I got a down clip [a midterm notice that one is likely to fail a course] in one of my courses and that’s what I’m studying for now. I have a test in it tomorrow…’. I said, ‘How are your other courses going? Harry replied, ‘They’re OK, Cs and Bs. I’m doing all right in those and I think if I can work a little harder on this I can get it up to at least a C by the final… Of course, I have no social life this semester and about all I’m doing is studying’ (March 1961, freshman independent man). (Becker et al 1968: 96) Those awarded scholarships or otherwise marked out as high achievers felt under particular pressure to maintain a GPA at the top end of the range: Well, I start studying after dinner and I study all night until midnight and sometimes one o’clock. And sometimes I start at six o’clock and just keep going right through. And I’ve been getting awfully tired, I think that’s why I got that cold. Last weekend I went home and I slept thirteen hours until three o’clock in the afternoon. (November 1959, freshman girl). (Becker et al 1968: 96) Becker et al argue that the GPA perspective affected much more than the student’s academic fate, for it greedily spilled over into other spheres of campus life. Grades acquired a symbolic meaning according to the collectively defined values of the inmate culture. As a master status (Hughes 1945) the GPA defined the individual’s whole identity within the institution and shaped the way that others evaluated them. Not only staff but also students used the GPA to sort and categorise their peers, as for example students were not allowed to participate in extracurricular activities if their grades fell below a C average, and some campus clubs and societies used the GPA as a criterion for selection. Fraternity and sorority houses were concerned with maintaining a

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certain ‘standard’ of member for the sake of their collective reputation, and screened out those with lower grades in order to ensure a smart pledge class (Becker et al 1968: 54). Grades therefore operated as a form of currency, or social capital (Bourdieu 1973) within the institution, being valued not only for their manifest academic significance but also for the social benefits they afforded. Students effectively used their GPAs to buy friendship, acceptance and peer esteem: Grades are the major institutionalized valuable of the college campus. The players in the drama of college life – students, faculty, administration, and parents – all define grades as valuable, even though they may disagree about their value relative to other things. Furthermore, formal and informal rules define how grades are to be gained and the consequences of having grades of one kind or another (Becker et al 1968: 55). Faculty members, meanwhile, were more cynical in their outlook. Often they would outwardly comply with the institutional rules by awarding grades, but privately believe that these were an unsatisfactory measure of attainment. This perspective was ostensibly concealed in their encounters with students, but subtly conveyed to them by ‘communication out of character’ (Goffman 1959). That is, whilst performing according to the official script (that grades were all important and an objective measure of ability), the staff would add a tacit subscript that communicated their awareness that this was just an act, in which they did not sincerely believe. For example they might give hints at what was on the exam paper, or which answers were required in order to ‘make the grade’ on a piece of coursework. In this respect, classroom interaction was a collective team performance, with actors simultaneously keeping an official definition of the situation going and colluding to undermine it. Likewise, some students fraternised informally with their professors as if they were friends, but confessed that this was an insincere, instrumental strategy, for they had an ulterior motive: Mainly, I just get to know them. I go up to their offices and talk with them. [What do you talk about?] Anything, anything they feel like talking about. I might figure out a good question to ask them. That’ll show them that I’m really thinking about the course... You know, these teachers don’t like to talk about their subject all the time, they get tired of it, day in, day out, the same thing. I just size them up and see what I think they will go for. Now my English

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teacher last year, he was a tough one to figure out the second semester. It took me almost a whole semester to figure out what to do about him. Finally, I figured it out. I praised him, that’s what he liked. It paid off, too. I got my mark raised a whole grade. (October 1969, sophomore fraternity man). (Becker et al 1968: 99) Cultures of companionship Peer interaction mediates all stages of the student role, from entry to exit (cf. Ebaugh 1988). The latter point was illustrated by Hall’s (1969) research with students who were taking their PhD qualifying examinations at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), preparing to make the transition from student to professor. Hall found that peer interaction amongst the student cohort had a greater effect on their levels of motivation and knowledge acquisition (as measured by exam performance and final grades) than did their original ability level (as measured by entry level test scores). Students underwent a process of career socialisation, which served two functions: information gathering and anxiety management. In the first case, they sought, like Becker et al’s students, to find out what was required of them to graduate: what did a PhD thesis look like, how should they tackle writing one, and what were the examiners looking for? Such knowledge was communicated by word of mouth from recent graduates and junior faculty to the students who would soon join their ranks. The more established members assumed the role of mentor, taking it upon themselves to coach their junior classmates in the ways of ‘acting like a professional’. The second function, anxiety management, involved the PhD students reassuring each other about their academic progress and showing concern for those who appeared stressed. Inmate cultures can also be formed in sites of extracurricular activity. Milligan (2003) showed how employees of the Coffee House, a campus cafeteria at a Californian university, developed a sense of shared identity on the basis of having worked there during a perceived golden era. Milligan argues that the students underwent locational socialisation (Lofland 1973) into the idiocultural (Fine 1987) norms and values of their particular cohort, which gave them a sense of uniqueness, pride and superiority. Although the Coffee House had since changed hands and been redeveloped, these students retained nostalgic memories of their site-specific encounters and daily routines, and were fiercely loyal to their peers. By contrast, they were somewhat dismissive of the younger generation of students working in the new cafeteria, who in turn felt excluded from this clique.

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The old and new employees therefore had distinct, oppositional identities, and defined themselves relationally as insiders or outsiders. The old employees felt that their identities had been displaced along with the former institution, and took refuge in defensively reminiscing about the ‘good old days’. Milligan argues that this attachment to place had developed because the students spent so much time socialising there outside of work hours, in some cases dating or sharing houses with fellow employees. While away at college, they regarded the cafe as their second home, and their colleagues as a surrogate family: It was great. It was fun. It wasn’t a job. You got to be loud. It was more than a place to work, it was a place to hang out with your friends and, you know, meet people who you would hang out with on the weekend. The people. The people. That’s what sticks out, you know. It was just the greatest time. It wasn’t working. It was fun. (Kimberly, kitchen worker). (Milligan 2003: 386) The Coffee House was nostalgically reconstructed through the students’ collective memory as a place that embodied certain values, such as providing unpretentious, nutritious food, being tolerant of diversity, encouraging environmental awareness through recycling, and above all, having a strong ethic of teamwork. Indeed, the institution was personified as a benevolent figurehead who symbolised home, identity and belonging. Its disciplinary gaze was dispersed through networks of peer surveillance, where it was experienced not as punitively repressive but as positively affirming the workers’ collective identity: if you wanted to go have a coffee or have something to drink you could go outside. Go outside and have a cigarette. But underneath that really lax mentality, there’s the strongest work ethic and you know you’ve got to get your work done and you have that loyalty, like I did at the old Coffee House. I mean, yeah, maybe you can wear shorts to work and you can get a coffee [when you want], but you get your work done. It’s like, [you] have a sense of urgency, knowing that the Coffee House trusts you. (Janine, out front worker). (Milligan 2003: 386) Darkness and danger The cohesiveness and insularity of campus life has the potential not only to bolster confidence or attenuate loneliness, but also to distress

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and intimidate. To the extent that the boundaries between self and other are systematically eroded by the greedy forces of collectivity, the individual can suffer feelings of impending engulfment, implosion or petrification (Laing 1965). As we saw in Chapter 6, the desire to belong to an exclusive fraternity or sorority house leads some to partake in dangerous hazing rituals (Hodges 1995; Korry 2005), while the intimacy of co-residential dorm life occasionally turns sour through sexual assaults, gang rapes and suicide pacts (Sanday 1990). Furthermore, students may not aggregate into one cohesive mass but rather divide into oppositional subcultures: Horowitz (1987) documents the conflicts that arose between the clashing values of the Nerds, Jacobins, Meatballs, Rebels and New Outsiders. Lamont (1979) paints a pessimistic portrait of ‘campus shock’ in American universities, exposing such practices as racism, sexual attacks, cheating and other forms of academic misconduct that may be normalised within the local culture of an institution. Most notable of these is the climate of ‘grade frenzy’ that develops when students’ conscientious commitment to the GPA perspective (Becker et al, ibid.) goes awry. In Ivy League universities particularly, the pressure to achieve and maintain high grades can become all consuming: Too many students interpreted their grades as a statement of their real worth, and staked almost their total identity on the GPA or its equivalent. In some minds the mere fraction of a grade became the nail-in-the-horseshoe that could wreck life’s best laid battle plan (Lamont 1979: 61). At particularly stressful points in the year, this could lead to extreme measures: Students preparing for examinations became so tense that their memory spans were shortened and their ability to absorb data declined. ‘You throw up just before a test, then spend four days in the bathroom with diarrhoea waiting for your score,’ said a Columbia senior. Others woke up before dawn in cold sweats or were seized by hallucinations… To avoid taking exams for which they were unprepared, students went to such literally sickening lengths as to ingest quantities of orange juice mixed with toothpaste on the morning of a test; they feigned conjunctivitis by pouring salt into their eyes, even cut themselves up with knives. Columbia students swallowed ‘speed’ or diet pills so they’d appear haggard

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enough to justify being excused from an exam because of exhaustion; a Harvard man was rumored to have received psychiatric dispensation after he drank a gallon of water from the nearby Charles River. There were reports of neurotic premeds who’d fatally overdosed themselves before an exam. At Michigan and Stanford, students were known to ring false alarms or phone in bomb threats in order to evacuate a hall while an exam was in progress. They could then presumably complete the exam on their own time, often in collaboration with other students, or use the opportunity to grill their classmates about the contents of a test before it was rescheduled (Lamont 1979: 66). When students were expected to compete with each other for class ranks, acceptance onto honours programmes, entry to graduate school, and so on, the once cohesive and supportive inmate culture turned into a toxic mix of self-serving individuals, using their insider’s understanding to undermine each other’s efforts. This underlines the potential for conflict that bubbles under the surface of a negotiated order: ‘It’s each man for himself’, said a premed at one Ivy league college. ‘I know if I get a B on a test, I’ve killed half the class.’ Some premeds showed a malevolent skill at producing phony lecture notes to mislead a colleague, or working out purposely wrong solutions for classmates who sought help on sample questions before an exam (Lamont 197: 69). Finally, it is worth remembering that not only student but staff identities are changed by the totalising effects of pedagogic institutional arrangements. Bidwell (2001) suggests that college faculty develop their own informal cultures, or communities of practice (Wenger 1998) that shape their everyday working practices, encounters with each other and relations with the student body. Drawing on neoinstitutional theories (Weick 1976; Meyer & Rowan 1977), Bidwell imagines colleges as flexible, dynamic and organic systems, rather than fixed hierarchical structures, wherein the institution’s reality is created, sustained or changed through the micro-level interactions between members. For example, Gamson (1967) documented two distinct cultures that emerged in the natural and social science departments of a Michigan college, through the pedagogic values of their staff: respectively

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performance and personalism. Whereas the natural science faculty focused on what students produced and achieved, marking (as they saw it) objectively what was written in term papers, the social science faculty viewed students more holistically, and graded their work by considering additional factors such as effort, enthusiasm and class participation. The natural science faculty systematically marked low to frighten students into working harder, whereas the social science faculty believed that marking higher would boost the confidence of their protégés. They were also more prone to blurring hierarchical boundaries by fraternising with students outside of class and off-campus, which created a totalising effect on both their and their charges’ everyday lives. Thus when asked whether he had any contact with students outside of class, one social science professor answered, Every place but in bed. They came to my house. We went for picnics. We’ve had coffee. I went to their parties. We had informal seminars. I can’t think of a facet of life that I haven’t had contact with students (Gamson 1967: 289).

Performing arts academies Perhaps the prototypical pedagogic hothouse is the performing arts academy: an HEI devoted to the study of music, dance, drama or theatre. In the UK, these include the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA), London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (LAMDA), the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Central School of Speech and Drama, the Conservatoire for Dance and Drama, the Royal Ballet School, and the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance. Equivalents in the USA include the Boston Conservatory, Juilliard School, Eastman School of Music and the Peabody Academy. These institutions are elite and highly selective, with competitive entry requirements; students enjoy the prestige of having been identified as a rising star in their field. In return, the individual is expected to apply themselves to study with a passion, intensity and dedication to their art. It is accepted, even celebrated, that students will demonstrate total commitment, and that this vocation will greedily pervade every aspect of their being. While students are formally registered for degree courses or other qualifications, these may be seen as incidental, epiphenomenal outcroppings of an essential artistic tempera-

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ment that would inevitably have expressed itself. As one drama student put it, My advice to aspiring artists is… never doubt yourself. It will happen if you really, really want it to happen. Don’t listen to those who tell you that you need something to fall back on. Also, it should go without saying, but you have to work hard. This business can be really tough, so you need to be on top of your game. (Eddie Korbich, Boston Conservatory theatre graduate: http://www.bostonconservatory.edu/s/940/feature.aspx? sid=940&gid=1&pgid=1082) Unlike boarding schools and other HEIs in which residence is a mere convenience, performing arts academies deliberately cultivate a totalising environment in order to allow students to become immersed in their respective art worlds (Becker 1982), surrounded by like-minded others and infused with the norms and values of that culture. The experience is intended to effect a holistic overhaul of self-identity, whereby student are liberated by realising their potential. For example, the president of one prestigious college claims that, The transforming role of Juilliard is to help talented students harness their dedication to become communicative artists, imbued with the passion and understanding to reach within themselves to affect and move audiences… so that they may achieve their fullest potential as artists, leaders, and global citizens. (http://www.juilliard.edu/about/about.html)/ http://www.juilliard.edu/ about/mission.html) Such transformations of the self are documented in the testimonies of alumni students, which can be read as biographically reconstructed narratives. Academy graduates look back upon their college days as having been a critical period that defined their identities, and emphasise the role played in this by cohesive student bodies. For example, Adrianna Dougherty of the Boston Conservatory writes, I knew that I had always really loved dance, and I found it very difficult to think of anything else that interested me enough to major in. I decided that I wanted to do this at this time in my

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life and see where it takes me… The faculty prepared or challenged me with the extra time that each of them puts in with each of the students. The faculty really cares about each of us not only as students, but as people. The faculty members take the time to mentor us as people, artists and as students of art. (http://www.bostonconservatory.edu/s/940/feature.aspx? sid=940&gid=1&pgid=1079) However, such transformations of identity come at a cost – mentally, emotionally, occasionally physically and always dramaturgically. The individual’s socialisation into their school’s institutional culture is not a passively imposed state of being, but rather an actively constructed identity performance. Just like those in therapeutic self-help groups (see Chapter 7), hothouse members are concerned with presenting themselves as ideal students, the peer group forming the most critical of audiences. Moreover, in ‘doing conformity’, they also play to themselves, rehearsing their self-stories and seeking to convince themselves of the authenticity of their commitment (cf. Weinberg 1996; Paik 2006). Performing arts students are therefore socialised into a culture of commitment, where a devotion to their art must be rehearsed as fervently as the art itself. Wulff’s (1998) ethnography of a Swedish ballet company revealed how a distinct ‘ballet culture’ emerged through the perception of the company as a surrogate family: from the hours spent practising – and being seen to practise – to the backstage bickering that went on, dancers were intent on demonstrating their immersion in this exclusive world (cf. Buckland 1999). For example, they anticipated and normalised physical injury as an occupational hazard, but one that importantly symbolised their commitment to the art. Wainwright & Turner (2004) concur that dancers wear their injuries as a badge of pride, posturing and performing narrative accounts of artistic passion: [Dennis:] ‘It’s a very dangerous career with regard to orthopaedic injury. I mean I’ve had other injuries… you do put yourself under this sort of risk every day.’ (Wainwright & Turner 2004: 327) Thus the disciplinary power of the RI is translated into the discourses and practices of its members, who performatively regulate their own commitment. Smith (2001) illustrates this in his exposition of the dance school as a greedy institution. The conservatory he studied was

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reputed for the cruelty of its staff, who would verbally abuse the students with mortifying procedures. As one student put it, ‘they break you down mentally… [and then] they build you back up through the rest of your years there the way that they think a professional dancer should be’ (2001: 3). Students described the institution as an ‘emotional prison’ (2001: 2) that they felt powerless to leave, for their previous self-image had been shattered; they could only wait to embrace the new, replacement, ‘dancer’ identity: [Taylor:] ‘ I sort of lost touch with the world outside of that school. Because you’re there twenty-four-seven. I didn’t know anything else. What else am I going to do? All I’ve done all my life is dance’ (2001: 5). Furthermore, the insularity of this elite organisation as a closed, impermeable institution meant that dancers supported each other’s decisions not to leave. Together they sustained a belief in its seductive allure: [Mo:] ‘When I first got there it was like magic… because you were totally surrounded by artists. I mean you’re closed off and… you’re surrounded by very talented people’ (2001: 5). This shows that the experience of institutionalisation and ‘release anxiety’ (Goffman 1961a) remains a risk for members of the RI, just as in the TI. Despite their voluntary admission and lack of physical confinement, inmates can feel equally controlled by the discipline of performative regulation. As Flam (1993) argues, the ‘emotional self’ can suppress the will of the ‘rational self’ to leave an organisation, as fear combines with loyalty to ensure members’ commitment. Not surprisingly, controversy has surrounded the effects of these institutions on inmates’ mental health. On the one hand, performing arts have been introduced to the curriculum of many mainstream schools as a quasi-therapeutic intervention for ‘at risk’ pupils, and participation in such schemes has been found to enhance adolescents’ self-esteem, confidence and social skills (Daykin et al 2008). On the other hand, critics have pointed to the risks associated with being permanently immersed in such worlds, ranging from physical injury (Abma 2001) through to increased rates of depression, violence and suicidal ideation (Watt 2003).

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One example of this is the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan, USA. This meta-institutional complex incorporates a summer camp for gifted children, a public radio station and a boarding school – the Interlochen Arts Academy – which teaches music, drama, dance, creative writing and visual arts. Put together, these institutions comprise not only a ‘home for the arts’ (Boal 1998) but also a totalising environment, explicitly designed to shape its members’ identity formation. Interlochen unapologetically aims to cultivate an atmosphere of intense enthusiasm, passionate commitment and absolute focus: students are taught that they have been given a unique opportunity to devote themselves to their talent amidst a community of like-minded peers. Their belief in the ‘Magic of Interlochen’, as it is colloquially known, is frequently recited in the course of everyday life, as well as celebrated by effervescent assemblies (Durkheim 1912), such as the ‘Interlochen Presents’ summer festival. Dean Boal (1998), who was the college president from 1989–1995, refers to ‘The Interlochen Spirit’ as something that has emerged from the institution’s residential segregation and closed, impermeable structure: its boundaried insularity has created an enchanting symbolic universe (Berger & Luckmann 1967). In justifying this, Boal argues that the cultivation of talent necessitates isolation from a distractingly pedestrian outside world and the severance of ties to former relationships: When they arrive, students encounter limited access to telephones and few opportunities to watch television, and they can go to shopping malls just once a week. Academy students work on computers and correspond by electronic mail, but their associations with the world beyond Interlochen are restricted. Nevertheless, the students feel stimulated, not deprived… The isolation the students find here breaks restrictive ties to home, habits, and lifestyles, enabling Interlochen to establish a wholesome environment for growth. The Interlochen spirit links the entire community with feelings of sharing, caring, fairness, dedication and commitment to excellence, and competition… Interlochen’s remote setting instils a sense of calm and detachment from unwanted distractions. Though they live in the close quarters of dormitories or cabins, students soon find secluded spots in the woods where they can be alone to paint a sunset or practice the violin at the edge of a lake… (Boal 1998: 8). Marya Hornbacher (1997), one of Interlochen’s famous alumni, writes about the time she spent at the school as a period of acute self-

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consciousness and pressure to ‘be someone’ brilliant. Moreover, this was a persona she felt obliged to performatively display, at first to her peer group, but ultimately to herself. Hornbacher developed anorexia nervosa at Interlochen in response to its values of restraint, self control and unwavering dedication: it’s not surprising that a place like this would run wild with startlingly intense children. Intensity about our respective fields was what had drawn us there in the first place. The workload was intense. Many of us, including me, had so many classes, workshops, isolated practice times, and rehearsals that we were studying ten hours a day, six days a week. The fact that we had left home at the age we had, in favour of a world that intellectually and artistically far outstripped our emotional development, was notable in and of itself… I was on a mission to be another sort of person, a person whose passions were ascetic rather than hedonistic, who would Make It, whose drive and ambition were focused and pure, whose body came second, always, to her mind and her ‘art’… At school we were hungry and lost and scared and young and we needed religion, salvation, something to fill the anxious hollow in our chests. Many of us sought it in food and in thinness. We were very young at a time in our lives when the search for identity, present and future, was growing intense, the hunger for knowledge and certainty extreme. Many of us came from less-than-grounded families. We were living inside a pressure cooker, competition tough, stakes very high, the certainty of our futures nonexistent, the knowledge that one is choosing a difficult life clear and the awareness that one’s chances of ‘making it’ were slim. This created, quite simply, a hunger for certainty. (Hornbacher 1997: 104, 107, 118–119)

Audit cultures in academia A final variant of the educational RI is the culture of academia, as experienced by teaching and research staff in HEIs. Though prestigious as a purveyor of cultural capital (Bourdieu 1973), academia is a demanding, challenging and not particularly lucrative career path, to which individuals have to be totally committed – intellectually, emotionally and

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practically – in order to progress. Being a university faculty member involves juggling teaching, research and administrative duties, working long hours and feeling as if one is constantly ‘on call’ to attend to a wide range of professional duties. Women academics, in particular, have written about the impact of this organisational culture upon their personal lives: the stress of never being able to ‘switch off’ or enjoy genuinely free time (Davies & Holloway 1995; Griffiths 1997; Delamont & Atkinson 2004), feeling guilty about neglecting domestic and family responsibilities (Hoskins 2010), and experiencing a conflict between the demands of work and home (Acker 1992; West 1995; Forster 2001). Women academics are also thought to be prone to the Impostor Phenomenon, whereby a sense of relative incompetence, inferiority and fraudulence combine with a fear of being ‘found out’ and dismissed (Clance 1985; Koch 2002). Academia easily becomes an allencompassing social world that exerts greedy demands upon its members. Yet as with any RI, these inmates perceive their commitment to have been a voluntary choice, the academic career representing opportunities for personal as well as professional development. Recent studies of the impact of an ‘audit culture’ upon university faculty (Strathern 2000a; Pearson 2002; Lucas 2006) have explored not only the pressure this creates to ‘publish or perish’, but also how surveillance regimes are internalised and re-enacted between participants. Strathern (2000b) argues that there has been a shift in attitudes within ‘the academy’: once regarded as the pinnacle of scientific knowledge and professional autonomy (Johnson 1972), it has now been reframed by discourses of accountability. Faculty are expected to keep bureaucratic records of their own research activities, and to be critically reflexive practitioners (Biggs 2003), able to account for what, why and how much they have achieved. At the level of everyday routines and practices, academics perform ‘rituals of verification’ (Strathern 2000b) such as filling in forms, writing reports and submitting paperwork for critical review. This has been consolidated by the bureaucratic processes of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), Research Excellence Framework (REF) and other equivalents: audit trails of each HEI’s research income and output (publications) that are used to create league tables and other competitive performance profiles. Ironically, this can be perceived as detracting from the esteem of the work, insofar as erstwhile mysterious intellectual endeavours (such as writing) are rendered transparent and open to scrutiny. In Durkheim’s (1912) terms, the sacred status of intellectual enterprise is reduced to the profane, mundane level of ‘generic genius’ (Rimoldi 2000).

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Audit culture affects the earlier stages of research, too, as academics must individually bid for funding to research councils and charitable organisations. They can no longer indulge in the luxurious enjoyment of research for its own sake, or study something because it interests them, but rather must explain and justify a project’s social usefulness, in terms of anticipated social and economic impacts and policy implications (Mitchell 2009). University departments are required to submit annual monitoring reports of their collaborative achievements in terms of research output and teaching quality, the latter being evidenced by student feedback. The National Student Survey (NSS) and other technologies of surveillance position the student body as a critical audience, directing a powerful gaze upwards to their tutors. The effects of all this upon the lived experience of academics is to create a shift from practical to discursive consciousness (Giddens 1984): staff find themselves not only performing but also reflecting on their performances through retrospective narrative accounts, which construct meta-level identities. Academic life comes to be perceived as a faintly ridiculous game of strategic self-presentation and bureaucratic hoop-jumping, to discursively reconstruct one’s professional reputation (Lucas 2006). In Mead’s (1934) terms, academics have become increasingly aware of themselves as social objects, viewed from the perspective of a generalised other: the disciplinary gaze of the audit culture. Amit (2000) suggests that faculty experience the university as a Panopticon tower (Foucault 1975), emitting a dispersed, pervasive gaze of surveillance over its members’ practices. Importantly, this gaze operates not as a top-down, vertical flow of power, but rather a dispersed, networked authority that circulates through peer surveillance. In his cautionary tale of the RAE, Sparkes’ (2007) character of The Weasel, an overbearing colleague, epitomises the ways in which staff contribute to the feeling of surveillance by monitoring each other’s progress and achievements alongside their own. The potential intransigence of inmates, such as the protagonist, Jim, is suppressed by an awareness that to fail to pull one’s weight would mean letting down the team. Thus peer pressure emerges as a potent mechanism of social control: Oh Jim, just to let you know that paper I told you about has been accepted for publication. It’s got an impact factor of 5.4 so it’s really up there. It will look great in my RAE return.

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…’Congratulations,’ said Jim with a slight turn of the head, ‘That’s great news. Well done.’ What else could he say as Director of Research? He had to say it but he didn’t have to mean it. But just saying it got to him as he recalled how the Weasel was always putting down younger staff by inferring that the lower impact journals they published in were inferior and not worthy of attention. In fact, that they as colleagues were inferior and not worthy of attention by him. This was one reason why Jim detested the Weasel – he was an academic bully. This is why Jim spent so much time with younger staff explaining the mythology of impact factors and supporting their efforts to get published in journals that were relevant and appropriate for their work, and that developed their thinking, regardless of any impact factors. But the prevailing cultural climate at UWA swamped his words and generated a fear in those colleagues who had yet to gain tenure. Even those who had secure positions were not immune to this tyranny. These numbers actually counted in defining academic worth, in defining the value of the person (Sparkes 2007: 530–532). This extract reminds us of the potential for tension and conflict within inmate cultures. The Weasel’s behaviour shows how peers may not act as benevolent mentors, but rather as competitive rivals: their tokenistic genuflection in praise of teamwork and communality may conceal an ‘inauthentic’ motivation of self-centred ruthlessness. Furthermore, Jim’s distaste for such Machiavellian tactics reveals the fate of inmates who do not comply with an RI’s institutional values. His response is a cynical performance (Goffman 1959), whereby he realises that in order to survive, all that matters is the outward appearance of compliance: ‘He had to say it but he didn’t have to mean it’. This echoes Goffman’s (1961a: 143) remarks about inmates feigning to ‘insightfully’ take the institution’s view of themselves in order to be cut some slack; however, in this case the goal is not to be released, but rather to remain. In the next chapter, we see how such tensions and competitiveness intensify in online environments, where despite the absence of physical constraints, members can feel under equally oppressive forms of virtual surveillance.

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9 Virtual Institutions

The RIs we have looked at in previous chapters have, despite their changing structure and function, remained grounded in physical buildings or settlements. In this chapter, we explore a final type of RI that throws into question even this aspect of institutional life, by showing how identities are shaped by virtual communities in cyberspace. The rise of post-industrial society (Bell 1973) and the information age (Castells 2000) over the past century has transformed social life, with between 53–76% of the population in Europe, Australia and North America now online (World Internet Usage Statistics 2010). ComputerMediated Communication (CMC), once a novel appendage to face-toface interaction, has rapidly become a normal, routine, even primary means through which everyday life is enacted: in the workplace, the home, and in transit through mobile devices. Critics have bemoaned the social effects of this, with the demand to be constantly online, accessible and accountable (Cascio 2005), for it seems that digital media threaten to realise the ‘colonisation of the lifeworld’ that Habermas (1981) forecast. Psychologists have also cautioned against the detrimental effects of excessive computer use upon children’s development of social skills, and identify Internet addiction (Young 1998) as a new psychopathology. Consequently, this chapter explores the doubleedged sword that is ‘life on the screen’ (Turkle 1996), whereby virtual environments that once provided liberating opportunities for identity play can become insular, confining worlds that greedily pervade their members’ consciousness.

Virtual communities Modernist social theorists waxed both lyrical and lachrymose about the erosion of traditional social bonds by industrialisation and urbanisation. 207

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Tönnies (1887) suggested there had been a shift from Gemeinschaft (community), based upon shared residence and loyalty to place, to Gesellshcaft (association), characterised by fleeting and impersonal relations between isolated individuals. Durkheim (1893) pointed to a shift from mechanical solidarity, based upon perceived similarity and conformity to shared beliefs, to organic solidarity, based upon looser bonds of cooperation and economic interdependence. Wirth (1938) was sceptical about the ‘urban way of life’, with its highly specialised division of labour that allowed people to know each other only through certain roles, which he thought segmented social relationships and weakened social integration. Meanwhile, Simmel (1903) argued that urbanisation had had a detrimental effect upon individual consciousness: the fast paced metropolis bombarded the senses with constant stimulation, which evoked a response of blasé indifference. Nearly a century later, Gergen (1991) postulated that new digital technologies were having a similar effect upon consciousness by saturating the self and encouraging a fragmented, multiphrenic existence. The isolated individual, alone at the computer, knew the outside world only through virtual connections, and lacked any sense of belonging or rootedness. This chimes with moral panics about the decline of traditional communities and civic involvement since the mid-twentieth century (Putnam 2000) and a rise of self-interested individualism. However, Sennett (1977) pointed to a paradoxical tension between the modernist desire to be left alone with one’s freedom, and a persistent longing for intimacy. An alternative thesis emerged: that community had not been lost but merely changed form. If the drive to forge social bonds and connections was a basic human need, it must simply adapt to new circumstances. Anderson (1983) introduced the concept of the ‘imagined community’, wherein members did not necessarily share a geographical location and meet face to face, yet took comfort from the perception of others who shared a key social attribute or common experience. This was applied to the online world by Rheingold (1993) with his concept of the ‘virtual community’, whose members encountered each other only through CMC, as alter egos and avatars. Far from impoverishing social relations, it has been argued that communities formed online may be just as cohesive and tightly knit as those in the offline environment (Wellman & Gulia 1999), and provide equal levels of social support for their members (Smith & Kollock 1999). For example, Ward’s (1999) cyberethnography of two feminist online communities revealed how grassroots political activism can be mobilised through even ‘virtual’ solidarity. The Riot Girrrl movement

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of the 1990s, an underground third wave feminist subculture that celebrated women’s participation in punk rock music (Bayton 1998; Rosenberg 1998), has gained added momentum through online fansites, zines and message boards (Duncombe 1997; Turner 2001; Feigenbaum 2007).

Transformative online identities At the micro level, sociologists have pointed to the effects of Internet use upon self- and social identities. These responses can be broadly categorised as utopian and dystopian (Wellman et al 2001). The former emphasise the value of online communities for promoting new forms of social interaction that enhance or even supplant those found in everyday life. CMC has been argued to bring together people with common interests regardless of temporal and spatial barriers, and to promote a more open, democratic exchange of views (Sproull & Kiesler 2007). By flattening social hierarchies of class, gender, ethnicity and so on, virtual communities may increase the social capital that individual users possess (cf. Bourdieu 1973), while facilitating offline interpersonal contact and organisational participation (Wellman et al 2001). The lack of non-verbal cues that characterises CMC is said to evoke a liberating anonymity, insofar as actors are distanced from their audiences and feel a reduced sense of social presence (Kiesler et al 1984). Qualitative studies of virtual communities have emphasised how members enjoy the freedom that anonymity affords, feeling disinhibited and engaging in more self-disclosure (Joinson 1998). For example, my research with self-defined shy people (Scott 2004, 2007) revealed that these individuals experienced the protective membrane of the group as a ‘cybershell’, or safe space within which they felt confident to express themselves, in what I called the ‘paradox of shy vocality’. Other commentators have pointed to the opportunities that CMC affords for identity play and experimentation. Markham (1998) notes that asynchronous CMC (such as email and forum posts), which involves delays between responses, allows people to engage in more elaborate acts of self-presentation, by carefully designing versions of themselves to appeal to different audiences. Turkle (1996, 1999) suggested that users construct a ‘second self’ online, presenting alternative personae to the various audiences they encounter. This can have a quasi-therapeutic effect, as they can work through personal dramas by experimenting with different ‘possible selves’ (Markus & Nurius 1986). For many, the Internet represents a safe haven in which identity reinvention can be

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performed without having too ‘fateful’ (Goffman 1967) an effect upon offline interactions and relationships. The online world can be experienced as a separate, self-contained reality in which new selves are constructed as a private triumph of identity work: The fact that self-presentation is written in text means that there is time to reflect upon and edit one’s ‘composition’, which makes it easier for the shy to be outgoing, the ‘nerdy’ sophisticated. The relative anonymity of life on the screen – one has the choice of being known only by one’s chosen ‘handle’ or online name – gives people the chance to express often unexplored aspects of the self… In simulation, identity can be fluid and multiple, a signifier no longer clearly points to a thing that is signified, and understanding is less likely to proceed through analysis than by navigation through virtual space (Turkle 1999: 643–646). Dystopian theorists, however, have suggested that these interpretations are idealistic, overlooking issues of social inequality and exclusion. The ‘digital divide’ threatens to limit identity play to the relatively affluent middle classes who are able to afford home computers (Katz & Apsden 1997; Newholm et al 2008), while power differentials from the offline world may extend into online social relationships (Miller & Slater 2000; Castells 2000), for example in the gendered use of language (Herring et al 1992). Even friendship bonds can be arranged hierarchically in social networking sites (Dalsgaard 2008), with peer surveillance between community members threatening the democratic ideal: ‘much communication on the internet is not horizontal – in part because networks are not by default horizontal or devoid of differential rank’ (Dalsgaard 2008: 10). Other critics have pointed to the potential for identity play to turn into identity deception (Donath 1996): by selectively representing and modifying their online personae, users may invite more or less ‘authentic’ interaction with community members. This raises the wider question of the relationship between virtual community members’ online and offline selves. Arguments range from the view that CMC is a poor substitute for ‘real life’ interaction (Young 1998) to the idea that it allows a more authentic representation of the user’s true self (Turkle 1996, 1999; Urry 2005). A third perspective, however, suggests that there is continuity rather than disjunction between online and offline personae, as users tend to carry over social characteristics such as gender and sexuality (Woodfield 2000; Waskul et al 2000) that are particularly meaningful to them, and draw upon

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their experiences of performing in offline social roles (Wellman & Gulia 1999; Pleace et al 2000). Virtual communities may therefore augment, not supplant, their members’ previous identities, making the reinvention process one of modification rather than radical transformation. As we have seen in previous chapters, many RIs situated in the physical ‘real world’ also operate online, in order to extend their reach and consolidate existing ties. For example, see Hughey’s (2008) cyber-ethnography of Black fraternities and sororities (Chapter 6) and Barker’s (1999) account of New Religious Movements recruiting online (Chapter 4).

Social interaction in virtual institutions The virtual institution can be defined as any online community to which members voluntarily subscribe and find themselves performing reconstructive identity work. This may be a consciously devised strategy, or an unintended consequence of community membership, to which the individual becomes increasingly committed through recurrent participation. Like any other RI, the virtual institution exerts a ‘greedy’ hold on its inmates (Coser 1974), demanding heavy commitments of time and emotional energy. As we shall see, it can take various forms, including discussion forums, fan communities, virtual workplace organisations, online social movements, support groups and fantasy worlds. This is not to say that each of these contexts acts inevitably as an RI, but rather that some of their members experience them as such, as a result of their active commitment. The virtual institution is defined not by any essential features of its structure, function and organisation, but rather by the way in which these are subjectively experienced by its members. It is a subtype of the virtual community, which can be identified by the intensity of the bonds that tie individual members to each other and to the organisation as a whole. For some, virtual worlds function as distributed communities (Gochenour 2006), in which individuals see themselves merely as nodes in a system, without any personal commitment. The Internet has been said to promote networked individualism (Wellman et al 2001) within a networked society (Wellman & Hampton 1999), whereby people forge connections to multiple peers in different contexts, creating a rather fragmented, dispersed sense of self. ‘Glocalization’ may have replaced the traditional community, as individuals feel tied not to one physical locale but to numerous, unconnected virtual sites (Wellman & Hampton, ibid.). However, others have argued that this mode of organisation

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affords new opportunities for community formation, insofar as those who congregate in any one site can transform its meaning through their patterns of interaction. Fernback (2007) argues from a Symbolic Interactionist perspective that the ‘diluted community’ develops as actors attach changing meanings to their encounters and gradually build a sense of collective identity. What began as a formation based on ‘convenient togetherness without real responsibility’ (Fernback 2007: 63) can be transformed into a close-knit institution with a greedy pull on its members. From this perspective, the virtual community is an emergent social process, rather than a static structural entity, defined by the meanings its inhabitants give to it (Cohen 1985). Qualitative studies have indicated that while many people approach online groups for the purpose of information exchange, what motivates some to remain are the additional functions it offers, of social support, companionship and solidarity (Cohen & Wills 1985; Smith & Kollock 1999; Pleace et al 2000; Leimeister et al 2008).

Healthy havens The first context in which virtual institutions can emerge is that of physical and mental health. While there is a plethora of information available online for almost any medical complaint, certain conditions lend themselves particularly well to peer-mediated support in online forums. Qualitative studies in medical sociology have documented how chronic illnesses and sudden disabilities can be experienced as life-changing events, which force the individual to reassess their relations with the body, self and others, as well as to adjust to new routines of everyday life (Fairclough et al 2004; Gregory 2005; Ville 2005). There may be a sense of biographical disruption (Bury 1982) and rupture, as the individual’s former, healthy self is eroded and replaced by a new, more vulnerable self. Aside from the physical work of rehabilitation, biographical identity work must be performed to make sense of these changes, through the composition of illness narratives (Kleinman 1988; Williams 1984) that restore ‘biographical flow’. Social support is crucial here, with solace being sought in the company of others who have had similar experiences, and who can empathise with the everyday struggles of managing the condition (Charmaz 1991; Cockerham 2000). Virtual communities offer particular support to those whose conditions are stigmatised, contested or medically unexplained (Bendelow 2009). Whereas acute, short-lived infectious diseases permit easy

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access to the sick role (Parsons 1951), inviting heroic treatment interventions and excusal from social responsibilities, longer term conditions that have a more uncertain course and nebulous symptomatology may evoke a less supportive response and be awarded fewer ‘sympathy credits’ (Clark 1987). Sufferers may then turn to the Internet to find like-minded others who promise to vindicate them from suspicions of fakery (Rhodes et al 1999) and provide legitimation to the diagnosis (Adamson 1997; Glenton 2003). The postdiagnostic identity is reinforced by a supportive community of peers (the Goffmanesque [1963a] own and wise), and members may decide that it is only in this virtual space that they can truly be themselves. Similarly, actors may be drawn to online support if their symptoms make it difficult or impractical to socialise with fellow sufferers outside the home, or are embarrassing to discuss face to face; this has been documented by studies of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) (Williams & Robson 2003) and Chron’s Disease (Lewis 2006). In such cases, virtual institutions appeal by virtue of their anonymity; they represent a safe space in which members can disclose private and sensitive information (Turner et al 2001) and find relief in being able to talk openly and honestly. This was illustrated by Broom’s (2005) study of an online support group for older men affected by prostate cancer. Broom argues that the intimate nature of this problem posed a threat to the discourses of hegemonic masculinity into which the men had been socialised. They felt a pressure to appear stoical and unemotional when frontstage (Goffman 1959) in the ‘real’ world, and to present themselves as strong and capable (Gray et al 2000), which precluded talking about the fears and discomfort caused by their illness. Within the backstage space of the virtual group, however, these inhibitions faded, and they took comfort in sharing their experiences: Some men don’t want to be face-to-face. Maybe they’re frightened of it; maybe they don’t want to travel the distances. Maybe they’re scared of being ridiculed or something … all sorts of reasons like that. Maybe they’re a bit anxious about having the problem [prostate cancer] and not wanting to share it with other people. I think that’s men for you. Some will find it easier to talk online (Participant cited in Broom 2005: 94). This suggests a triumph of reinventive identity work: the men were actively engaged in managing their dualistic masculinity as a

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performative accomplishment, and relished secretly transgressing gender stereotypes. As Broom put it, ‘The benefits of online support centred on the possibility of maintaining the public performances of masculinity, while at the same time sharing the experience of weakness, vulnerability and sickness with other men online’ (ibid.: 94). Virtual institutions can also function to cultivate alternative systems of knowledge that stand in opposition to dominant models of health (Burrows & Nettleton 2000). Studies of lay health beliefs and popular epidemiology (Davison et al 1991; Williams & Popay 1994; Brown 1995) have revealed that such discursive challenges to biomedicine emerge from lay networks that organise online. Individuals may join virtual support groups to gather information about their condition and raise awareness of it, regarding themselves as agentic health consumers (Allsop et al 2004). Fox et al (2005a) pointed to the rise of ‘expert patients’ who are as well or better informed than their doctors, having researched their conditions on the Internet; indeed it is argued that ‘more people go online for medical advice on any given day than actually visit health professionals’ (Fox and Rainie 2002: 4). However, Nettleton et al (2005) argue that responses to online health resources are mixed, ranging from the enthusiast and celebratory to the cautious and concerned.

Mental health forums In Chapter 7, we saw how people turn to therapeutic RIs in the offline world, such as rehabilitative clinics and self-help groups, but these institutions also have their virtual equivalents. For example, the twelve step model employed by Alcoholics Anonymous and other addiction programmes (Denzin 1987; Rossol 2001; Hoffmann 2006) transfers well to the online environment. This may be because of its avowed commitment to democratic, non-hierarchical group relations and rhetorical transparency: the programme rules and supporting documentation can be viewed and discussed by all, while peer-to-peer support is provided in the absence of an official leader. Pleace et al (2000) studied the Friends of Bill W, a virtual twelve step programme for problem drinkers based in the USA, whose members communicated through IRC (synchronous chat). While some information and practical advice was exchanged, the main function of this group was social support, peer esteem and companionship. Forty-one per cent

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of the conversations analysed were categorised as playful or friendly exchanges (elaborate greetings, emotive gestures and flirting), compared to only 20% that were about drinking behaviour; a further 15% were regulatory exchanges to sanction inappropriate responses and maintain order. This propensity to playful banter was no trivial matter: it functioned to strengthen the bonds between members and build a community of trust, which facilitated subsequent information exchange and self-disclosure. Nevertheless, members continued to consult offline sources of information for more instrumental and practical needs, and perceived there to be a continuity between these sources and their online social support. Recovery was understood to be an all encompassing experience that could not be neatly contained in either the ‘real’ or the virtual worlds, but rather spilled over from one to another, requiring multiple and complementary sources of support. Pro-anorexia websites The darker side of virtual institutions is illustrated by studies of proanorexia, an underground resistance movement that has emerged over the past decade in the form of online communities, websites and forums dedicated to the positive reinterpretation of eating disorders (Ferreday 2003; Fox et al 2005b; Day & Keys 2008). Citing slogans such as ‘anorexia is a lifestyle, not a disease’ (Atkins 2002), these sites typically contain ‘tips and tricks’ on self-starvation, ‘thinspirational’ pictures of celebrities, and a forum in which members can discuss their progress towards a low target weight. The most optimistic interpretation of this invokes celebratory notions of identity politics and pride. The pro-anorexia movement presents a counter-hegemonic discourse (Day & Keys 2008) or explanatory model of illness (Kleinman 1988; Fox et al 2005a) by challenging dominant biomedical or psychiatric understandings of eating disorders, disputing notions of victimhood, and asserting the rights of those affected to reclaim and redefine the meaning of their condition. Users come together in what they regard as a safe space, to construct a new, collective identity based upon the idealised state of thinness and the values it represents, such as hard work, self-improvement and perfectionism: This is a place for the elite who, through personal determination in their ongoing quest for perfection, demonstrate daily that Ana is the ONLY way to live.

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… the best we can be is the thinnest we can be. We will not allow those around us to detour our missions. We will do whatever it takes to reach our goals. (Participants cited in Day & Keys 2008: 9) Religious imagery can be found in this culture. Day & Keys (2008) observe how theological discourses are employed to personify ‘Ana’ (anorexia) and ‘Mia’ (bulimia) as godlike figures who instil both awe and fear into their followers. Following Durkheim (1912), we might surmise that what members are actually worshipping is the conscience collective of the community itself, symbolically represented by these totemic figureheads. Members then become intent on demonstrating that they are a ‘good anorectic’ who conforms to the rules of the ‘eating disorder religion’ (Day & Keys 2008: 8) in order to be accepted. Sometimes this metaphor is taken literally, with posted lists of parodic ‘Ana commandments’ by which members are expected to live, and which are ritualistically cited like the rules of a twelve step programme: Thou shall not eat without feeling guilty. Strict is my diet. I must not want. It maketh me to lie down at night hungry. It leadeth me past the confectioners. It trieth my willpower… I believe in calorie counters as the aspired word of God… I believe in bathroom scales as an indicator of my daily successes and failures… (Day & Keys 2008: 8) Not surprisingly, journalists have raised concerns about the dangers of pro-anorexia web-rings, which are seen to be preying on vulnerable teenage girls (Brennan 2001; Dwyer Hogg 2001). A media backlash against the movement in the early 2000s increased pressure upon Internet service providers to censor material and shut down offending sites (Ferreday 2003). The ensuing moral panic (Cohen 1972) echoed that observed in response to some religious sects and cults (see Chapter 4), with intimations of dubious recruitment strategies and brainwashing effects. Discourses of risk have therefore been mobilised to define proanorexia as a social problem of public health rather than a matter of individual pathology: an insidious epidemic that threatens to affect many and about which something must be done (Lupton 1995). Concerns have been raised about the risk of a ‘copycat effect’ (Bruch 1978) occurring through peer pressure, whereby members would teach each

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other ways of being anorexic and performing the identity, resulting in an escalation of behaviours and consequent suffering. But what of the members’ own meanings and motivations? Why do individuals choose to enter and remain in such controversial environments? Primarily, pro-ana communities are perceived to provide social support, insofar as they offer sanctuary from those in the offline world who ‘pressurise’ them to recover. The virtual RI represents a safe space in which members can share beliefs and opinions that might not be tolerated elsewhere. For many pro-anorexic individuals, recovery is not an option and the best they can hope for is to safely manage the effects of their condition: I joined a pro-recovery anti pro-ana site and they were all politically correct and trying the proper support in a recovery type position – but they had an article on pro-ana and I looked into it – at first just to get some triggering pics and stuff, but came across this site and have found on the whole that the support I receive on there is much better than the support I received on the other. … maybe one day I will be ‘ready’ for recovery but I certainly am not yet – and I am sick and I like to know there are people out there who feel the same way as me. (Participant cited in Fox et al 2005b: 959–960) However, one study (Mulveen & Hepworth 2006) showed how this communality can intensify dangerously: what begins as an enclave within offline reality can slide into being an all-encompassing, insular world far removed from it. The participants in their study indicated a sense of dependency on this local culture, precisely because of its detachment from ‘real life’, its exclusivity and its totalising effects. Their comments echo those of the secret society and fraternity house members discussed in Chapter 6: I’m starting a new ‘regimen’ today and will feel good to witter about it in a safe place. Sure as hell can’t tell anyone in ‘real life’. For me it represents a secret society which I am so glad to be a part of. (Participants cited in Mulveen & Hepworth 2006: 291) This pattern of increasing dependency can be understood as an unfolding career trajectory, whereby individuals become progressively

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committed to a deviant identity (Becker 1963). The virtual RI members undergo a process of resocialisation, mediated by sequential phases of interaction with like-minded peers. They might initially stumble across the websites whilst seeking information and advice, but be seduced by charismatic peers and initiated into a new symbolic universe (Fraser 2003). Rather than discarding their troubled selves, they become progressively committed to the eating disordered identity, whose meaning is gradually transformed from stigmatising to empowering. Anorexia, particularly, is discursively reframed as an opportunity for self-actualisation, a ‘golden cage’ (Bruch 1978) of transcendent purity, reminding us of Laing’s (1967) anti-psychiatric reading of schizophrenia as a hyper-sane voyage of self-discovery. For example, Fox et al’s (2005b) virtual ethnography of the Anagrrl community revealed how anorexia was talked about in aspirational terms as an ongoing project of self-improvement (cf. Shilling 1993). Pro-anorexic individuals seek to reinvent themselves as potentially pure, successful and happy, which renders their time in the virtual RI as a liminal period of waiting. However, these peer relationships may not be as benevolent as they appear, for the veneer of support and solidarity often conceals an underlying dynamic of conflict and competitiveness. Members are concerned to present themselves as authentically anorexic and vie with each other to be seen as the best performer in this regard, monitoring their progress relative to each other’s achievements. The forums provide ample opportunity for peer surveillance, as members post messages to spur each other on, display photographs of their diminishing bodies, or cite their (current and ideal) vital statistics in a profile signature (Fox et al 2005b). They perform identity work by positioning themselves within a self-imposed hierarchy, distinguishing their own status as ‘true anas’ from those ‘wannarexics’ who are simply dieting: Genuine sufferers – the [people], mostly female, who are in pain and really do suffer from some mental affliction or illness related to food, eating, weight, etc. There are a lot of dickheads on the Net, especially younger ones (13 or 14 who come onto sites and ask how to ‘become’ ana, or say they are ‘trying’, but want tips other than fasting and purging – ones that require no effort or pain. I think they’re looking for a quick fix weight loss solution, probably coupled with ignorance, naivety, attention seeking or some form of needing help for some other problem they have.

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You can usually tell who’s ‘for real’, just by the tone of their writing. (‘Beth’, participant cited in Fox et al 2005b: 957) The rest of the community function as an audience who critically appraise and respond to posts with regulatory comments, encouraging the members to remain committed to their goals. For example, Fox et al (2005b) observed some ‘thinspirational’ exchanges between girls who gave each other motivational pep talks. They presented themselves as peer guides who were accompanying the inmate on their journey, albeit a few steps ahead, and so could draw upon their own experiences to mentor their protégés: Go to the mall and try on some clothes! I do that all the time on weekends. really works. There’s nothing like a too-tight pair of jeans to stop that tummy from grumbling. If you’re already a size zero try the junior’s division. I’m a zero at most stores so what I do is I go to juniors. gosh! I’m a size 11 there!!!!’ (Participant cited in Fox et al 2005: 961) Inevitably, for some, this counter-discursive pressure becomes too much: patterns of interaction once understood as friendship now confront the individual as a ‘participatory panopticon’ (Cascio 2005; Brignall 2002) with more sinister overtones of surveillance. Moreover, the intense, totalising effects of the group can make it difficult for disillusioned members simply to leave. As we saw with the secret societies discussed in Chapter 6, notions of loyalty and mutual support can become warped into greedy demands that oppress and disempower individuals. Release anxiety (Goffman 1961a) occurs when inmates feel so dependent upon institutional life that they are uncertain about how to cope without it. Dissenters who ‘lose their faith’ in pro-anorexic beliefs may feel particularly trapped in the community, afraid to leave for fear of being vilified by those they leave behind. The testimonies of ex-members reveal how peer support can quickly turn sour, as their commitment to recovery is interpreted as a betrayal of the cause. Like jilted lovers, fellow inmates may respond with vitriolic attacks on the alleged traitor, as this former adherent recalled: one young woman tried to leave a pro-ana on-line group and was bombarded with threatening emails from pro-ana members telling her she was fat and wishing her dead. Terrible!! http://www.flickr.com/groups/realwomen/discuss/72157605916603327/

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Being ‘authentically’ suicidal Performative regulation is exercised in the virtual RI by members’ strategies of self-presentation and impression management (Goffman 1959). In Chapter 7, we saw how those in face-to-face self-help groups develop a collective interpretation of what it means to be ‘authentically’ recovering, striving both to appear as such to each other and to ascertain the extent to which these peers are performing sincerely (Weinberg 1996; Paik 2006). The explicit rhetoric of tolerant, nonjudgemental acceptance in such groups means that it is difficult for members to challenge each other without laying themselves open to criticism, and so they employ more indirect mechanisms of informal social control, such as teasing and humour (Pollner & Stein 2001). In the online environment, this effect is exacerbated because of the absence of formal group leaders and the democratising effects of CMC (Williams & Robson 2003). Members of these virtual institutions are free to discipline themselves, by monitoring each other’s social faces (Goffman 1967) and encouraging certain forms of behaviour. This was demonstrated to chilling effect by a recent spate of alleged ‘copycat’ or ‘cult’ suicides in the borough of Bridgend, Wales. Seventeen young people took their own lives here in 2007, and a further seven in 2008–2009; most knew each other as friends or relations, and used the same method of hanging. British newspaper journalists suggested that an ‘Internet effect’ (Pavia 2008) might be to blame for the creation of a ‘suicide cult’ (Adams & Allen 2008; Mesure 2008), because the young people had used the social networking site Bebo to swap messages discussing their plans and comparing techniques. Memorial sites were also set up by friends after the deaths, commemorating their lives and celebrating what they saw as their bravery. A moral panic ensued about the dangers of unregulated Internet content and young people’s vulnerability to peer pressure (cf. Coyle & MacWhannell 2002): was suicide being normalised, even glamorised, as an expression of authentic suffering? There was already concern about the disproportionately high rate of suicide in young men, which has endured (Platt 2009), even though recent sociological research suggests it is mid-life and older men who are most at risk (Fincham et al 2008; Shiner et al 2009). It is also interesting to note that the interventions designed in response to this have adopted relatively lateral, dispersed ways of exercising power: rather than traditional authoritarian ‘crackdowns’ on deviance, we find measures that attempt to engage local communities and work with existing media. Thus the National Suicide Prevention Strategy

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issued by the UK Department of Health (2002) aimed to directly support young people in schools, target local suicide hotspots and improve media coverage. In 2011, the social networking site Facebook announced a new ‘suicide alert’ system through which concerned friends could report those who posted status updates suggesting suicidal intent. ‘Anyone worried about a friend can fill out a form, detailing their concerns, which is passed to the social networking site’s moderators’ (BBC News, 7th March 2011), who could in turn contact the Samaritans and the police. It is ironic that such attempts to protect young people from peer pressure in fact encourage further mutual surveillance within virtual communities. Similar mechanisms operate in the peer mediation of care for those struggling not to commit suicide. This was illustrated by Horne & Wiggins’ (2009) study of a self-help and support forum for those experiencing suicidal feelings. As Symbolic Interactionists, they suggest that being suicidal is not a fixed, pre-existing state of mind that individuals bring to the group, but rather an emergent, processual identity that is collectively negotiated between members. The forum functioned as a site in which claims to be authentically suicidal were presented, tested, and then either validated or rejected. Horne et al observed various performative strategies displayed by actors as they worked up their authenticity in opening posts, by presenting themselves as being ‘on the edge’ of life and death, but found that these evoked different responses and subsequent patterns of interaction. Signs of authenticity were perceived in those whose posts followed a certain narrative form, including an immediate threat to commit suicide, a list of rationalisations for the decision that showed it had been seriously thought through, and a fatalistic conclusion that there was nothing more they could hope for: this was a statement of intent rather than a plea for help. Such posts evoked rapid and unconditionally supportive responses from the other forum members, who believed that the individual was sincere and rallied around him or her: Caroline, Posts: 628; 12:03 p.m. ‘Almost did it yesterday. Will do it today. Have nothing left keeping me here. It’s worse than its ever been and those i love have abandoned. Its not worth it anymore. i’ll miss you. i’ll always love you. this is somebody’s fault.’ Leo, Posts: 335; 12:16 p.m ‘Darling, you can hang on. You can. Last week I was in the same place and I reached out for help from A + E. It’s been the worst week

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of my life but through some weird-ass things (I dunno why) I managed to pass through it. Keep holding on, please, right now it doesn’t seem like it will get better but I swear it will. Who’s fault? Maybe if you simply let go and type everything that’s on your mind it may help. xxxxx’ (Horne & Wiggins 2009: 176–177) By contrast, signs of inauthenticity were identified in people who appeared to be trying too hard with a carefully composed narrative that sounded rehearsed and clichéd. This often happened when individuals employed medical, psychiatric terminology, listing thoughts and feelings that were intended to be recognised as symptoms of suicidal ideation. Forum members were also incensed when a poster appeared to be trivialising others’ problems or presenting themselves as having a more serious case to consider. Thus the following message was denied consideration and duly invalidated by a lack of response: Christine, Posts: 3; 12:06am ‘My story is as follows: I’m an 18 year old female who suffers from depression, cutting (self-injury), social anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, extreme stress, and insomnia… Please write back if you can at least share your experience or relate. Thanks!’ (Horne & Wiggins 2009: 176–181)

Blogging and v-logging Alongside forums, other virtual spaces provide platforms for reinventive identity performances. Stefanone & Lackoff (2009) suggest that personal blogging (keeping an online diary or web log) has become increasingly popular as a form of non-directed self-disclosure, through which users make intimate and private information publicly available to global audiences. This represents a form of the ‘do-it-yourself biography’ (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim 2002) that invites a superficial intimacy, by positioning the author as the central focus of attention. Despite the individualised, esoteric content of the subject matter, blogging is a relational, communicative activity that forges connections between the author and his or her ‘blogroll’ of interested followers. As Hodkinson (2007) argues, blogs are ostensibly concerned with individual lives, yet unfold as interactive journals that are socially oriented toward an imagined audience. Although this may only be a small, intimate readership, blogs are designed to enable viewers to comment on daily updates and provide supportive responses (Herring et al 2004).

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The blogger may engage in dramaturgical circumspection (Goffman 1959) by composing narratives in such a way as to anticipate or even evoke a certain reaction. By telling one’s story, even (or especially) when it is one of personal distress, trouble and trauma, the blogger invites instant feedback and support that validates their identity claims. As Wilkinson (2004) argues, displays of suffering tend to evoke pro-social responses of sympathy and compassion. For example, Seaneen Molloy’s blog, ‘The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive’ achieved a cult following in response to her frank and candid account of living with Bipolar Disorder, and earned her a certain amount of fame. This young woman was invited to write for BBC Ouch and One in Four magazine, two UK publications dedicated to raising awareness about disability and mental health issues, and her blog was adapted into a play for BBC Radio Four. Molloy’s blog has subsequently morphed into a larger scale website of information resources, self-help and support, relating her personal troubled to wider public issues (Mills 1959): I am open about who I am here. There are a few reasons for this. The first is that I don’t want to be an anonymous person with manic depression. I want you to understand and know the person behind the illness. I also don’t want to add to the stigma of suffering from mental illness by hiding behind the internet. I don’t have a little shell protecting me from you. I want to show people that the stereotypes attached to severe mental illness are simply not true. (Molloy 2010: http://thesecretlifeofamanicdepressive. wordpress.com/hello-my-name-is-seaneen/) So what motivates people to enter this type of virtual institution? Stefanone & Lackoff (ibid.) argue that insofar as blogging involves the public performance of private sentiments, it operates according to the same mechanisms as reality television. We might surmise that it also appeals for similar reasons, satisfying a need for recognition, visibility, even celebrity, that has emerged from the late modern culture of narcissism (Lasch 1979). By publishing a personal account online, the blogger leaves traces of identity in cyberspace, which provides a sense of symbolic immortality (Giles 2000). Interestingly, however, these sympathetic audiences are not merely passive, detached voyeurs, but rather tend to be active bloggers themselves, who may in turn post their own stories to blogging communities such as Live Journal. Schmidt (2007) therefore suggests that blogging is not the isolated, introspective activity that it appears to be, but rather a carefully orchestrated identity performance that adheres to a set of shared rules, assumptions and expectations.

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A related online activity is v-logging, or uploading an ongoing video diary to publicly accessible resource banks. Video-sharing websites such as YouTube have become increasingly popular since their inception in the early 2000s, based upon the democratic principle of User-Generated Content (UGC). Cha et al (2007) suggest that UGC has created new patterns of social interaction by enabling those with niche interests to ‘network’ and develop multi-directional social bonds. For many, their participation in a video-sharing network evokes connotations of the supportive virtual community. Numerous collaborative channels are dedicated to the discussion of issues that affect emotional health, such as mental disorders, major life events like divorce and bereavement, and personal relationships. As RIs, video sharing websites also provide a platform for the performance and reconstruction of identity, a process mediated by significant others in a virtual community. Individuals can post their own videos but also comment on each others’, leaving feedback that varies from the supportive to the derogatory. They may also post response videos in an iterative process, creating an asynchronous virtual conversation between talking heads. Lange (2007) suggests that there are varying degrees of openness in video sharing, ranging from the ‘privately public’, in which users make their v-logs widely accessible but limit the content to the relatively superficial (information and instruction, hobbies and interests, humorous clips) to the ‘publicly private’, in which video makers share intimate thoughts and feelings, and make themselves selves vulnerable to scrutiny. Members are actively involved in regulating each other’s behaviour, by monitoring their fellow inmates’ daily activities, tracing micro level developments in their lives and sometimes offering suggestions to help them get through difficult times. The v-logger’s life becomes a jointly authored biographical narrative that unfolds through the mutual interactions and co-constructed meanings of actors in that virtual community.

Fan communities Virtual institutions may be sought out as a territorial space in which to cultivate a fan identity. Fandom is an experience of enjoyment and interest in a cultural text, combined with emotional commitment and personal attachment to it. Sandvoss (2005) defines this in terms of to the regular, repeated consumption of such objects, while Tulloch & Jenkins (1995) distinguish the dedicated fan from the more casual follower. Common sense understandings of fandom often emphasise its

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negative connotations, with a focus on individual psychology and social pathology (Jensen 1992): the stereotypical fan is ‘geeky’ or ‘sad’, someone unhealthily obsessed with their object of admiration, who spends too much time immersed in a fantasy world (Abercrombie & Longhurst 1998). Schickel (1985) describes fandom as an illusory relationship with ‘intimate strangers’: people who seem familiar to us as a result of frequent exposure, but whom we really do not know at all. The notion of parasocial interaction (Horton & Wohl 1956) has been mobilised to explain how a one-sided relationship of this kind (the fan performs all of the mental and emotional labour, which is unreciprocated) can evoke a strong feeling of false or second order intimacy (Rojek 2001). The fan is thus conceptualised as someone who is unhealthily trapped within a make believe world that distracts them from ‘real’ life. However, some scholars have argued that fandom involves strategic practices that imply agency more than passivity or pathology. For example, critical theorists have suggested that by choosing an idol who represents counter-cultural values, fans engage in subversive acts of political resistance (Fiske 1992) that challenge dominant ideologies. Fandom also allows social actors to engage in identity play by trying out different ‘possible selves’ (Markus & Nurius 1986) and identifying with the characteristics of their idols. An individual might then progress through a succession of fan relationships as means of discovering different facets of their ultimate, ‘true’ self. Crucially, these private journeys are made publicly visible, as assertive statements demanding an audience reaction. Consequently, Hills (2002) defines fandom as an identity performance: a set of dramaturgical practices that allow individuals to positively cultivate a self-identity: fandom is not simply a ‘thing’ that can be picked over analytically. It is also always performative, by which I mean it is an identity which is (dis)claimed, and which performs cultural work (Hills 2002: xi). Fan identities are performed and negotiated with reference to likeminded others. Just as the traditional fan club would print newsletters to allow communication between members, online spaces now provide the means of generating their sense of imagined community. Albrow (1997) describes such virtual spaces as ‘socioscapes ‘ that enable geographically disconnected individuals to develop a sense of belonging; their engagement in collective lifestyle practices further cultivates a cultural ‘sociosphere’ of activity. Members draw comfort from the

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ritual practices of collective worship, which ultimately symbolise a celebration of the group (cf. Durkheim 1912). For example this fan of the singer Melanie C wrote, I share my fandom with other fans on the internet and I think this has made me more of a fan because it made me realise that I wasn’t the only one. I can call a few of these people friends, even though I’ve never met them in the flesh, but we have this interest in common to talk and send e-mails.’ (Hannah, quoted in Sandvoss 2005: 56). However, immersion in a fan community also has its darker side. Hills (2002) emphasised that fan clubs are organised hierarchically and involve much competition and rivalry, as individuals vie for attention and status (Fiske 1992). Following Bourdieu (1977), Hills defines ‘fan social capital’ as ‘the network of fan friends and acquaintances that a fan possesses, as well as their access to media producers and professional personnel linked with the object of fandom’ (Hills 2002: 57). They may also display ‘fan cultural capital’ by demonstrating knowledge about their idol; in presenting themselves as the most authentic, serious or dedicated fan, they seek to distinguish their status from that of their peers (cf. Bourdieu 1984). Just as in other types of RI, fans evaluate their progress towards this idealised identity in relative terms, by comparing themselves to the others in the community. There may be implicit or explicit snobbery between the self-proclaimed ‘superfans’ (Hills 2002) or ‘executive fans’ (Tulloch & Jenkins 1995), who claim to be more longstanding members or to possess insider knowledge about the object of admiration, and those whom they define as junior ‘protofans’ or ‘newbies’ (Hills 2002; Thornton 1995). For example, Hodkinson (2002) documented how the goth subculture, whilst ostensibly based on notions of inclusivity for the perpetual outsider, nevertheless employed mechanisms of exclusivity within both its online and offline communities. These fan relations were managed by a self-imposed hierarchy, as individuals sought to be recognised as ‘gother than thou’. Established members displayed snobbery towards those whom they perceived as fair-weather, aspirational fans, whose preoccupation with fashion rendered them only superficially, and therefore insufficiently, committed to the subculture’s values: like the baby goths. I think that’s probably Marilyn Manson’s fault.... They’ve got short hair, and they’ve just got a little bit of eyeliner, a

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little bit of lipstick and they think ‘oh, I’m a goth (Participant cited in Hodkinson 2002: 79). Nevertheless, this only served to draw the rest of the community together. By defining themselves relative to these ‘wannabes’ as being more committed and authentic, the longer-standing members sought solace in each other and expressed pride in their collective identity: Net-goths are a clique, no matter how much they deny the fact. Naturally there are people who span both worlds, and I’m not saying that the rest are associating only with other net-goths consciously. But it’s a natural thing to get together… It’s common ground (Participant cited in Hodkinson 2002: 192).

Social networking sites A contemporary form of virtual institution that is particularly salient at present is the social networking site. Based upon earlier communication platforms such as Usenet, Listserv and Bulletin Board Systems, these sites function to connect computer users through a self-generated network of links, based upon friendship bonds, information sharing, trust and recommendation. The most popular examples are Facebook, Bebo and LinkedIn, which allow users to create profile pages of personal information; these are self-mobilised organisations of peers who come together to find out about key information, experiences and changes in each other’s lives. More recently, websites like Twitter have been introduced, which limit communication to one line updates on the ‘status’ of an individual, whose movements can then be tracked by interested ‘followers’. This inevitably evokes the image of the participatory panopticon (Cascio 2005; Brignall 2002) with its mechanisms of peer surveillance, insofar as ‘friends’ can monitor the minutiae of each other’s conduct. Some critics have argued that online social networking is becoming the predominant way in which we ‘do’ friendship. Suhr (2009) suggests that the practice is indicative of a wider ‘participatory culture’, whereby individuals make use of digital media to forge social bonds instrumentally, on the basis of perceived usefulness. Buckingham (2008) argues that young people in particular rely upon digital media as the primary means of constructing and (re)defining their social identities, and that they spend significant proportions of their time interacting in these ‘digital public’ spaces. Social networking has been said to be of

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value in the formation and maintenance of social capital, by providing a sense of connectedness to others in an imagined community, which in turn promotes psychological wellbeing and self-esteem (Ellison et al 2007). The practice is also characteristically democratic in levelling the relations between users in a network. Performative regulation occurs through the way in which user identities are displayed strategically within social networking sites. Dalsgaard (2008) suggests that the ‘Facebook phenomenon’ has produced a new form of individualism, whereby people define their social status in terms of relationships but in an atomised, fragmented style: we are ‘partible persons’ (Strathern 1998), defined by an array of unrelated roles. Peer esteem can be assessed in terms of not only the number of ‘friends’ that one has, but also their social status, as for example celebrities earn vicarious kudos points for the individual (Walther et al 2008). Users present their connections and attachments as a ‘portfolio of sociability’ (Castells 2001) to evoke reactions of admiration and accrue more cultural capital. Despite the apparent democratisation of exchange (Williams & Robson 2003) between networked friends, they can implicitly be ranked hierarchically, both by the individual user and the audience who appraise his or her status. For example, Walther et al (2008) found that profile owners’ friends rated the individual’s attractiveness and likeability more favourably if s/he had displayed complimentary wall posting and comments, and an array of attractive friends. Dalsgaard asserts that Facebook allows individuals to present themselves egocentrically as being at the centre of all these other people’s lives, as if their disparate relationships were in fact connected: social networking sites are more than just a reproduction of the work of distinction that takes place in real social life… they give everyone the chance to be individual in the sense of being unique, because any person can be shown as being in the centre of a social universe – their own (Dalsgaard 2008: 9). This has an interesting effect on the networked individual as a virtual institution inmate. Debatin et al (2009) discovered that despite knowing that their profiles were publicly accessible, Facebook users experienced a high level of perceived privacy (King 1996), and imagined their friendship networks to be relatively closed and insular. They held a lax attitude towards the risk of privacy invasion, regarding this as something that

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threatened others but not themselves. Consequently, the users posted a large amount of highly personal information, believing that only sympathetic and like-minded friends would be reading it. These researchers argued that this was an illusory perception, brought about by the user’s frequent and prolonged immersion in the virtual space; usage of the site was so integrated into the rituals and routines of their everyday lives that they became desensitised to its effects. Not surprisingly, social networking sites have been subjected to the wider moral panic about supposed Internet addiction (Young 1998). Concerns have been raised about where to draw the line between ‘healthy’ fraternisation to build social capital, and unhealthy levels of obsession with the websites. It seems that although sociability, extroversion and the ability to ‘network’ are culturally valued attributes in late modern western society (Scott 2007), there is an expectation that this will take place in the ‘real’, offline world, and that it will be instrumentally productive, for example in forging new business relationships. The notion of extensive sociability for its own sake, particularly in an ‘artificial’ online environment, continues to be regarded as deviant. Cautionary tales pepper mass media reports about an alleged new generation of ‘Facebook addicts’ who are failing to develop adequate social skills for ‘real life’; there is a presumption that face to face interaction is superior to relationships conducted online. For example, an article in the London Evening Standard (Goodchild 2008) suggests that social networking sites encourage women in particular to amass large numbers of superficial ‘friends’ in an acquisitive manner, as mere trophies of popularity. Like other behavioural addictions, the individual is never satisfied, constantly seeking to find ‘just one more’ friend. Citing a therapist from The Priory Clinic, Goodchild suggests that this leaves users feeling incomplete, inadequate and unhealthily dependent on others for their selfesteem. This reaction is also interesting as it indicates a secondary market of clients who might seek help for their supposed Internet addiction in therapeutic clinics – another type of RI (see Chapter 7). Thus RIs have the potential to reproduce themselves and multiply in an iterative chain, as one type creates a problem for which another provides the solution. As we saw in Chapter 7, rehabilitation clinics like The Priory offer programmes of recovery from Internet addiction alongside other forms of ‘substance abuse’. Ironically, we can even find comparable virtual clinics and self-help websites that claim to help users extricate themselves from other virtual institutions. For example, one website (Wingfield 2010) presents a seven step guide on ‘How to

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quit Facebook’, based upon the twelve step model of Alcoholics Anonymous: 1. Admit you have a problem and keep track of what you actually do on Facebook. 2. Define your goals… why did you originally sign up? 3. Make and follow a Facebook schedule… write down the total number of hours, per week, that you should be spending on Facebook. If it seems like too much time, adjust your activity times accordingly. 4. Think of other things you could be doing with your time spent on Facebook. 5. Leave Facebook… you may need to quit cold turkey. This is a last resort, and is easier said than done. 6. Turn your profile into a pile of useless data! 7. Find a Facebook substitute… You need to find something to do during those little windows of time in order to prevent relapse… give yourself a ‘Facebook patch’. (Wingfield 2010: http://www.wikihow.com/Quit-Facebook)

Virtual worlds The above examples demonstrate the level of commitment that individuals can feel to upholding certain presented versions of themselves. As such, however, these personae retain some continuity with the users’ offline social characteristics and are typically regarded as an extension of their ‘real’ selves. By contrast, a final set of virtual institutions allow the individual to adopt a completely different persona, by entering into a distinct, self-contained symbolic universe. The term ‘virtual world’ refers to web-based, graphically designed sites that exist only in cyberspace, such as imaginary cities, organisations and landscapes. These originated in the 1980s from the virtual reality software employed in Multi-User Domains (MUDs), through fantasy role-play games such as Dungeons and Dragons. These games typically involved the user assuming the character of a mythical hero and embarking upon a quest to find something, rescue someone or slay otherworldly beasts. Waskul & Lust (2004) suggest that the appeal of such games lay in their ability to symbolically remove the individual from the trappings of their real life physical environment, social relationships and role obligations, and enable them to create new personae. This provides support for the utopian theories of CMC, which suggest that online interaction

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facilitates experimentation with alternative identities (Turkle 1996). As with other types of RIs, virtual world inhabitants choose willingly to discard their previous social identities in order to build a new alter ego, whom they feel more authentically represents their true self. There is a radical and complete transformation of the self, as the line of continuity between online and offline personae can be fractured. A popular contemporary incarnation of the virtual world is Second Life, an online community that functions as a virtual settlement (Bartle 2003). This is an interactive, synthetic environment composed of innumerable different lands, buildings, outdoor spaces and so on, which allows members great autonomy in constructing their online selves. They can recast their embodied individuality through the creation of an avatar, and spend extended periods of time immersed in a selfdesigned environment, navigating its spaces and moving between activities. Second Life even has its own currency, which can be purchased online to enable users to buy property, possessions, services and personal attributes, which enhance their avatar’s cultural capital (Wellman & Hampton 1999). In Cohen & Taylor’s (1992) terms, this kind of cyberscape represents an ‘escape attempt’ to avoid the stresses of everyday life: I came to Second Life to get away from some bad things that happened to me in Real Life. I’m still getting over the RL stuff, but I think SL has helped a lot in providing an outlet. I am a lot more alive in SL than I ever have been in RL. I feel safe in SL, and this gives me an incredible sense of freedom. I also feel empowered in SL, cause I can raise my arm and rez a 10 foot wall (or a gold bracelet) instantly. I have fun, because I get to do things I have never tried in RL, like skating, sailing, entering a beauty pageant, not to mention shameless flirting! … Second Life serves an important purpose for many people: some of us need a different existence [sic] from Real Life. (Participant cited in Harrison 2009: 84) Curiously, however, behaviour in Second Life actually mirrors the rituals and routines of everyday life, and seems to provide a sense of comfort through the re-experience of familiar features that transfer from the offline world. For example, Harrison (2009) documents the importance of land ownership and territory in Second Life, where a significant amount of time is spent on buying, selling and building property. He suggests that members immerse themselves in these

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practices as a means of creating a sense of rootedness and belonging, which compensates for a loss of community experienced in ‘real’ life. Although virtual settlements are not based upon geographical location, they still provide a sense of place, stability and homeliness, which can be more meaningful to the individual than their offline, physical environment. Harrison reports how some Second Life members felt so deeply connected to their virtual world and their fellow inhabitants that they developed collective myths and memories. This evoked a sense of cultural heritage, as members built simulated versions of historic buildings and tourist attractions, which they then visited together. Elsewhere in Second Life, members’ practices take on a different significance by providing a reflective commentary on their offline social identities, which in turn produces a sense of creative fulfilment. For example, Waskul et al (2000) and Brookey & Cannon (2009) document how sexual behaviour translates from the real to the virtual world, enabling individuals to explore aspects of their sexualities that could not otherwise be indulged. Waskul et al argue that despite cyberspace being a disembodied environment, it presents a platform for the performance of gender and sexuality via the media of graphic illustration, text and language. The anonymity of such interaction creates a further effect of disinhibition, which is perceived as liberating for selfpresentation. Members engage in ‘outercourse’ rather than intercourse by describing, displaying and using their avatars’ bodies in sexualised encounters, which they report to be highly meaningful: It’s erotic, it turns me on – the mystery of it. Not knowing who is really on the other end is really erotic – you can be anything. I may stretch truth, and live out fantasies… it allows you to be with whoever you want – no inhibitions. It’s not real. People can take any identity they want, and they do. People lie about who they are to create sexual illusions. (Participants cited in Waskul et al 2000: 385) Interaction is experienced here as aspirationally fulfilling. Users can purchase modified or replacement body parts to reinvent themselves as the sexual beings they feel they ‘really’ are, and to freely express previously suppressed desires. Waskul & Martin (2009) described how Second Life members would indulge in orgies, same sex encounters, extramarital affairs and other forms of sexual behaviour that were

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regarded as deviant in their offline social worlds. They argue against the idea that virtual world participation represents a total escape from everyday life, because members typically create avatars that share their ‘real’ demographic characteristics (gender, age, ethnicity, etc). They use their ‘second’ lives as a way of experimenting on, modifying and reinventing their ‘first’ or original, offline selves in order to live, as they see it, more authentically. In this respect, virtual RIs display the same characteristics as other RIs, albeit in a heightened, extreme manner. The following, final chapter recapitulates on these key features, and reviews their expression across the different types of RI. I then return to the questions and puzzles outlined at the start of the book, and try to provide some answers.

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10 Conclusion

Social identities are changing. Symbolic Interactionist theorists have long argued that the self is a fluid, dynamic entity, which emerges through the course of social interaction in everyday life, as actors collectively define its meaning (Blumer 1969; Goffman 1959; Thomas & Thomas 1928). Identity is in a constant state of becoming, an unfinished narrative that can unfold in an infinite number of ways to create unique, individual stories of the self. Yet this does not occur in a cultural vacuum: actors are located in institutional sites that provide a wider context for identity formation, as well as discourses that help them to make sense of the process. These institutions range from the physically tangible – buildings, organisational premises, boundaried spaces – to the pervasive and nebulous – friendship networks, political movements, imagined and virtual communities – and have themselves changed over time. This book has explored how and why individuals in contemporary, western, late modern societies are increasingly seeking out institutional membership as a vehicle for identity change, and the extent to which they are able to control this process. It has also considered how these institutions have themselves changed in their form, structure and purpose, and the relationship between this and the lived experiences of their inhabitants.

Institutional change: From TI to RI Taking as a starting point Goffman’s (1961a) concept of the Total Institution (TI), I questioned whether and to what extent this formation exists today: which of its features have proved more or less enduring, and why? Goffman’s TI, exemplified by the psychiatric asylum, was an austere, hierarchical structure based upon authoritarian power and 234

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coercive methods of social control. Patients – or inmates – were typically incarcerated against their will because others had decided that something was wrong with them. These former identities were systematically eroded and replaced with new ones, which the individual had no choice but to accept. The TI was a physically bounded structure that ‘totally’ encompassed its inmates – spatially, temporally, socially and psychically – and controlled every aspect of their lives. Days unfolded in the same, regimented pattern and inmates were treated alike as the passive recipients of an institutional order, to which they could respond only by choosing a level of compliance. Yet despite this gloomy picture, Goffman presents an image of the inmate as a social actor with a clear sense of self and autonomy: although this may be compromised – even mortified – by the ‘institutional arrangements’ of the TI, there is a clear indication of a prior, underlying self whose integrity has been undermined. Indeed, much of the polemical impact of Asylums stems from an anti-psychiatric stance of moral outrage at the idea of patients being denied the basic civil rights of freedom, dignity and independence. We are invited to sympathise with the heroic TI inmate who makes gestures of resistance, however limited and futile, insofar as this suggests the survival of the ‘true’ self and triumph of the human spirit. Since that era, a new institutional form, which I call the Reinventive Institution (RI), has emerged, serving a significant proportion of those who would previously have entered TIs but also many others who would not. Some TIs still exist, of course – prisons, hospitals, care homes and so on – but they provide for only a relatively small proportion of those deemed acutely needy or troublesome, and in any case have become more rehabilitative and welfare-focused (see Chapter 5). Meanwhile, increasing numbers of people self-refer to new institutions that promise salvation from less tangible private troubles (Mills 1959) or problems in living (Szasz 1961), through the medium of identity reinvention. These clients seek not merely to eliminate unwanted parts of the self but to cultivate an entirely new one, positively designed and modelled as a lifestyle change. RIs are institutional sites to which people retreat for periods of self-reflection, education, enrichment and reform, in pursuit of holistic self-improvement, and in which members’ interaction is crucial to the process of reinvention (a formal definition is given in Chapters 1 and 3). These have emerged over the past century partly as a consequence of decarceration, but also through the cultural climate of late modernity, with its emphasis on individual achievement, personal fulfilment and hyper-reflexivity. As Giddens (1991) argues, the self has become a project to be constantly worked upon; the end result

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is incorporated into our life politics as a display of autonomy, authenticity and self-control. Although such arguments apply most obviously to the affluent, white middle classes, who have the resources (time, money and cultural capital) needed to participate in what might, admittedly, be regarded as rather self-indulgent practices of the ‘worried well’, the broader principles that RIs celebrate are culturally pervasive through the mass media, Internet and other spheres of the ‘information age’ (Castells 2000).

Voluntarism and volition A key feature of the RI is its apparent voluntarism, with the implication of social agency. Members choose to seek out and remain in these institutions, believing it is in their own best interests to cultivate some new form of selfhood. The prior self is not tragically mortified but willingly discarded, and inmates enthusiastically participate in selfadministering the institution’s rules, regimes and regulations. Authenticity is seen to reside not in the self who enters the institution but in the one who might come out: the ideal, future self who is to be invented. Indeed, inmates may begin a love affair with the process of reinvention itself: some become serial reinventers, addicted to the idea of self-improvement (cf. Furedi 2004). Ostensibly, then, RI inmates possess greater agency than those in TIs, by being able to choose whether, how, where and why to reinvent their own identities. However, as Gubrium & Holstein (2001) argue, there is a limited range of identity templates available to fit oneself into: generic ways of modelling the self and rewriting its story. In the various types of RI documented in this volume, we have seen how certain discourses are used to sell the new identities on offer, like ‘McSelves’ waiting on a supermarket shelf. Crucially, these discourses also prescribe ways of experiencing the reinvention process and of narrating this to oneself through both in situ and retrospective biographical accounts. This raises the question of whether and to what extent RI inmates have control over the authorship of their new identities, and the balance between agency and passivity in this process. For example, what of the inmate’s decision to remain in the RI – or perhaps their inability to leave? RIs are ‘institutions without walls’, which remain permeable to the outside world, and which members are ostensibly free to leave, yet feel unwilling or unable to – because of a deep loyalty that makes such a course of action difficult or undesirable. RIs keep their members committed by exerting a ‘greedy’ (Coser 1974) demand for total and

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sincere devotion to their cause, which might be a religious doctrine, therapeutic model or professional vocation. This effect is strengthened by the power of a cohesive inmate culture, wherein it is the peer group, more than staff or leaders, who guide recruits through their journeys of reinvention and help them to interpret the meaning of these experiences. Members praise conformity and obedience and have no time for those who refuse to ‘get with the programme’; they monitor each other’s commitment and evaluate their progress in relative terms, through what I call ‘performative regulation’ (see below). However, this has a dark side insofar as members can be critical, unhelpful or even downright destructive in their treatment of each other: encouragement can slide into pressure, advice into manipulation, mentorship into competitiveness. Life in the RI, which began as a happy opportunity to expand one’s horizons and discover different ways of being, can degenerate into an exhaustingly intense and incessant feeling of obligation to one’s fellow inmates and shared responsibility for their fate. Even individuals who lose faith in the institution may find it impossible to leave because of an ingrained fear of betraying the cause, abandoning their fellow journeymen and being left to go it alone.

Power and performativity These micro-level processes point to the bigger question of how power operates within the RI. Does this apparent agency and voluntarism imply a shift in power away from staff and into the hands of inmates, or have they simply become complicit in a subtler form of social control? Certainly, the very stark and austere patterns of coercion that Goffman observed have all but disappeared, with those TIs that remain having been overhauled by welfare reforms and new discourses of patient/client choice, holistic care and joint decision-making (Rogers & Pilgrim 2005). However, a different pattern suggests itself in the RI. Here, there is no need to soften the blow of coercion, provide treats and privileges, or otherwise compensate for lost freedom and ‘contaminative exposure’ to unwanted people and places (Goffman, ibid.). This is because inmates perceive themselves to be enjoying a voluntary status: they want to be in the institution, to be transformed, and to do so alongside others with whom they willingly co-operate. Does this mean that they enjoy total freedom as empowered, self-determining agents? Not necessarily. An examination of the micro-politics of interaction in each type of RI has revealed that just as much pressure, manipulation and subtle coercion occurs within the democratised ranks of

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the inmate culture, with peer-mediated sanctioning proving equally effective in changing members’ feelings, beliefs and behaviour. How is this possible? Dimensions of power In Chapters 2 and 3, I considered some alternative theories of power that might usefully be applied to the RI, although each alone was insufficient. Foucault’s (1975) vision of disciplinary power suggested the unilateral surveillance of subjects by some form of authoritarian guardianship – whether this meant actual persons, as in the Panopticon tower, or mere technologies that embodied their knowledge. Psychiatric assessment tools, case files, programmes of staged recovery and so on, all provided ‘grids of perception’ which enabled governmental bodies to map the terrain of ab/normality across certain ‘troublesome’ populations: the sick, the mad, the criminal and so on. Individuals could then be categorised and classified, their progress monitored relative to others in their comparator group. The presumed scientific neutrality of these technologies gave authorities the right to right to probe into minds and bodies, gaining pervasive knowledge of those whom they governed. In an institutional context, these subjects were merely ‘docile bodies’, rendered passive by the disciplinary technologies that were imposed upon them, and helpless to resist their effects. Indeed, one of the most sinister aspects of the ‘carceral society’ that Foucault identified was the tendency for people to accept and normalise these mechanisms of surveillance, internalising the ‘gaze’ to the extent of self-administering it: they became self-disciplined, self-governing subjects who monitored their own behaviour, obviating the need for any personal exercise of power. These themes of discipline, surveillance, knowledge-based regimes and population mapping certainly apply to the RI, as we find inmates subjecting themselves to institutional discourses that define their old and new identities, as well as systems of rules with which they willingly comply. However, this rather top-down, hierarchical model of power allows little room for the consideration of actors’ meanings and motivations. If RI inmates are not forced to enter these sites, why do they choose to do so, and how do their actions fit in with the institutional arrangements of power? We might then look to a more bottom-up process of individual action, driven by cultural changes that have occurred on the ground. This is especially important given the arguments about decarceration and recarceration (see Chapter 3), which have given rise to more nebulous institutional forms and dispersed ideologies. Since

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Foucault’s time, critics such as Lyon (2001) have pointed to the rise of a surveillance society, wherein the panoptical gaze is no longer tied to the physical structure of closed institutions but permeates the spaces of everyday life. This resonates with Furedi’s (2004) arguments about the governmental effects of our contemporary ‘therapy culture’ and Castel et al’s (1982) warnings about the encroaching ‘psychiatrization’ of everyday life. We now define more and more of our life experiences as troubling and indicative of deep-rooted problems that need to be overcome. A bilateral theory of power is more accurate here, in considering why individuals voluntarily comply with regimes of power: we must address Jenkins’ (2008: 163) blunt question, ‘why do people put up with it?’. Most notably, Rose’s (1989, 1990, 2000) critique of the ‘psy industries’ usefully extends Foucault’s notion of governmentality to a consideration of why these cultural trends have caught on. He points to the seductive power of diagnostic tools, counselling, and, increasingly nowadays, open access online resources, as readily available forms of democratised knowledge that promise tantalising ways of ‘knowing thyself’. The ultimate weapon of power is to make subjects want to be governed, he argues: a ‘genealogy of freedom’ teaches us to seek ways of improving, even perfecting ourselves in pursuit of a mythical ideal (Craib 1994). Rose suggests that this obligation can feel tyrannical, insofar as it suggests that it is no longer acceptable to be average, normal or just okay: we must seek to be better, fantastic, outstanding. As we saw in Chapter 8, educational RIs in particular attract anxious young people who feel that the gateposts of competition have been shifted, that they must present themselves as high achievers with the potential to be brilliant. Nevertheless, this is a cynical theoretical position, which would paint rather a pessimistic picture of life in the institution. Inmates would be portrayed at best as cultural dopes (Garfinkel 1967), not realising they were being manipulated. Agency would be recognised only in a limited form, as the willingness to obey rules without force, not as the ability to act in one’s true interests and make a difference to social systems and structures (Giddens 1984). The institution itself would be seen as a mere instrument of power, just another technology in the governmental armoury. We are pointed towards dark forces at work through insidious currents of social control that sweep actors up in their wake, making genuinely free choices impossible. Inmates would be driven by essentially negative motivations: the inability to resist authority or challenge cultural discourses, uncritical compliance with regimes, and the fearful internalisation of the gaze. But how plausible

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is this shadowy model, when we consider the predominantly positive and self-reflective accounts RI members give of their own motivations? It is too simplistic, indeed insulting, to dismiss inmates’ beliefs as the mere effects of cultural brainwashing or false consciousness. A more accurate depiction of the RI would acknowledge social actors who make subjectively meaningful decisions to participate in institutional life, and their experience of the reinvention process as beneficial. This evokes Lukes’ (2005) theory of a third dimension of power, which rests upon two crucial assertions: firstly that power is most effective when it secures the willing compliance of subjects to be governed, and secondly, that insofar as individuals may perceive it to be in their own interests to comply with regimes, it may actually be so. Or more to the point, even if there are mechanisms of social control in operation, this need not be a bad thing for the person who becomes entangled in them. As apologists for complementary medicine sometimes counter to the ‘placebo’ argument against their scientific credibility, if an intervention makes the person feel better, does it matter how? (Peters 2001). Thus the subjective meaning of compliance with an RI regime may be interpreted by actors as a positive motivation, and if so, what right do we have to judge these beliefs as invalid? As Symbolic Interactionists will always argue, ‘if men [sic] define situations as real, they are real in their consequences’ (Thomas & Thomas 1928: 154). However, there is still something missing. Even a three dimensional analysis of this kind fails to take into account the social context in which these regimes are sought out, delivered, pursued and reproduced. Why do inmates perceive the institution in such positive and beneficial terms? Such attitudes do not simply descend from abstract, impersonal power structures; they are created, sustained and mediated by the rituals and routines of institutional life. Symbolic Interactionist theories help to elucidate this process. From a dramaturgical perspective (Goffman 1959), I have argued that the RI’s power operates horizontally as well as vertically, through the interactions between members as social actors or players. Goffman’s (1983) concept of interaction order pointed to the way in which actors collaboratively build and sustain a shared definition of reality, by presenting themselves strategically and interpreting the impressions others give off. This is a largely harmonious vision of co-operation, which assumes that actors want to avoid conflicting definitions of the situation that would pose a threat, both to their individual faces and to the momentum of their collective team performance. The self is embedded in these networks of interaction, which constitute the fabric of society; specific

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sites, such as the institution, are no more than complex patterns of interaction, or institutional arrangements’, upheld by routinised conformity (cf. Simmel 1917). As we saw in Chapter 2, Goffman was not naive enough to suggest the absence of conflict, but rather saw it to be expressed in more subtle and measured ways, through dramaturgical stress and interactional tension, defensive identity performances, and acts of resistance that were small, even tokenistic (Jenkins 2008; Scott 2010a). These gestures were easily suppressed and quashed by the institutional machinery, as for example the hospital underlife never mobilised into collective protest because individual inmates were primarily concerned with their own fate. In the RI, this process is even more difficult to discern, because inmates are (or present themselves as being) sincerely committed to the institutional regime. Any feelings of frustration or resentment are channelled not at authoritarian staff for imposing the rules, but at fellow inmates for failing to adhere to them. Negotiated Order Theory (NOT) (Strauss 1978) was more observant of the potential for conflict between organisational strata; the agentic, revolutionary capacity of social actors; and the overall messiness and complexity that lay beneath the semblance of interaction order (Day & Day 1977; Fine 1984). Nevertheless, the emphasis of this theory, too, was ultimately upon harmony: tension was diffused and dramaturgically managed through actors’ sustained efforts to negotiate their interests. Symbolic Interactionist approaches do remain somewhat reluctant to address the thorny issues of power, inequality and conflict beyond the level of the micro (Gouldner 1979; Smith 2006), and so can usefully be combined with other models such as Foucault’s (Jenkins 2008). This model is also important in reminding us to avoid Goffman’s own habit of portraying individuals as rational, self-contained and rather mechanical cogs in the dramaturgical machinery, behaving instrumentally and unemotionally according to logically deduced motives of self-presentation. NOT invites us to contemplate the possibility of ‘messiness’ at the intrapersonal as well as interpersonal level, insofar as actors may experience conflicting motivations, ambivalent emotions and behavioural inconsistencies (cf. Craib 1994). Thus in the RI, members might vacillate between different levels of commitment to the institution over the course of their stay, depending on their experience of the regime. They may also experience shifts in attitude towards staff and peers, who might be convivial dramaturgical team-mates one day but hostile competitors the next. Identity reinvention is a long term process that unfolds in a linear but uneven pattern, with many

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peaks and troughs along the way; the inmate’s progress along this trajectory is shaped by and contingent upon the flow of interaction in which they are embedded. Performative regulation To synergise these theoretical strands, I proposed the concept of performative regulation (see Chapter 3). This is intended to describe specifically the operation of power in the RI, but might also potentially apply to other types of organisation. In devising this concept, I sought to bring together elements of the macro, structural level (institutions as systems of rules and regulations) and the micro level (inmates as individual actors, motivated by self-reflexive and dramaturgical concerns), while emphasising an intermediate, meso level (the interaction context in which individuals perform their identities, namely the inmate culture with its local norms, values and sanctions). Performative regulation occurs where groups of people submit themselves to the authority of an institution, internalise its values and enact them through mutual surveillance in an inmate culture. Power flows not only vertically downwards, but also horizontally, diagonally and through every dimension in between, in messy, cross-cutting circuits. Furthermore, this power is experienced as benign, enabling and beneficial to the goal of self-improvement; it is accepted by actors and legitimated by their meaning-making practices and accounting procedures. The governmental gaze is dispersed and reticulated through mechanisms of peer surveillance and mutual regulation, whereby members monitor each other’s conduct, sanction deviance and evaluate their own progress in relative terms. I have used the term ‘performativity’ in a dramaturgical sense, to refer to the ways in which RI inmates strategically interact as knowledgeable agents, managing the versions of the self that they present to others (Goffman 1959). The rituals of group meetings, informal fraternisation and peer mentoring are central to this process, and such informal learning can be as transformative as the formal instruction that an institution provides. Inmates learn not only what it will be like to be their future self, but also how to experience themselves during the process of its acquisition: as students, neophytes and identitiesin-the-making. This in turn informs the dramaturgical task of presenting these transitional characters to other actors in the institution, whose reactions have a fateful effect upon their status claims. Inmates play to each other as committed conformists and rule followers, presenting themselves as troubled, recovering, transformed or reinvented, at vary-

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ing stages and to varying extents (cf. Gubrium & Holstein 2001). These performances are witnessed by fellow inmates as audience members, whose scrutinising gaze exerts the power either to confirm or to discredit their identity claims. This reaction affects the actor’s subsequent performances, as lines of action may be changed to avert scepticism and create a more convincing impression – to oneself as well as to others – of sincere commitment. Meanwhile, it is important to remember that these audience members are themselves actors, who are simultaneously engrossed in their own identity claims and dramaturgical dilemmas. The unfolding drama is a tangled knot of interactional contingencies, attributed meanings and mutual (mis)perceptions.

Identity and authorship What deeper and longer term effects does this have upon inmates’ selfidentities? These may be elucidated if we consider the alternative, poststructuralist notion of performativity, espoused by Bulter (1990). Here, the appearance of a stable identity is an illusion, created by a reiterative series of acts: the individual is constantly engaged in doing rather than merely having or being a self. In this respect, there is a parallel to Symbolic Interactionist notions of selfhood as dynamic, mutable and contingent upon the performances of others. However, while the poststructuralist argument goes further in suggesting the absence of an underlying, essential self – which is nothing more than the sum of its performances – the dramaturgical model retains the idea of there being an actor behind the character(s) presented. Thus in the RI, there is an original subject who is doing their own reinvention, in an ongoing, self-reflexive cycle: s/he is simultaneously an actor who performs and a subject defined by these performances. This differs from the experience of the TI inmate, who perceived a clear distinction between their ‘real’ self (the prior, civilian self that was under attack) and the false self they were obliged to assume within the institution. For the RI inmate, these two aspects of identity collide and merge in an ongoing dialogue between the ‘I’ and the ‘Me’ (Mead 1934), as the individual acts, reflects upon reactions to these actions, adjusts his or her self image and behaves accordingly. The prior version of the self is scrutinised, picked apart and systematically rebuilt by the actor, and some parts of it may be retained in the reconstructed product. The new identity is experienced not as an externally imposed, alien form but rather as an ideal image, which inmates actively incorporate into a narrative of authenticity, wherein reinvention signifies the realisation of their true interests.

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This involves complex processes of emotional labour, dramaturgical skill and biographical identity work – all of which serve further to alter the individual’s understanding of themselves. As agentic storytellers, RI inmates are audiences to their own performances as well as those of each other: they bear witness to the process of their own reinvention, and seek to convince themselves that this experience has been deliberate, meaningful and worthwhile. They do not simply lose themselves or discard their previous identities completely, even if this is the story that they tell themselves to account for what has happened – the fact that they are capable of telling the story is itself evidence that the narrating author-self survives. Furthermore, this is a story that continues after the individual leaves the institution – if, of course, they manage to do so. Actors must deal with the interactional complexities of navigating the process of role exit (Ebaugh 1988) and becoming being an ‘ex’ occupant of two social roles: their pre-institutional self (who remains an important, villainous character in the reinvention narrative) and their inmate self (who was a neophyte in a liminal stage of becoming [cf. Turner 1967]). This again is different to the moral career of Goffman’s TI inmate, who lost sight of his or her mortified, pre-patient self completely, and whose experience of the ex-patient phase was a negative one of confronting prejudice and stigma (Goffman 1963a). Far from being ashamed of their stay in the institution, RI inmates are often proud, sometimes evangelical, about asserting their reformed identities. They reflect upon the process of transformation as a turning point (Strauss 1969) in their lives, which made them who they are today. A minority, however, become disenfranchised by the experience and lose faith in the institution; their accounts may read less as invitations than as warnings to potential recruits not to get involved. Such dissenters demonstrate the practices of role distance and communication out of character (Goffman 1959), as they reflect critically upon the performances they have given and cast doubt upon their own sincerity. To return to the question posed at the outset of this book, of how much control the RI inmate has over the authorship of their new identity, the answer is a complex one. To an evident and substantial extent, the inmate is agentic and voluntaristic, exercising independence and autonomy in the way that s/he approaches and engages with the institution, and as a dramaturgical actor, s/he retains a degree of critical detachment from the characters s/he plays. Yet on the other hand, the inmate does not make these choices in a social vacuum, and is influenced by the performances, actions and reactions of fellow inmates, the insti-

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tutional discourses that circulate, and the wider cultural ideologies from which these have sprung. The authorship of the reinvented self is therefore a complex, multi-party process, involving the exercise of power but also resistance, negotiation and iterative mutual influence. The individual does make agentic choices, and perceives these to be in his or her own best interests, but insofar as this author-self is itself reconstructed by the experience of being in the institution and undergoing change, it is difficult to argue that these are independent and autonomous choices. The narrative of reinvention is one that inmates tell themselves, acting both as performers and audience members, and it is only convincing to the extent that it is validated by other players in the drama of institutional life. Perhaps we may conclude that both the RI inmate and the TI inmate possess a combination of agency and passivity in relation to their own role status, but that the relative balance between the two has shifted and reversed: whereas TI inmates were not simply docile bodies but potential rebels, RI members find their performative autonomy compromised by the discipline of interaction order.

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Index abuse and exploitation, 61–4, 69–70, 136, 179–81, 196, 201 see also brainwashing, bullying, violence academia, 203–6 accounts, 40, 160, 172, 200, 204, 205, 240, 242 see also narratives of self addiction, 7, 33, 38, 41, 42, 95, 105, 143, 145, 151, 156, 159, 161–73, 207, 229, 236 agency, 4–5, 18, 19–21, 23, 24, 26, 28, 30, 35, 38, 42, 48, 49–50, 51–2, 70, 93, 105, 132, 138, 143, 145, 147, 148–9, 154, 160, 163, 168, 191, 214, 217, 225, 236, 237, 239, 244–5 alienative coalition, 22 Alcoholics Anonymous, 164, 214, 230 see also twelve step programmes Alpha Course, 70–2 anti-psychiatry, 1, 14, 19–20, 31, 152, 218, 235 Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs), 33, 92 anxiety, 34, 35, 36, 59, 123, 191–4, 194 armed forces, 137–9, 139–40 see also military; ships and seafarers asylum, psychiatric, 11, 20, 57, 151, 173, 234–5 Asylums, 1, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19–21, 31, 34, 234–5 audience reactions see validation of identity claims audit culture, 203–6 authenticity, 34, 36, 60, 78, 84, 105, 106, 108, 111, 114, 117, 150, 170, 173, 210, 218, 220, 221, 226–7, 233, 236, 243 authorship of the self, 4–5, 145, 243–5 awareness contexts, 171

backstage, 16, 34, 145, 213 Becker, Howard, 8, 18, 22, 63, 67, 84, 124, 132, 154, 190–4 betrayal, 22, 118, 119, 140–1, 219, 237 Big Brother, 43, 90, 111–12 biographical identity work, 39–43, 52, 97, 147, 166, 188, 195, 199, 212, 236, 244 see also narratives of self blogging, 222–4 boarding schools, 175–85, 202–3 bodies, 99, 106, 107–15, 176, 184–5, 200, 212, 218, 232–3, 238 boot camps, 103, 109, 112 borstals see Young Offender Institutions (YOIs) brainwashing, 62–3, 70, 216, 240 buddying systems, 27, 179, 182 buildings, 12–13, 16, 32, 89, 93, 119, 131, 175, 176, 182, 207, 231, 234 bullying, 179–81, 205–6 bureaucracy, 16, 26, 100, 152 camaraderie see solidarity and cohesiveness carceral society, 46, 48, 89, 238 career trajectory, 22, 51, 63, 67, 77, 80, 88, 97, 119, 132, 142, 154–6, 158, 164, 190, 217, 241 case record, 24, 27, 90, 97 ceremonies, 16, 40, 56, 57, 78, 79, 119–20, 127, 137, 159, 162, 178, 179, 190 chapter houses see fraternities and sororities character building, 88, 98, 99, 103–5, 105–6 charismatic leaders, 62, 63, 70, 71, 74, 77, 103, 121, 123, 124, 152, 153, 159 Children of God, 62 Christ’s Hospital school, 178–9, 182

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274 Index civilian, home or outside world, 19, 22, 28, 44, 51, 137, 144, 148, 159, 179, 182, 210–11, 213, 217, 225, 229, 230–3, 243 class, 12, 13, 35, 55, 60, 76, 78, 79, 83, 99, 125, 129, 143, 175–6, 180–1, 187, 186, 209, 210, 236 closed institutions see impermeability Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), 95, 96, 149–51 coercion, 4, 9, 16–19, 21, 26, 28–9, 30, 42, 234–5, 237 cohesion see solidarity and cohesiveness college and university, 185–98, 203–6 see also academia; fraternities and sororities; higher education; students college towns, 130 communication out of character, 193, 244 competitiveness, 7, 50, 107, 111, 168, 169, 178, 184–5, 187, 197, 198, 202–3, 204–6, 218, 226–7, 237, 239, 241 confession, 23, 38, 42, 95, 96, 97, 112, 113, 116, 165, 168, 172 conflict, 7, 10, 15, 18, 19, 49, 67, 101, 124, 140, 153, 163, 171, 196, 197, 206, 218, 240, 241 conformity and compliance, 23, 29, 57, 96, 138, 158, 170, 171, 216, 240 performance of, 25, 50, 51, 57, 88, 90, 96, 104, 138, 169–73, 185, 190–4, 200, 206, 216, 218–19, 226, 242 consumerism and commercialisation, 37, 38, 60, 72, 74, 75, 76, 78–9, 121, 128, 161 contaminating exposure, 23, 57, 90, 237 convents, 56–7, 73 cultural and social capital, 6, 104, 175, 193, 203, 209, 226, 228, 229, 231, 236 cultural doping, 38, 48, 239 cynical performances, 24, 25, 26, 52, 96, 97, 149, 171, 193, 206

dance, 5 Rhythms, 79–80 decarceration, 14, 31–4, 92, 143, 235, 238 degradation ceremonies, 22, 168 deindividuation and disinhibition, 139, 209, 232 deviance, 21, 23, 26, 46, 84, 95, 135, 140–1, 143, 144, 149, 154, 165, 169, 205–6, 218, 220, 229, 233 see also resistance and rebellion dieting and weight loss, 107–9, 113–14 see also eating disorders disappointment, 39 disciplinary power, 5, 23, 30, 38, 45–9, 50, 64, 68, 76, 78, 82, 86, 88–115, 147–8, 151, 160, 173, 183, 184, 195, 200, 205, 238, 239, 245 discourses, 35, 37, 38, 41, 46–8, 54, 59, 71–2, 74, 88, 97, 113, 143, 150, 161, 162, 163, 168, 184, 186, 200, 215, 216, 222, 234, 236, 238, 239, 245 see also rhetoric, institutional dramaturgy, 9–10, 16, 18, 35, 43, 50, 51, 104, 145, 162, 167, 169, 173, 179, 190, 193, 213–14, 223, 225, 240–1, 242–3, 244 Durkheim, Emile, 55, 74, 78, 120, 126, 130, 158, 159, 164, 165, 183, 186, 204, 208, 216, 226 eating disorders, 146–9, 184–5, 203, 215–19 education, 174–206, 239 effervescent assemblies, 74–5, 78, 120, 126, 155, 159–60, 202 emotions, 7, 36, 39, 49, 55, 64, 73, 79–80, 83, 84, 104, 105, 106, 110, 112, 114, 133, 134, 142, 143, 146, 149, 150, 153, 154, 159, 162, 164, 165, 169, 170–3, 181, 200, 201, 203, 211, 213, 224, 241 emotional labour/work, 167–70, 172–3, 225, 244 Eton school, 177–8

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Index 275 exclusivity, 6, 44, 59, 115, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 126, 127, 131, 136, 156, 160, 189, 195, 196, 198, 200, 217, 226 expert patients, 32, 214 Facebook, 221, 227–30 family, 15, 22, 34, 35, 36, 44, 65, 66, 67, 79, 84, 102, 105, 109, 110–11, 112–13, 131, 138, 146, 147, 152–7, 166, 175, 176, 179, 181, 185, 200, 204, 195 RI as surrogate family, 65–6, 112–13, 138, 153, 156, 179, 195, 200 fandom, online, 224–7 fashion, 113–15 ‘fat camps’, 109–11, 112 femininity, 78–9, 114–15, 147, 184–5, 187, 204, 208–9, 216 fitness gyms, 107–8 forums, Internet discussion, 212–22 Foucault, Michel, 5, 16, 23, 32, 38, 44, 45–9, 64, 88, 146, 165, 176, 205, 238, 241 fraternities and sororities, 196, 129–41, 137, 156, 160, 192, 196, 211, 217 freedom and liberation, 46, 98, 105, 160, 184, 232, 237, 239 Freemasons, 119–21, 137 Friends of the Western Buddhist order (FWBO), 69–70 friendship and fraternisation, 27, 65–6, 67–70, 86, 99, 116, 117, 122, 125–7, 128, 134, 155, 162, 191–3, 194–5, 214–15, 227–30, 234, 242 frontstage, 10, 16, 213 Garfinkel, Harold, 38, 116, 131, 136, 162, 168, 239 gender, 12, 13, 78–9, 83–4, 85–7, 98–9, 114–15, 120, 125–7, 129, 132, 133, 133–4, 136, 139–40, 145, 146, 147, 162–3, 180–1, 184–5, 187, 204, 208–9, 210, 213–14, 229, 232–3 Goffman, Erving, 1–2, 5, 8–29, 34, 39, 43, 44, 49, 51, 56–7, 63, 64, 90,

96, 114, 118, 132, 134, 135, 145, 148, 149, 162, 167, 169, 171, 173, 175, 176, 179, 193, 206, 213, 220, 234, 235, 237, 240–1, 242, 244 ‘good’ inmate see conformity and compliance, performance of Gouldner, Alvin, 16, 26, 241 governmentality, 88, 100, 238, 239, 242 Grade Point Average (GPA), 187 GPA perspective, 191–4, 196 greedy institution, 43–4, 63, 68, 85, 117, 158, 192, 196, 200–1, 211, 236 Greek letter system see fraternities and sororities Hare Krishnas/ISKCON, 65 hazing rituals, 135–41, 160, 196 Henderson Hospital, 152, 154–6 hierarchy, 22, 45, 100, 118, 119, 146, 153, 163, 176, 179, 209, 210, 218, 226, 228 higher education, 174–5, 185–98 home see civilian, home or outside world home improvements, 113 identity, 2, 4–5, 19–21, 34–9, 40, 54, 59, 63, 84, 94, 97, 99, 105, 117, 126, 129, 131, 132, 134, 141, 142, 148, 173, 178, 182, 183, 184, 188, 190, 195, 199, 203, 205, 209–12, 215, 221, 223, 227, 231, 234, 238, 242, 243–5 equipment, 22, 120, 176, 182 performance, 34, 35, 84, 100, 122, 131, 132, 134, 136, 138, 144, 148, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 171, 173, 180, 184–5, 200, 203, 205, 218–19, 221–2, 223–4, 241, 242–3 reinvention, 6, 7, 21, 28, 34–9, 41, 49, 52, 59, 69, 80, 88, 95, 97, 105, 108–9, 111, 115, 149, 150, 151, 162, 164, 173, 185, 186, 187–90, 202, 209, 232–3, 235, 236, 241, 243, 244, 245

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276 Index identity – continued work, 39–43, 142, 145, 158, 161, 164, 168, 210, 211, 213, 218 see also biographical identity work imagined community, 208, 225, 228, 234 impermeability, 12, 15, 28, 44, 59, 63, 92, 111, 123, 201, 202 Impostor Phenomenon, 204 incarceration, 14, 19, 31, 43, 46, 88, 89, 91, 92, 148 individualisation, 36 individualism, 34, 55, 123, 190, 208, 228 indulgency pattern, 16, 26, 27, 45, 97 informational preserve, 22 initiation ceremonies, 6, 40, 118, 119–20, 137 see also hazing rituals inmates, 8, 19–21, 26–8, 39, 64, 92, 131, 148, 149, 169, 172, 173, 182, 205, 219, 228, 235, 239, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245 inmate culture, 3, 13, 41, 49, 51, 52, 53, 69, 82, 85, 86, 92, 94, 100, 102, 106, 110–11, 118, 125, 129, 132, 140, 153, 154, 166, 167–73, 174, 180, 181, 184–5, 190, 191, 192, 194–5, 197–8, 200, 206, 217, 237, 242 institutions, 4, 14–15, 37, 43–5, 131, 149, 234, 239, 241, 242, 243 see also Total Institution (TI); Reinventive Institution (RI) institutionalisation, 13–14, 28, 31, 44, 92, 93–4, 181, 201 institutional arrangements, 18, 19, 21, 24, 27, 28, 29, 38, 51, 81, 86, 88, 110, 124, 141, 146, 174, 176, 197, 235, 238, 241 insularity, 2, 6, 44, 69, 79, 85, 115, 116, 123, 129, 133, 135, 136, 155, 174, 178, 194–5, 195–8, 199, 201, 202, 207, 217, 228 interaction order, 5, 18, 30, 49, 51–2, 240, 245 Interlochen Arts Academy, 202–3 Internet addiction, 207, 229

Internet-based communities see virtual institutions Ivy League, 187 Jehovah’s Witnesses, 65 kibbutzim, 84–7 Kingsley Hall, 152 Ku Klux Klan, 121–2, 137 late modernity, 2, 35, 59, 123, 223, 234, 235 leisure, 73–5, 81, 83, 95, 98, 103–7, 125–7 liberal arts colleges, 131, 187 lifeworld, 35, 36, 58–9, 158–60, 182, 184, 207 liminality, 112, 130, 137, 144, 218, 244 liquid institutions, 35 lodge houses, 126 looping, 24 loyalty, 44, 61, 118, 119, 120, 126, 135, 137, 138, 140, 146, 156, 176, 178, 181, 194–5, 201, 208, 219, 236 Lukes, Steven, 6, 48–9, 160, 240 madness, 11, 14, 32, 94, 142, 152, 154 Magic Circle, 127–9 make dos, 27 masculinity, 83–4, 85–7, 98–9, 120, 123–5, 133–4, 178, 180–1, 213–14, 220 master status, 22, 105, 145, 146, 168, 192 McSelves, 39, 77, 137, 236 medicalisation, 11, 32–3, 46, 94, 143, 149, 150, 165, 166, 239 members see inmates mental health and illness, 11, 21, 79–80, 81–2, 96, 102, 110, 115, 142–73, 181–2, 201, 212–14, 214–22, 223–4, 228–30 military, 85–7, 88–115, 98–103, 151 monasteries, 56–8, 68, 73

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Index 277 morality, 19–21, 24, 32, 34, 38, 42, 44, 51, 82, 90–4, 98, 103, 106, 108–9, 110, 111, 112, 115, 119, 120, 150, 152, 164, 170, 173, 177, 183, 184, 195, 235 moral career, 5, 21–6, 28, 38, 39, 63, 72, 77, 80, 84, 88, 90, 106, 112–13, 145, 159, 164, 244 moral loosening, 24 moral panic, 63, 135, 208, 216, 220, 229 mortification, 22, 23, 24, 31, 56–7, 90, 114, 119, 136, 137, 138, 145, 201 narratives of self, 39–43, 49, 55, 80, 97, 99, 104, 162, 163, 165–6, 172, 189, 195, 199, 200, 205, 212, 221–2, 223–4, 234, 236, 243–4, 245 see also biographical identity work naturism, 84 negotiated order, 5, 13, 15–16, 30, 45, 49, 50, 100, 183, 197, 241 New Age spirituality, 75–6, 83, 150 New Religious Movements (NRMs), 54, 60–4, 211 online communities see virtual institutions online resources, 32, 74, 79, 207–33, 239 organisations, 14–15, 18, 33, 38, 43, 62, 116, 134, 161, 211, 230, 234, 241, 242 aesthetic, network and virtual, 43 outside see civilian, home or outside world pacts, 136 Paganism, 77–9 Panopticon, 46, 48, 51, 89, 110, 112, 146, 205, 219, 227, 238 parachurches, 66–7 peer group leaders and mentors, 41, 50, 72, 139, 156, 179, 182, 190, 194, 219, 237, 242

pressure, 4, 69–70, 72, 85, 107, 109, 135–6, 181, 183–4, 187, 192, 195, 196, 203, 204, 205, 213, 216–17, 219, 220, 221, 237 socialisation, 106, 110, 117, 128, 129, 131, 132, 135, 139, 149, 182, 191–4, 194–5, 200 surveillance and monitoring, 49–52, 54, 69, 82, 85, 88, 89, 90, 106–7, 110, 134, 140, 154, 155, 160–1, 169–73, 183, 195, 204–6, 210, 218–19, 221, 227, 242 People’s Temple, 62 performative regulation, 6, 30, 49–52, 53, 59, 69, 131, 134, 155, 160–1, 167–73, 181, 183, 200–1, 215, 218–19, 220, 228, 237, 242–3 performativity, 7, 237–43, 243 performing arts academies, 198–203 permeability, 44, 53, 64, 94, 123, 127–8, 133, 182, 236 permeable institution, 44–5 pharmaceutical revolution, 14, 32 power, 1–2, 3, 9–10, 16–19, 30, 33–4, 37, 45–9, 49–52, 118, 122, 123, 149, 153, 160, 168, 169, 183, 209, 210, 220, 234, 237–43, 245 prisons, 2, 6, 9, 33, 45, 46, 48, 57, 71, 72, 88–97, 144–6 penal reforms, 90–4 prisoner rehabilitation programmes, 94–7, 144–6 privilege system, 23, 95 pro-anorexia websites, 215–19 problems of living, 7, 32, 33, 98, 143, 165, 235 see also medicalisation psychiatry, 11–12, 14, 20, 31, 95, 142, 150, 151, 215, 222, 238 ‘psy’ industries, 37, 46–8, 239 punishment and sanctioning, 23, 91, 134, 160–1, 167, 168, 169, 180, 215, 220, 238, 242 race and ethnicity, 56, 65, 66–7, 78, 94, 121, 129, 132–3, 133–4, 137, 209, 211, 233 reality television shows, 109, 111–15, 223

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278 Index recarceration, 33, 59, 238 recovery, 4, 7, 13, 23, 38, 40, 42, 90, 96, 97, 98, 109, 142–73, 215, 217, 219, 220, 229, 238, 242 Red Hat Society, 126 reflexive self, 2, 32, 36, 39, 68, 147, 149, 164, 204, 232, 235, 240, 242, 243 regimes see disciplinary power; rules; treatment regimes; timetables and schedules rehabilitation, 6, 7, 11, 33, 72, 92, 94–7, 110, 144, 145–6, 169, 171, 173, 214, 229, 235 reinvention see identity, reinvention of Reinventive Institution (RI), 2, 19, 22, 28–9, 30–53, 54, 72, 73, 84, 86–7, 90, 94, 104, 139, 169, 204, 206, 211, 229, 235, 236, 238, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245 definition, 3, 30–1 features, 52–3 relative evaluation of progress, 4, 6, 49, 51, 53, 90, 97, 106, 142, 169, 172, 204, 218, 226–7, 237, 238, 242 release anxiety, 44, 144, 156, 201, 219 religion, 54–87, 105, 120–1, 130, 150, 158, 186, 203, 216, 226 resacrilisation, 58–60 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE)/Research Excellence Framework (REF), 204–6 residential segregation, 12, 92, 123, 129, 176, 202 resistance and rebellion, 18, 23, 26–8, 51, 52, 94, 132–3, 144, 146, 148–9, 153, 169, 205–6, 215, 219, 225, 235, 241, 244, 245 retreats, 69, 73, 79, 80–3, 106, 128 revolving door effect, 31, 144 rhetoric, institutional, 37, 41, 51, 71–2, 77–8, 88, 95, 110, 122, 139, 149, 158, 168, 169, 170, 173, 182, 186, 220 Rhodes Farm clinic, 147

rites of passage, 22, 40, 98, 104, 112, 129, 135, 137, 140, 162, 185 see also status passage rituals, 6, 22, 38, 53, 55, 56–7, 68, 75, 78, 118, 119, 120, 121–2, 126, 130, 136, 137, 163, 164, 165, 168, 177–9, 204, 226, 242 rivalry see competitiveness; conflict Roedean school, 178 role distance, 26, 50, 95, 138, 146, 154, 171, 244 roles, 1, 3, 4, 10, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 22, 24, 25, 26, 28, 30, 33, 34, 40, 44, 85, 105, 117, 120, 124, 131, 138, 139, 147, 155, 173, 174, 179, 190, 191, 194, 208, 211, 213, 228, 230, 244, 245 Rose, Nik, 37, 46–8, 54, 77, 98, 160, 239 Rosenhan, David, 149 Rosicrucians, 121 rules, 1, 3, 8, 9, 14–16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 44, 45, 52, 69, 85, 90, 94, 100, 101, 112, 114, 129, 135, 148, 149, 153, 155, 164, 171, 176, 177, 179, 182, 183, 186, 191, 193, 214, 216, 223, 236, 238, 239, 241, 242 running, 105–7 schedules see timetables and schedules schools, 174–85, 189 see also boarding schools Scientology, 76–7 Second Life, 231–3 secondary adjustments, 24, 26, 27, 28, 92, 148, 191 secrecy, 116–18, 136, 156 secret societies, 116–25, 127, 136, 140, 164, 217, 219 sects and cults, 60–4, 75, 121, 216, 220 secularisation, 58 selfhood, 4–5, 17, 19–21, 26, 28, 30, 34, 35, 41, 95–6, 107, 137, 162, 167, 168, 172, 174, 185, 188, 208, 210, 211, 212, 225, 231, 234, 235, 240, 242, 243–5

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Index 279 self-actualisation, 38, 47, 75–6, 76–7, 79, 98, 113, 150, 159, 174, 183, 218 self-help groups, 37, 161–73, 214–22, 229 self-improvement, 52, 59, 76, 98, 218, 235, 236, 239, 242 self-presentation, 10, 22, 43, 50, 104, 145, 162, 167, 170, 205, 209, 210, 220, 221–2, 241, 242 see also dramaturgy; identity performance self-religions, 59, 75–83 self-respecting tendency, 22 seminars, workshops and courses, 70, 75, 76–7, 79, 81 service clubs, 125–7 sexuality, 66–7, 84, 85–7, 95–6, 132, 133–4, 136, 162–3, 179–81, 185–6, 210, 232–3 sexual violence, 25, 62, 69, 95–6, 121, 134, 136, 180–2, 196 ships and seafarers, 101–3 shyness clinics, 149–51 Simmel, Georg, 116–18, 136, 154, 208 sincere performances, 24, 51, 132, 169, 171, 173, 193, 220, 221–2, 237, 241, 243 social movements, 83–7, 234 social networking sites, 210, 220, 221, 227–30 solidarity and cohesiveness, 7, 13, 16, 53, 54, 78, 94, 116, 118, 120, 122, 125, 126, 128, 131, 133, 135, 138, 140, 141, 146, 153, 160, 162, 177, 179, 181, 182, 183, 189, 195, 196, 197, 199, 208, 212, 214–15, 218, 237 Soul Survivor, 73–4 space and place, 147, 194–5, 207, 209, 215, 217, 227, 232, 234, 235 spirituality see religion Spring Harvest, 74–5 staff authority and power, 16, 24, 51, 139, 170, 176, 177 identities, 139, 193, 197–8, 203–6

relations with inmates, 17, 28, 45, 94, 100–1, 132, 146, 153, 156–8, 179, 183, 187, 193–4, 197–8 world, 45 status, 2, 3, 12, 17, 18, 22, 23, 24, 26, 28, 30, 40, 44, 45, 57, 61, 95, 100, 101, 111, 112, 117, 119, 124, 125, 128, 130, 135, 136, 138, 139, 140, 142, 145, 153, 155, 158, 159, 163, 166, 167, 168, 169, 177, 178, 179, 180, 184, 185, 186–7, 188, 190, 204, 218, 226, 228, 242, 245 status passage, 41, 162, 185, 187–90 Steiner/Waldorf schools, 183 stigmatisation, 27–8 Strauss, Anselm, 15–16, 40, 49, 241 students, 129–41, 174–203, 242 suicide, 220–2 summer camps and festivals, 73–5, 202 Summerhill school, 183 surveillance, 3, 16, 32, 33, 45–9, 111–12, 146, 183, 204–6, 219, 238, 239 see also disciplinary power; peer surveillance Symbolic Interactionism, 1, 8, 9–10, 13, 17–18, 63, 131, 164, 190–4, 212, 221, 234, 240, 243 Theosophy movement, 120 therapeutic aims, 79–80, 81–2, 88, 103, 110, 142–73, 201, 209, 214 Therapeutic Communities (TCs), 151–61 therapy culture, 37, 48, 98, 142–3, 163, 239 time, 92–4, 102–3 timetables and schedules, 9, 46, 57, 68, 93–4, 159, 176, 235 Total Institution (TI), 1, 5, 8–29, 31–4, 35, 44, 48, 50, 56–8, 63, 64, 72, 73, 84, 86–7, 89, 90, 92, 101, 104, 118, 139, 146, 149, 160, 161, 175, 176, 234–5, 243, 244, 245 definition, features and types, 9 Transcendental Meditation (TM), 76–7

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280 Index treatment regimes, 94–7, 142–73, 239–40, 241 Troubadors, 133–4 turning points, 40, 113, 244 twelve step programmes, 95, 163–6, 167–73, 214, 216, 230 underlife, 26–7, 28, 51, 92, 241 Unification Church, 62 universities, 185–98, 203–6 see also fraternities and sororities; higher education; students v-logging, 222–4 validation of identity claims, 131, 162, 163, 165, 167, 173, 185, 221–2, 223, 245 victimhood, 39, 70, 143, 163, 165, 168, 169, 173, 215 violence, 121, 136, 140, 180–1, 196, 201

Vipassana meditation, 68–9 virtual community, 207–12, 234 virtual institutions, 7, 32, 79, 133, 207–33 virtual reality, 230–3 voluntarism, 4, 29, 30, 40, 43, 49–50, 51, 52, 53, 61, 64, 77, 98, 102, 105, 111, 147, 154, 167, 175, 183, 204, 211, 236–7, 244–5 ward system, 23, 148 Weber, Max, 8, 55–6, 58, 62, 152 working the system, 26, 100, 148 Young Offender Institutions (YOIs), 91 young people, 71–2, 73–5, 78–9, 91, 103–7, 127, 174–203, 216, 220–1, 227, 239 zombie institutions, 34