Habermas, Goffman, and Communicative Action

, GOFFMAN, AND COMMUNICATIVE ACTION:IMPLICATIONS FOR PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE*

James J. ChrissUniversity of Pennsylvania

In his Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas (1984, 1987) argues thatbecause Goffman's dramaturgy emphasizes the goal-oriented or strategicnature of actors' self-presentations, it fails to establish the conditions fornoncoerced or reasoned communication. After reviewing Habermas's nega-tive reading of Goffman, I assess both Habermas's and Goffman's theoriesin the context of professional practice and organizational behavior. I suggestthat certain programs in the social psychology of organizations, such asArgyris and Schon's (1974) action research, share Habermas's one-sidedview of Goffman's actor as an opportunistic, insincere manipulator. This mis-reading of Goffman results from a fundamental confusion over the ontologyand epistemology of "impression management." I conclude that if Haber-mas 's theory of communicative action is to advance further, that is, if it isever to adequately link with the empirical social world, it must come to moreconcrete terms with the nature of the presented self.

Over the past two decades researchersin the social sciences and humanities

have been taking the "linguistic turn," mean-ing that they are turning their attention to is-sues of the self and to theories of communi-cative conduct or practice. Discussions of theprocesses or theories of the self are incom-plete, however, if they are not formulated orunderstood within a broader analyticalframework. Goffman's (e.g., 1959, 1971,1974) dramaturgical theory of action, al-though providing important perceptions anddescriptions of the vagaries of face-to-facebehavior, does not on its own offer much of

* Direct correspondence to James J. Chriss, De-partment of Sociology, 3718 Locust Walk, Uni-versity of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6299. A much abridged version of this paper waspresented on August 9 at the 1994 annual meet-ing of the American Sociological Association inLos Angeles, CA. I thank Hugh Willmott, DavidSciulli, John Forester, and Ivar Berg for provid-ing helpful comments on several earlier drafts. Ialso thank the ASR reviewers for their comments.Much of this paper is drawn from Chapter 9 ofmy Ph.D. dissertation (Chriss 1994a). For anearly cursory statement on the Habermas-Goffman problem, see Chriss (1992). [The re-viewers acknowledged by the author are ChrisArgyris and Ben Agger. —ED.]

a sense of how these microprocesses arelinked to larger social structures.

On the other hand, Talcott Parsons's (1951,1978) architectonic social systems schemaprovides a blueprint, a mapping, or a grid forthe understanding, or at least the conceptual-ization of, whole social systems. Parsons at-tempted to reduce the massive complexity ofsocial systems to a few crucial elements orprocesses. This analytical gambit amountedto delineating four functional requisites ofsocial systems: adaptation, goal-attainment,integration, and latent pattern-maintenance(AGIL). Then he argued, by sheer force ofreason (Parsons's notion of "analytical real-ism"), that there exists parallel functionalprocesses at all other levels of the social sys-tem.'

' For example. Parsons argued that the processof allocating roles in society was analogous to theintemalization, through socialization, of culturalnorms and values in the individual. As Parsons(1951) states, "The allocation of personnel be-tween roles in the social system and the social-ization processes of the individual are clearly thesame processes viewed in different perspectives"(p. 207). Both processes, then, have similar func-tional significances at their respective levels ofgenerality or specificity, namely that of integra-tion.

American Sociological Review, 1995, Vol. 60 (August:545-565) 545

546 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

Although Parsons attempted to explain so-cial microprocesses through his AGILschema, a majority of researchers have notemployed his blueprint in their analyses.Parsons's schema is considered by many tobe bombastic, overly abstract, and not par-ticularly amenable to empirical testing (butsee Lidz 1986). The sense that Parsons'sschema is detached from reality—from theempirical social world—led to an avalancheof criticisms beginning in the 1950s and ex-tending until his death in 1979 and even be-yond (Dahrendorf 1958; Gouldner 1970;Mills 1959; Wrong 1961).

Much of this criticism of Parsons's pro-gram was. of course, concentrated in the aca-demic left, or "radical sociology." and espe-cially in Marxist or neo-Marxist thought. Afew observers have suggested, for example,that Parsons's (1937) "voluntaristic theory ofaction" is notable in that it includes almostno discussion of the works of Marx (Agger1992; Gouldner 1970). Parsons's programthus offered, at least in the minds of someleft-leaning critics, a handy alternative to theHegelian Marxism prevalent in Europe sincethe 1920s (Agger 1992:57).

In sociology, the most successful wing ofMarxist thought and research has beenFrankfurt School critical theory (Kincheloeand McLaren 1994). Horkheimer. Adorno.and Marcuse are some of the thinkers wholed the way toward establishing criticaltheory and extending its influence in sociol-ogy, largely through the successes of a num-ber of applied research programs (such asAdorno. Frenkel-Brunswik. Levinson, andSanford's [1950] study of the authoritarianpersonality). In extending and updatingMarx's legacy, the goal of Frankfurt Schoolthinkers was to identify, uncover, and hope-fully ameliorate oppressive social structuresor circumstances. Whereas Marx had con-centrated primarily on the objective featuresof oppression, such as those connected withpolitical power and economics, the new criti-cal theory called for a return to philosophy,and even to psychoanalysis, to thoroughlydiagnose the pathologies of modern culture.

This emphasis of critical theory continueduntil the early 1970s, when a new version ofcritical theory—call it neo-critical theory—emerged, largely through the efforts ofHabermas. Habermas's (1971. 1975) pro-

gram carried forward some elements of theHorkheimer/Adorno version of criticaltheory. For example, he retained their criti-cal view of positivism and their goal of es-tablishing a new theory of knowledge, whichwould, in dialectic fashion, take into accountthe social, historical, and cultural contextswithin which that knowledge is formulatedand accepted (i.e.. the sociology of knowl-edge; see Dahl 1995).

But departing from the original FrankfurtSchool tradition, which was largely skepticalof the ability of established science to con-tribute to the good life. Habermas aimed torescue science and the Enlightenment-in-spired force of reason through a search forthe foundations of knowledge (Bottomore1984). Habermas argued that if we are in-deed interested in identifying and eradicat-ing oppressive social structures, we must es-tablish a foundation or basis upon which wecan say. with some degree of certainty, whatis or is not a liberative or oppressive socialstructure. This understanding of social struc-ture can be forged only if critical theoriststurn their attention back to conceptualizingentire social systems, focusing once again oncertain crucial elements heretofore neglectedin the social science literature.

This attention to systems theory ledHabermas inexorably to an analysis of theworks of Parsons. Habermas (1987) states,for example, that "no theory of society canbe taken seriously today if it does not at leastsituate itself with respect to Parsons" (p.199). This is not to say. of course, thatHabermas was wholly enamored of Parsons'stheory. Habermas argues that Parsons's workdisplays a deep internal tension between theidealist tradition of social action and thepositivist tradition of social systems. In es-sence. Parsons's theory never successfullycoupled "system" to "lifeworld" (but seeMunch 1993).^ This is because Parsons was

2 Habermas (1984:82) argues that, for analyti-cal reasons, we need to distinguish between"world" and "lifeworld," especially with regardto discussing the "rationalization of thelifeworld." As human beings we rely, often intaken-for-granted fashion, on a cultural stock ofknowledge which, because it is alreadyintersubjectively shared, both forms the back-ground for communicative action and providesthe foundation for our routine social doings. The

HABERMAS, GOFFMAN, AND COMMUNICATIVE ACTION 547

generally inattentive to talk—to speechtheory or to linguistic analysis, more gener-ally. Parsons chose instead to attend to broadconceptions of culture, as in the culture, per-sonality, social system triad, and this focuskept his theory of social action suspendedwithin the system or functionalist side of theanalytical divide.

On the other hand, according to Habermas,Goffman's dramaturgical theory, althoughgiving attention to social action or lifeworldprocesses, is suspended in the idealist tradi-tion, and therefore it was never in a positionto link adequately to systems theory. Goff-man's mistake was that he never understood,perhaps never realized, that talk itself couldcontain the potential for a universal founda-tion for critical theory that could traverse thelifeworld-systems divide. This foundation is,as Habermas argues, the universal validityclaims inherent in all speech (to be discussedmore thoroughly below).^

COMMUNICATIVE ACTION INORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT

Goffman's work stands on its own as a rep-resentation of the lifeworld processes of so-cial interaction and face-to-face behavior. Ifwe are ever to reconcile Parsons's systemstheory with Goffman's work on the micro-processes of communication, it seems thatHabermas's theory of communicative actionmay serve well, as it has assimilated crucialaspects of Parsons's schema.

"lifeworld" is an unthematized realm that, suf-fused as it is with shared cultural knowledge, al-lows us to refer thematically to something thatactually exists in the objective world. For an ex-tended critique of Habermas's formulation oflifeworld, see Rosenthal (1992).

^ Habermas's theory of communicative actioncan be thought of as a meso theory providinglinks from the macro or systems analytical realmto the micro or lifeworld analytical realm. House,Rousseau, and Thomas-Hunt's (1995) mesotheory of organizational behavior, although notdrawing from Habermas per se, neverthelessshares some affinities with Habermas's program,such as their criticism of prevailing general psy-chological theories in the field of organizationalbehavior (OB), which tend to be context-free andrarely take into account macro or structural vari-ables.

Any further discussions of Goffman, Par-sons, Habermas, and their interrelation at thishigh level of theoretical abstraction runs therisk of disintegrating into confusion, intosomething even less than a patchwork ofideas. Thus, I move now toward a concretearea of concern to facilitate this discussionof communicative action: professional prac-tices, such as planning, consulting, andevaluation.

I choose the substantive area of profes-sional practice because I have worked as aconsultant (mainly in business and education)and evaluator (in program planning andevaluation with philanthropic organizations),and of course I did much of this work throughobserving talk in formal (business or organi-zational) settings. For example, consultants,planners, or evaluators may be hired by abusiness to observe the nature of interactionstaking place between personnel across vari-ous organizational hierarchies (Stein 1994).

Organizations hiring consultants to dosuch work are concerned, of course, with thebottom line—improving organizational com-munication, performance, or perhaps evenmorale.'* Sociologists familiar with Haber-mas's or Goffman's works may well recog-nize this particular organizational problem asone of "systematically distorted communica-tion" (Habermas 1987). The goal of the con-sultant in such a case is to recommend ac-tions for improving the organization's com-

'' With respect to morale, an organization mayhire a consultant if there is a widespread organi-zational perception that employee morale is lowor that managers are not effective in motivatingin their employees a sense of organizationalpride, loyalty, or teamwork. The literature onproblems and issues of this sort falls somewhatoutside the bounds of sociology per se, residinginstead in literature on organizations and espe-cially management. The practice of compellingemployees to demonstrate loyalty to a particularset of organizational values has received a scath-ing critique from Willmott (1993), who states:

Especially in cases where insecure, fashion-con-scious management strives to 'modernize' itspractices, aided and abetted by consultants whoprey upon managers' vulnerability, a paradoxicalconsequence of culture-strengthening pro-grammes is a further degradation and distortionof communication as employees instrumentallyadapt their behaviour to conform with the relevantcorporate code. (P. 536)


municative practices (Felts 1992; Hakel1994).

A few professional planning consultants,such as Forester (1989, 1992) and Schroyer(1973), have made explicit connections be-tween their day-to-day consulting work andHabermas's theory of communicative action.Other scholars, such as Sciulli (1992a) andFrankford (1994), are actively working onprograms that attempt to implement or assessHabermas's ideas within the context of pro-fessional or business practices. For the mostpart, however, the theory of communicativeaction remains distant from practice. Frank-ford (1994) and others have suggested thatalthough critical theory's major goal has al-ways been to link theory to practice, attemptssuch as Habermas's to facilitate such linkshave not been successful. Just as withParsons's AGIL schema, Habermas has facedthe difficulty of making his abstract theoryrelevant to the empirical social world.

The guiding idea of my paper is that Goff-man's observations on face-to-face interac-tion, and especially his taxonomy of verbalpresentations of self, may be just the sort ofempirically-grounded research to providelinks from theory to practice. I return in thenext section to the case of business consult-ing, specifically Argyris and Schon's (1974)program of "action research." I illustrate thatHabermas's theory of communicative actionis relevant even in those cases where thepractitioners themselves may be unaware ofsuch theory-practice links.^ Thus, I illustrate

^ Until 1985, Argyris and his associates(Argyris, Putnam, and Smith 1985) made no ex-plicit mention of the relevance of Habermas andcritical theory to their own work, such as in thefollowing quote:

Action science is not alone in advocating thatcommunities of inquiry be enacted in communi-ties of practice. This formulation also seems ap-propriate to critical theory as articulated by theo-rists of the Frankfurt School. Habermas speaks ofcreating conditions that approximate the 'idealspeech situation,' which would allow human be-ings to come to a rational consensus about how toconduct their affairs. To our knowledge, however,Habermas has not devoted his energies to creat-ing such conditions in the real world. (P. 35; ital-ics added)

For an interesting discussion that compares andcontrasts Habermas's critical theory with actionresearch, see Ledoux (1981).

the potential applicability of Habermas'stheory within business and professional set-tings where consultants are paid to observeorganizational actors' social and verbal inter-action.

I address a final issue, however, beforecontinuing. One could very well argue thatmy attempt to analyze Habermas, Goffman,and issues of communicative action withinthe context of organizations is fatally flawedbecause, by their very nature, formal organi-zations and other administrative entities arebased, not on communicative rationality, buton purposive and instrumental rationality.Cooke (1994), for example, notes that "theadministrative system does indeed representa mechanism of action coordination externalto the lifeworld" (p. 20).

Habermas (1987) admits that even withinformal organizations a number of routine in-teractions between organizational membersare connected via the mechanism of mutualunderstanding—that is, on some crucial lev-els communicative action is assured or atleast made possible between these organiza-tional actors. As Habermas (1987) continues.

Members of organizations act communicativelyonly with reservation. They know they canhave recourse to formal regulations, not onlyin exceptional but in routine cases; there is nonecessity for achieving consensus by commu-nicative means. . . . Innerorganizational rela-tions constituted via membership do not re-place communicative action, but they dodisempower its validity basis so as to providethe legitimate possibility of redefining at willspheres of action oriented to mutual under-standing into action situations stripped oflifeworld contexts and no longer directed toachieving consensus. (Pp. 310-11)

Although I am sympathetic to criticismsthat, following Cooke (;i994) and Habermas(1984, 1987), point out the instrumental, pos-sibly even coercive nature of organizations, Iargue that there are equally pernicious im-pediments to engaging in noncoerced or rea-soned communicative interaction within theboundaries of the lifeworld itself. Granted,actors may very well be ethically neutralizedby the formal-legal constitution of actionsystems typical of organizations—thisamounting to a distortion of lifeworld pro-cesses via the incursion of systems impera-tives. Nevertheless, there always exists the


possibility that certain forms of action, suchas strategic action, although emanating fromthe lifeworld itself, are nevertheless parasiticon communicative action, thereby hamperingactors' ability to reach understanding.^

With this caveat in mind, let us turn nowto a discussion of Argyris's action research.

ARGYRIS, SCHON, AND ACTIONRESEARCH

For several decades Argyris, Schon, andother researchers have been involved in whatis variably described as "action research,""action inquiry," or "action science," a pro-gram for integrating thought and action, es-pecially in the context of professional prac-tice (Argyris 1993a, 1993b; Argyris et al.1985; Argyris and Schon 1974, 1989; Schon1983; Torbert 1991; Whyte 1991). Thosewho work as evaluators, planners, consult-ants, psychiatrists, lawyers, architects, case-workers, and so forth, spend years receivingformal and rigorous training in a variety ofdiagnostic techniques that give them effica-cious means for assessing and intervening intheir world.

Argyris and Schon (1974) provide the fol-lowing account of the logic underlying theirown action program:

All human beings—not only professional prac-titioners—need to become competent in takingaction and simultaneously reflecting on the ac-tion to learn from it. The following pages pro-vide a conceptual framework for this task byanalyzing the theories of action that determineall deliberate human behavior, how these theo-ries of action are formed, how they come tochange, and in what senses they may be con-sidered adequate or inadequate, (P, 4)

In the authors' assessment, then, all delibera-tive action, whether conducted by profes-sionals in a work setting or by laypersons inthe course of their everyday lives, is basedupon some theory of action or conduct, how-ever tacit or unthematized this theory may bein the minds of actors. The authors suggestthat one of the primary goals of their pro-gram is to help identify what they call "theo-ries-in-use," that is, the actual assumptions.

knowledge, orientations, and strategiesundergirding and informing the actual socialpractices of individuals in given situations.As Argyris and Schon (1974) state, "Theo-ries-in-use are means for getting what wewant. They specify strategies for resolvingconflicts, making a living, closing a deal, or-ganizing a neighborhood—indeed, for everykind of intended consequence" (p. 15).

Argyris and Schon are careful to distin-guish theories-in-use from mere "espousedtheories," the latter being those theories ofaction to which actors or organizations givewritten or spoken allegiance. The idea is thatwe cannot be certain of deriving a person'stheories-in-use simply by asking why he orshe did X or Y under condition Z; a personmay not even be aware of incompatibilitiesbetween their espoused theories and theo-ries-in-use. Likewise, an organization mayhave a written code of directives or a formalmanifest pertaining to organizational goals orpurpose: yet their overtly stated position—the organization's "espoused theory"—maynot align with actual organizational prac-tices.^

Argyris and Schon's (1974) researchpoints to a particular model that accounts forpersons' typical theories-in-use, which theyrefer to as "Model I." This model designates(1) a group of governing variables, or thegoals research study participants strove toachieve; (2) action strategies, these being theactual strategies participants adopted; (3)consequences for the behavioral world; and(4) consequences for learning.

** As we shall see later, Habermas argues thatdramaturgical action is parasitic on communica-tive action as well.

^ Argyris and Schon, citing Scott (1969), illus-trate the incompatibility between espoused theo-ries and theories-in-use among workers in anagency for the blind. The organization's officialposition, as represented in written documents andemployee testimony (its espoused theory), holdsthat "the blind are potentially independent, thatagencies for the blind function to help the blindrealize that potential. The theories-in-use, how-ever, assume that the blind are basically depen-dent on the agencies, that it is a function of theagencies to sustain the dependence through con-tinuing service, and that the function of a blindperson is to adapt to life in an agency setting"(Argyris and Schon 1974:8), Note also that thisidea parallels Goffman's discussions of virtualversus actual identity (1963b) and total institu-tions (1961a),


Particularly important are the conse-quences for the behavioral world resultingfrom the various action strategies employedby research study participants and the gov-erning variables underlying these strategies.For example, if an actor's primary orienta-tion to the world is to define goals and try toachieve them (the famous ends-meansschema), then a typical action strategy wouldbe to design and manage the environmentunilaterally (e,g,, by being persuasive or byappealing to larger goals). When actors findthemselves in such situations or perceivesituations in such a light, the consequencesfor the behavioral world are such that actorsare seen by others as defensive (e,g,, havingto defend a particular line of action or pro-vide rationale), as inconsistent (e,g., in caseswhere the chosen means don't appear toalign well with desired or stated ends), ascompetitive, controlling, manipulative, orany number of other negative consequences.

The implications of Model I, according toArgyris and Schon (1974), is that, otherthings being equal, behavior is typically de-fensive and ultimately dysfunctional. Thisdefensiveness is passed on across genera-tions, as children are socialized into or learnModel I behavior from their parents, peers,and significant others insofar as the behav-ioral worlds of the family, school, and else-where conform to the assumptions of ModelI (Argyris and Schon 1974:82), As Argyrisand Schon (1974) state.

Adults programmed with these [Model I] val-ues tend to create human relationships that em-phasize competitiveness, withholding helpfrom others, conformity, covert antagonism,and mistrust while deemphasizing cooperation,helping others, individuality, and trust, (P, 83)

The authors then make an assertion thathas grave implications for my work on Goff-man, Habermas, and communicative action:Because these dysfunctional Model I valuesare embedded in our culture and remain thereas unseen or unthematized aspects of dailylife, they are "confirmed" by societal mem-bers and act as real, authentic, natural, or in-evitable guidelines for directing groups orindividuals in their dealings with one an-other. Hence, "Interpersonal diplomacy, be-ing civilized, withholding feelings, and sup-pressing anger and hurt are but a few com-

mon examples of what individuals are taughtto do to help maintain harmony in interper-sonal relationships" (Argyris and Schon1974:83),

Argyris and Schon argue that the tools ofinterpersonal diplomacy—things like defer-ence and demeanor, politeness, embarrass-ment, norms of etiquette, face work, reme-dial and supportive interchanges, accountsand apologies, tolerance, access rituals, androle distance (Goffman 1953, 1959, 1961b,1963a, 1967, 1969, 1971, 1974, 1981)—ac-tually support Model I, thereby sustainingand perpetuating the dysfunctional behaviorsassociated with it. In fact, from the perspec-tive of Argyris and Schon, Goffman's life-long work was dedicated to unearthing, de-scribing, and systematizing humanity's de-structive but "natural" Model I behavior,^

What this implies, then, is that Goffman'sdescription of the interaction order, and thevast array of interpersonal rituals containedtherein, amounts to documenting the wayspersons go about the business of living andcoping in a world of "pseudo-authenticity,"Model I generates and regenerates a state ofpseudo-authenticity, especially insofar aspersons tend to minimize negative feelingsand their expression.

As we have seen, then, the governing vari-ables of Model I consist of competitive, win/

" I argue (Chriss forthcoming) that the behav-iors that Argyris and Schon describe as self-seal-ing, defensive, and ultimately destructive actuallyembody the negational self. The negational selfis a self by default in that most public declara-tions of self amount to specifying what the self isnot. This can be accomplished through role dis-tancing or through self-effacement and modestyabout the self. Through these behaviors personsattempt to demonstrate the ideals of a well-de-meaned individual, Habermas (1984), too, sideswith Argyris and Schon in emphasizing truth-tell-ing as part and parcel to reasoned communication,thereby tending to cast politeness and other eti-quette norms into the realm of the irrational sincethey can work to mask persons' truthful assess-ments of a situation, Kingwell (1993:392) warns,however, that any reconstruction of rational pre-suppositions in communication, such as embod-ied in Habermas's theory of communicative ac-tion, would have to include those propositions as-sociated with politeness, especially as specifiedby Grice (1975) and Goffman (e,g,, 1959, 1967,1963a, 1971),


lose, rational, and diplomatic behaviors thatare "self-sealing."' These are examples ofwhat Habermas (1984,1987) would call "sys-tematically distorted communication." Formost large-scale organizations, distortedcommunication is a day-to-day, operationalreality. As Forester (1989) explains,

Whether in the public or private sector, organi-zations are not egalitarian Utopias; differencesof status, power and authority, information andexpertise, interests and desires abound. Thoserealities—including the incompetent manager,the arrogant section head, the misinformedstaff analyst, the fight between developer andregulator—cannot be wished away. (P. 8)

It is no great revelation that much of thedysfunctional Model I behavior with whichArgyris and Schon are concerned is ex-pressed or expressible in talk. Likewise, it isno surprise that the corrective measureswhich they propound—as specified in their"Model II" program of theories-in-use—aretargeted at organizational communicationand face-to-face behavior.

Argyris and Schon (1974) suggest thatModel II's governing variables are an im-provement over Model I's because they arenot self-sealing, but instead tend to permitmore effective testing of interactants' as-sumptions and greater learning about one'seffectiveness as a communicator and/or inter-preter. For example, the primary governingvariable of Model II, namely maximizingvalid information, means that an actor pro-vides others with directly observable data sothat others may make valid attributions aboutthe actor (Argyris and Schon 1974:86). Theorganizational consultant's job, then, is toshow organizational actors how to make thetransition from Model I—self-sealing behav-ior—to Model II—open and honest behaviorbased on maximizing valid information,maximizing free and informed choices, andmaximizing internal commitments to deci-sions made. Argyris and Schon spell out insome detail the steps that instructors typi-

^ "Self-sealing" behavior is behavior that closesoff public testing of the assumptions of one's orother's theories-in-use, thereby reducing learningand hence freezing actors in static and potentiallydestructive worlds. An example of the self-seal-ing process is as follows. Actor A believes thatactor B is defensive: If A cannot test this belief

cally take in helping participants actuallylearn Model II behavior (see 1974:110-136).

The differences between Habermas andGoffman is thus illuminated by the analysisof the work of consultants, especially thosewho are considered experts in the observa-tion of face-to-face interaction in a variety ofsettings—often organizational ones.

The empirical context thus established, Inow return to Habermas's theory itself. In anattempt to describe and clarify the methodsof reasoning employed by Habermas in hisTheory of Communicative Action (1984,1987), Baldamus (1992:100) provided a ci-tation analysis of that work. Not surprisingly,Baldamus found that of the 220 authors citedby Habermas, the top 5 were (by total num-ber of citations) Parsons (180), Weber (140),Durkheim (76), Mead (75), and Marx (69).Much further down the list, cited only 4times, is Goffman. I evaluate Habermas'sbrief treatment of Goffman and suggest theways in which Goffman's theory might helpconnect Habermas's overtly analytical theoryof communicative action to the empirical so-cial world.

HABERMAS ON THE CONCEPTS OFTELEOLOGICAL, NORMATIVE,DRAMATURGICAL, ANDCOMMUNICATIVE ACTION

Habermas (1984) defines "communicativeaction" as "the interaction of at least twosubjects capable of speech and action whoestablish interpersonal relations (whether byverbal or by extra-verbal means)" (p. 86).'°

and if A acts according to his hunch, B probablywonders why A is behaving in this way. There-fore B acts cautiously. A senses B's caution andmay interpret it as evidence that B is indeed de-fensive. A believes that if he were to reveal hisfeeling that B is defensive, his relationship withB would become less manageable. A's reluctanceto confront B means that B in turn need not con-front the incongruity between B's espousedtheory and his theory-in-use. But also as a result,A's behavior is incongruent with his values. Thenorms supporting incongruity and minimizing ex-pression of negative feelings are reinforced,thereby exacerbating A's negative or uncertainfeelings about B (Argyris and Schon 1974:77).

'"This obviously excludes so-called "self-talk." Goffman (1978, 1981) deals with specific


Obviously, language is itself prominent inHabermas's model—it is the mediumthrough which individuals interpret eachother's plans of action while negotiating defi-nitions of the situation. Ideally these nego-tiations, if they are to lead at all to a final(even if only provisional) definition of thesituation, must first and foremost define con-sensus among the participants.

This process of achieving understandingthrough language is for Habermas the defin-ing problem in the theory of communicativeaction. As Habermas (1984) explains, "Theconcept of reaching an understanding sug-gests a rationally motivated agreementamong participants that is measured againstcriticizable validity claims" (p. 75). Haber-mas's theory of communicative action, then,attempts to treat rationality from a universal-istic perspective. That is, in attempting to de-lineate the normative foundations of a criti-cal theory, Habermas suggests that these es-sential concrete norms are implicit in the va-lidity claims of all speech.

Habermas then expands this provisionalconcept of communicative rationality by ana-lyzing the ontological assumptions of ratio-nality embedded in a variety of social-scien-tific theories of action. Habermas (1984:85)suggests that this "profusion of action con-cepts" can be reduced in essence "to four ba-sic, analytically distinguishable concepts" ortheoretical traditions: (1) teleological action,(2) normatively regulated action, (3) drama-turgical action, and (4) his own communica-tive action.

Habermas evaluates the worthiness and so-phistication of the four theoretical perspec-tives on action with respect to how each sat-isfies the criteria of a three-world model.Habermas's (1984:95) three analyticalworlds correspond to the three ways socialactors relate to the everyday world, namely,objectively, socially, and subjectively. Thisthreefold relation of communicative actors totheir world identifies different forms or di-

forms of self-talk, such as imprecations andcurses (e.g., "ouch!," "damn!," "jeez!," "oops!").Habermas (1979) chastises Goffman, however,for lumping together identity-threatening acts,which are authentic emotional-expressive in-stances of self-talk, with spill cries, such as thosementioned above, which are more impulsive andnot overtly calculated as face-saving devices.

mensions of understanding that members ofa society gain as a result of their interactionwith others as well as through other routinesocial practices. Habermas argues that thefour theoretical perspectives on action varyin the extent to which each is able to illumi-nate these relations. He lists these theories inrank order: Teleological action is at the weakend of the explanatory spectrum, and pro-gressing to the most efficacious of the theo-ries, Habermas's own communicative actiontheory is at the strong end.

Teteotogicat Action

Since teleological concepts of action—suchas those of utilitarianism, behaviorism, or ra-tional-choice theory—emphasize primarilythe strategic or goal-oriented calculations ac-tors employ in pursuing courses of action,Habermas suggests that this concept can onlyaccount for one world, namely the objectiveworld. As the actor is engaged in a decisioncalculus that takes into account the elementsof his or her action options in relation to theconstraints and exigencies of the objectiveworld, the intended effect in the world or theresults of his or her strivings will in the endbe judged a success or failure according tocriteria of truth and efficacy (Habermas1984:87). The implications of teleologicaltheory is that action, as realized through thecognitive processes of a knowing subject, isrepresented only as a relation between theactor and a world. At the level of its onto-logical presuppositions, then, teleologicalaction operates from a highly demarcated,and for Habermas's purposes, insufficientone-world concept.

Normativety Regulated Action

Whereas teleological action operates from alimited one-world perspective, normativelyregulated action (such as Parsons) presup-poses relations between an actor and twoworlds (Habermas 1984:88). Actors depictedin the normatively regulated concept of ac-tion are endowed with a "motivational com-plex" in addition to teleology's lower-level"cognitive complex." The motivational com-plex makes norm-conformative behavior pos-sible in that actors judge whether or not theactions of themselves or another actor are in


accord with existing norms (Habermas1984:89). Beyond providing judgments ofthe extent to which actions are successful orunsuccessful in relation to the objectiveworld, the normatively regulated model ofaction also provides for judgments of an ac-tor in his or her relation to the social world,insofar as the actor is able to comply with(or is unable or chooses not to meet) the nor-mative expectations of the members of his orher social group. This is a two-world modelbecause, as Habermas (1984) explains, theconcept of norm-conformative action "pre-supposes that the agent can distinguish thefactual [objective] from the normative ele-ments of an action situation, that is, condi-tions and means from values" (p. 90).

Goffman's Dramaturgicat Modet of Action

Habermas then discusses the concept ofdramaturgical action. Like normatively regu-lated action, dramaturgical action provides atwo-world model, the two worlds comprisingthe objective and subjective dimensions of anactor's relation to the world. Goffman's actor"works the system for the enhancement ofself through self-presentation and impres-sion management. This idea is, for Habermas,strongly reminiscent of the kind of goal-orientedness characteristic of teleological(strategic) action. As Habermas (1984) states,"The dramaturgical qualities of action are ina certain way parasitic; they rest on a struc-ture of goal-directed action" (p. 90).

In addition to the objective world, drama-turgical action depicts a subjective world;actors involved in self-presentation mustform a "visible public" with regard to theiraudience. For the theorist, then, this model ofaction opens up a subjective world of actorsmaking "staged presentations" before a groupof others. In other words, we peer inside the"black box" of the subjective workings lurk-ing behind and animating an actor's overtbehavior. As Habermas (1984) explains, theconcept of dramaturgical action suggests that"the actor is oriented to his own subjectiveworld in the presence of his public" (p. 93).

Important to note here is that unlike theconcept of normatively regulated action,Habermas argues that dramaturgical actiondoes not allow for understanding or explain-ing the social world. In fact, he suggests that

all three of the aforementioned action con-cepts are deficient with respect to at least oneof the three worlds.

Although each of the concepts (teleologi-cal, normatively regulated, and dramaturgi-cal action) presupposes the importance oflanguage in explaining an actor's relation tothe world, Habermas suggests that only com-municative action incorporates language as amedium for reasoned or noncoerced action—a medium through which actors can actuallygain understanding and consensus as mem-bers of a societal community. As Habermas(1984) explains.

Only the communicative model of action pre-supposes language as a medium of uncurtailedcommunication whereby speakers and hearers,out of the context of their preinterpretedlifeworld, refer simultaneously to things in theobjective, social, and subjective worlds in or-der to negotiate common definitions of the situ-ation. (P. 95)

It is my position that Habermas's diagno-sis of the deficiencies of teleological, norma-tively regulated, and dramaturgical conceptsof action in explicating certain dimensions ofhis three-world model is for the most partsound. However, I explore further Haber-mas's judgment that dramaturgical actionfails to adequately specify actors' relationsto the social world. I believe, in fact, thatHabermas's theory of communicative actionmay be fruitfully recast through the prism ofGoffman's (1974) frame analysis, especiallywith reference to "The Frame Analysis ofTalk" (Goffman 1974, chap. 13:496-559)."Before moving on, however, I first review

'' Because Habermas published CommunicativeAction in 1981 (translated from German in 1984),it is perhaps the case that he had not yet readGoffman's Frame Analysis, which was first pub-lished in 1974 (and translated into German in1980). Habermas never cites Frame Analysis, andit is hard to imagine that he would have come tothe same conclusions regarding the inadequaciesof dramaturgical action for his own theory of com-municative action had he been familiar with itsmajor arguments. However, Habermas (1979) wasfamiliar with a paper of Goffman's—"ResponseCries" (Goffman 1978)—which later appeared inan edited volume on human ethology (vonCranach, Foppa, Lepenies, and Ploog 1979) andthen was included in Goffman's Forms of Talk(1981). However, Goffman does not refer to ormention Frame Analysis anywhere in that paper.


Habermas's discussion of validity claims andthe rationality assumptions underlying com-municative action.

COMMUNICATIVE ACTION, RATION-ALITY, AND VALIDITY CLAIMS

To reiterate, Habermas is concerned first andforemost with an analytical program that,through the generative assumptions of uni-versalizable ethics (norms) and social actors'capacity for moral reasoning and rationality(Benhabib 1992:24), attempts to delineatecriteria for and the possibility for nonco-erced, or communicative, action. The prob-lem of rationality is thus reintroduced inHabermas insofar as the conditions for sucha communicatively achieved, reasonableconsensus among actors must be groundedin the possibility of actors' communicativerationality, this being "the competency to ar-gue and the imperative of responsibility[through language]" (Hinkle 1992:317; alsosee Hayim 1992).

Habermas's attempt to designate criteriafor noncoerced, or communicative, actionhinges on the explication of three validityclaims that represent the binding force ofcommunicative acts. A speaker raises all ofthe following validity claims with his or herutterances, as every speech act could be con-tested on the following grounds:

(1) Hearer can contest the normative right-ness of the utterance (social world).

(2) Hearer can contest the subjective truth-fulness of the utterance (subjectiveworld).

(3) Hearer can deny that certain existentialpresuppositions obtain (objective world).

Habermas (1984) offers the following ex-ample to illustrate these validity claims:

A seminar student understands the followingrequest by a professor: "Please bring me a glassof water." (P. 306)

As this is not a simple imperative or sheerexpression of will, but a speech act carriedout in an "attitude oriented to understand-ing," the student may contest its validity withthe following responses:

(1) No. You can't treat me like one of youremployees [contesting the normative right-ness of the utterance].

(2) No. You really only want to put me in abad light in front of the other seminar par-ticipants [contesting the subjective truth-fulness of the utterance].

(3) No. The next water tap is so far away that Icouldn't get back before the end of the ses-sion [denying that the appropriate objectiveconditions obtain]. (Habermas 1984:306;comments in brackets added by author)

The student is, in the first case, contestingthe action of the professor; in the second,contesting that the professor means what hesays; in the third, denying the truth of propo-sitions the professor has presupposed in thegiven situation. This holds, according toHabermas, for all speech acts oriented toreaching understanding.

Habermas attempts to somehow find a wayto institute the binding normative (moral)conditions obtaining in the "ideal speechsituation" across the entire societal commu-nity. He admits that this is, at present, apurely Utopian goal, as he is unable to locateinstances of communicative action at the in-stitutional level within modern. Western so-ciety (see Sciulli 1989, 1992a, 1992b). It is,first and foremost, the problem of modernity,what Habermas refers to as the shearing offof system from the lifeworld.'^ But unlikemany critics of modernity, Habermas is un-willing to reject the project of Enlighten-ment, which he construes as the quest for therational foundations of a critical sociology.This quest is, I believe, worthwhile and im-portant, and hence my concern is to helpreach this goal by attempting to link Haber-mas's analytical theory of communicativeaction to the empirical social world. In asomewhat more critical vein, I suggest thatHabermas must take more seriously Goff-

'̂ In attempting to complete the project of mo-dernity, Habermas knows full well the sorts ofsocial pathologies that must be addressed to de-fend modernity against recent postmodern(meta)critiques (especially those of Lyotard, Fou-cault and Baudrillard). Habermas's "shearing offof the lifeworld" equates to a concern with thedeleterious effects of instrumental rationality onthe everyday social world (lifeworld). The ongo-ing rationalization of society has caused a splitbetween system and lifeworJd. This implies twoforms of societal integration: (1) The lifeworld isintegrated by communicative action, whereby ac-tors work to achieve consensus through language;


man's (1959, 1981, 1983a, 1983b) insightsinto the forms of talk that occur in the gen-eral context of human communication forgedthrough simple co-presence (i,e,, the "inter-action order"),

BRINGING GOFFMAN BACK IN

Habermas's concern with the problem of cur-tailed communication, and of communicationmore generally, is shared by Goffman, Thatis, like Habermas, Goffman spent his entirecareer investigating communicative action orconduct, but from an empirical or ethno-graphic perspective, not an overtly analyticalone. In his dissertation, "CommunicationConduct in an Island Community," Goffman(1953) explains, "As the study progressed,conversational interaction came to be seen asone species of social order" (p, 1), And later,citing Parsons (1951) and Barnard (1947),Goffman lays out the fundamental assump-tion underlying his sociological model ofcommunication: "I assume that conversa-tional interaction between concrete personswho are in each other's immediate presenceis a species of social order and can be stud-ied by applying the model of social order toit" (p, 33),

Whereas Habermas's rationality assump-tions are explicitly stated as three validityclaims, the assumption of rationality is onlyimplicit in Goffman, as Parsons and othershad already worked out sophisticated sche-mata to explain the place of rationality in so-cial order, or rather, in the "constitution" ofsocial actors operating within the social sys-tem. The closest Goffman ever comes to di-rectly dealing with the rationality problem isthrough his theory of normal appearances

(2) at the systems level, functional integration in-tertwines action with their consequences. The lat-ter form of integration is guided by the"objectivating attitude," the former by the"performative attitude," Because abstract andgeneralized criteria are encompassed in many fac-ets of life (e,g,, legal norms, economic action, thenorm of cognitive rationality), the "system" maybe seen as operating with a life of its own, withlittle or no reference to the actual activity of par-ticipants of the lifeworld. This system dominationoccurs through the ongoing rationalization (orwhat Habermas calls the "colonization") of thelifeworld.

(see Goffman 1971), That is, per the drama-turgical theory of action, social actorslearn—first through socialization and thenthrough imitation and experience—the tacitcultural codes signaling an actor's proper de-meanor while in the presence of others,Goffman's actor can thus modify presenta-tions of self appropriately to "fit" any par-ticular interaction episode so as to signal tothose present that he or she is a reasoned or"rational" actor (i,e,, that he or she is a rati-fied participant in the social proceedings,that he or she belongs there, that he or she isnot "crazy" or deranged, that he or she is nota threat). An actor's minimum requirementsfor maintaining normal appearances throughthe display of his or her verbal and/or non-verbal actions means that no undue alarm issignaled to others present,

Goffman and Habermas part company onthe epistemological assumptions embeddedwithin each of their theories that pertain toeach theorist's ability to conceptualize whatis going on in the minds of social actors; callit the problem of Verstehen, or phenomeno-logical "intersubjectivity," or more generally,subjective understanding, Habermas, inviewing dramaturgical action, operates ex-plicitly with a "black box" concept of action(to be discussed more fully below), Goffmanhowever rejects this position in his own theo-ries. For Goffman, Habermas's view of com-munication is overly rationalistic. To under-stand this divergence, we turn to Goffman'sFrame Analysis (1974), specifically his dis-cussion of the "Frame Analysis of Talk,"

Goffman's Frame Analysis of Talk

The one thing that makes the idea of com-municative action possible is that, using lan-guage, disparate actors can reach consensuson issues at hand, Goffman's idea of linguis-tic competence is close to Habermas's: Indi-viduals in the presence of others possess cul-tural competence in that they are generallyable to avoid misunderstandings in their ev-eryday communication, (Notice though, forexample, the "cute mistakes" that childrenare allowed in their speech; they are assumedto lack a fully developed communicativecompetence, ) Goffman discusses conversa-tion—the traditional view of which "assumesan easy exchange of speaker-hearer role


[whereby participants are] engaged in a con-summatory moment" (Goffman 1974:498)—merely as a foil. Habermas shares this tradi-tional, hyperrational view of conversation,and as a consequence tends to gloss over theactual social context of talk, which, I wouldsuggest, Goffman has successfully incorpo-rated. In other words, Habermas needs Gof-fman's fuller communication paradigm toflesh out his own theory of communicativeaction.

From Goffman's perspective, all utter-ances, whether formal or informal, regulative,expressive, constative, directive, commissive,or declarative—are first and foremost an-chored in the surrounding world.'^ As he(Goffman 1974:500) states, "utterances takeup a place in the world"; they are, followingDurkheim, "social facts." Utterances producereactions or orientations of actors, therebycontributing to the production of an ongoingsocial world. Most important from the per-spective of dramaturgy, talk is always aproject imbued with "structured suspense"(Goffman 1974:506).

Suspense in talk implies that "we spendmost of our time not engaged in giving infor-mation but in giving shows" (Goffman 1974:508). The implications for Habermas'sproject are staggering. Habermas's theory isdriven by an information paradigm. That is,social life is more or less a continuous battleover the status, the validity, the appropriate-ness, the truthfulness, of knowledge claims—the problem of information exchange andtransfer drives Habermas's theory. But forGoffman, talk constitutes not only bald state-ments of fact; talk is also about recounting,about "story-telling." Much of talk consistsof replayings in which a storyteller maintainsthe listeners' suspense. This suspense pro-vides frames for the organization of talk.

The purely informational perspective(Habermas) leads, in Goffman's view, to anunacceptably utilitarian view of talk or com-munication. The "rational recounting" of

'3 As Collins and Makowsky (1993:268) note,Habermas attaches one particular type of speechact, namely expressives, to Goffman's dramatur-gical theory of action in that for Habermas, ac-tors represent (or can misrepresent) their subjec-tive states or inner selves to others through dra-matic presentation.

facts between participants in communicationimplies the black-box model of interactants(Goffman 1974:511). Furthermore, continuesGoffman, "this utilitarianlike approach tospeech ill equips us for what individuals ac-tually do during speaking" (p. 512). Theblack-box model of information exchange isa simplification because in actuality the "in-sides of the actor's head are exposed in waysother than through voluntary statements orinvoluntary leakage" (p. 514). Going beyondthe black-box model, Goffman (1974:515)gives examples of nonutilitarian talk such as"collusive communication," whereby one can"conceal speech behind speech" by convey-ing information via sarcasm, irony, innu-endo, or simple fun. Habermas deals some-what inadequately with the collusive frame,and would tend to write it off as strategic ac-tion, which, in any case, would not meet hisstandards for communicative action.

Goffman (1974) suggests that the "tradi-tional model of the actor whose facial fea-tures are his evidential boundary does not fitthe facts but instead somehow overration-alizes man" (p. 515). However, notice that anactor may guide his or her behavior to fit theblack-box model—to align with normativestrictures of the perceived moral universe: InGoffman's (1974) words, "he has guided hisconduct so as to ensure this fit, sustaining ahuman nature to fit the frame" (p. 516). Thisis Goffman's "normal appearances," whichHabermas mistakes for first-level rational ac-tion. Goffman illustrates the complexity, theframe-within-a-frame possibilities, of rea-soned communication.

Additionally, Habermas says very littleabout what Goffman refers to as the "ritualframe of talk." This is when listener providesto speaker an intermittent stream of support-ive gestures: "uh-huhs," "yeahs," nods of thehead, sustaining eye contact so as to signalinterest in the talk, and so forth. This ritualframe reflects the accommodating pattern offace-to-face interaction. The speaker, ofcourse, also plays a role in accommodation,as the "life of talk consists principally of re-living," or replaying, sustained by suspense(Goffman 1974:547). In other words, nakedperformative utterances, such as a bridgeplayer's bid of "three clubs," are only a mi-nuscule element of the frame of talk. What isimportant, especially if we are to link Haber-


mas's theory to the empirical social world, isthat in talk a person always frames him- orherself from view. An important quote fromGoffman (1974) illustrates this point:

To say that he [the speaker] assumes a role andpresents himself through it is already a bias inthe direction of wholeness and authenticity.What he does is to present a one-man show. Heanimates. (P. 547)

This animation is the speaker's agency, hisor her "doing of the moment." There oftenare, as Habermas has rightly noted, true feel-ings and attitudes expressed in talk, and in-ner states can be documented (the famousblack-box). "But," as Goffman (1974) sug-gests, "these displays are not some privilegedaccess to the biological innards of thespeaker, for they are properly to be attributedto a figure animated, not the animator" (p.547). This is Goffman's (1983b) notion of"loose coupling," the difference between themythic and the performance text—or theslippages that occur between social structureand individual human acts.

Goffman (1974) makes this extremely im-portant point: "Everyday life, which is realenough in itself, often seems to be a lami-nated adumbration of a pattern or model thatis itself a typification of quite uncertainrealm status" (p. 562). This is what Garfinkel(1967) and others have described as the "per-ceived moral universe," the normative viewof the world that individual actors carryaround in their heads, or what Durkheim re-fers to as the "collective conscience." FromGoffman's perspective, everyday activityprovides an original against which copies canbe struck.

Attempting to Reconcile Goffman andHabermas

As we have seen, Habermas's goal is to out-line a research program for a universal prag-matics that identifies and reconstructs theuniversal conditions of possible understand-ing between actors. This goal, of course,turned Habermas's attention toward therealm of "practical discourse," and to specifythe criteria or conditions for possible nonco-erced action, this practical discourse must beaimed at "understanding" rather than at"success."

For Habermas then, "success" is an overlystrategic orientation that often overrides themore crucial goal of "understanding" in ac-tion or communication. What Goffman's ob-servations on talk help us see, however, isthat Habermas's distinction between "suc-cess" and "understanding" in talk is an over-specification of a process that may be imper-vious, at least at this time, to the sort of ana-lytical fine-tuning Habermas seeks. Granted,persons often "put on shows" in talk, theymay attempt to deceive, and there are oftencalculated shifts in the alignment of speak-ers and hearers (what Goffman calls shifts in"footing") as the context of the talk dictates(Goffman 1981:127). But much of this seem-ingly "strategic" action is not necessarily ori-ented to success, that is, a speaker's instru-mental attempt to achieve some goal at theexpense of his or her audience (see Rawls1987:143^4). In fact speakers do indeed at-tempt to achieve understanding throughtalk—Habermas's communicative action—and they utilize the props, mechanisms, andprocesses that Habermas erroneously con-demns as evidence of a speaker's strategic orcoercive intent.'''

Much of the content of talk is, as Goffmanshows, suffused with the very human attemptto illustrate to others through speaker's talkthe presence of a stable, concerted self (seemy discussion of the "negational self [Chrissforthcoming]). In other words, everyday lifeis guided by fictive or romanticized ideals(norms) about the way life ought to be con-ducted. We learn to comport ourselves to ren-der our activities as agreeable to others, andto show through our presentations that wehave a consistent, stable persona to which ouridentity is connected. As Goffman (1974)suggests, "Indeed, in countless ways andceaselessly, social life takes up and freezes

''•Collins and Makowsky (1993) make muchthe same point, suggesting that Habermas seemsto view Goffman's theory as concerned primarilywith the ways that actors express or conceal sub-jective states before a group of others. But, as Iargue here, this view of Goffman is overly nar-row. Rather, "The self may be a 'sacred object'to which we give ritual respect, but by the sametoken it is also a modern myth which actuallyfluctuates with the footings one takes in differentlevels of social interaction" (Collins and Makow-sky 1993:270; also Chriss 1993).


into itself the understandings we have of it"(p. 563).

It is no wonder, then, that Goffman dedi-cated so much of his professional energies tomapping out where, how, and to what extent"real" life becomes theatrics or even down-right deception. In effect, Habermas's ana-lytical program attempts to pick up fromGoffman's (and before him, Bateson's[1972]) starting point by suggesting thatthere is a way to make such a distinction, thisbeing the distinction between authentic (non-coerced) and inauthentic (coerced or staged)communication.

The problem of communicative action, un-derstood in this way, leads us to consider thefollowing from Goffman (1974):

Life may not be an imitation of art, but ordi-nary conduct, in a sense, is an imitation of theproprieties, a gesture at the exemplary forms,and the primal realization of these ideals be-longs more to make-believe than to reality. (P.562)Persons in talk, according to Goffman, al-

ways walk a tightrope along the reality/make-believe continuum, not because there is nec-essarily some devious or underhanded reasonfor doing so, but because of the inherentlytenuous and shifting positions speakers oc-cupy while talking. Goffman's (1981:147)idea of "embedding" suggests just this; thatas speakers we represent ourselves throughthe personal pronoun "I." As speakers we area figure in a statement, a protagonist in a dra-matic event told (or retold).

When we refer to ourselves in talk, wenecessarily speak of someone who inhabitsthe world that is spoken about, not necessar-ily the world of current talk. It is first andforemost a knowledge claim, but not in theway Habermas would designate. That is, thereferencing of self in talk through use of thepersonal pronoun allows for a tremendousflexibility of presentation(s) of self before anaudience (Bell 1984). In effect, we each haveat our disposal a wide array of naturally oc-curring dramatic personae from which todraw in normal everyday speech, and this isnot alarming.'^

' ' For example, "hedges" and "qualifiers," inthe form of performative modal verbs (e.g., I"wish," "think," "could," "hope," etc.) introducedistance between a speaker's figure and itsavowal (Goffman 1981:148).

But in modern industrial societies, bur-geoning populations and increased levels ofanonymity are a feature of everyday interac-tion. In this environment, the increased flex-ibility and decreased accountability of self-presentations may indeed contribute to therise of a whole new range of framing de-bates, such as the imbroglios which haveerupted recently over abortion, speech codes,or even sexual harassment. This particularline of investigation cannot be pursued fur-ther here because it would take us too farafield (but see Chriss 1994b; Horowitz 1993;Wiley 1994). I emphasize, however, thatconceptualizations of the self, and especiallythe question of the sincerity of the presentedself (see Tseelon 1992a), are central issuesin the theory of communicative action.

ISSUES OF ORGANIZATIONS ANDPROFESSIONAL PRACTICE

In summarizing my thoughts on Habermas,Goffman, and communicative action, I returnnow to issues of organizations and profes-sional practice—consulting, management,evaluation, and planning. One of the areas inwhich sociologists can claim a degree ofcompetence is social interaction, or morespecifically, face-to-face behavior. For ex-ample, students or disciples of Goffman maychoose to follow his lead regarding the ob-servation and understanding of face-to-faceinteraction in naturalistic settings. For re-searchers so inclined, the dramaturgicaltheory of action provides a general frame-work for describing, analyzing, assessing, orexplicating concrete instances of such talk inany number of settings, be it a party, an of-fice meeting, a therapy group session, a ser-vice transaction, a chess match, a war-gamers convention, or what have you.

Several years ago I spent the summerworking for a large philanthropic foundation.I was hired to conduct a meta-evaluation ofthe foundation's evaluation research unit.Because the foundation prided itself on hav-ing a "flat" organizational hierarchy, I gen-erally had free access to all departmental andmanagement meetings as well as to key or-ganizational actors, such as the executive di-rector and the heads of the various depart-ments (these being religion, culture, educa-tion, policy analysis, international affairs.


communications, and evaluation). Throughboth formal and informal discussions withemployees of the foundation, it became ap-parent to many of them that Goffman's workwas central to my own understanding and in-terpretation of social behavior.

Within two weeks of my arrival, I sensed agrowing uneasiness, and even suspicion,among many at the foundation. Much of thishad to do, I believe, with Goffman's reputa-tion for turning a jaundiced eye toward orga-nizations, and organizational actors moregenerally, as evidenced by his infamousexpose of "total institutions" reported in Asy-lums (1961a), What I suggest is that many inorganizations or organizational studies seemto have a one-sided or incomplete view ofGoffman's theory—one that views him asovertly concerned with exposing the dark un-derbelly or the "crawlspaces" of organiza-tions,'*

Ingram (1986) perhaps best typifies thisparticular sentiment; he suggests that the no-tion of organizational "underlife" was firstproposed by Goffman (1961a), According toIngram's reading of Goffman, the underlifeof an organization is composed of organiza-tional members who, while maintaining alevel of organizational identification and ap-pearing to fulfill organizational roles, engagein behaviors that violate organizational ex-pectations and yield unauthorized rewards.The crawlspace of an organization, then, isthe structure of arrangements that support oreven promote underlife existence.

Confronted with this rather negative as-sessment of Goffman at the foundation, orrather, confronted with the abiding conten-tion that Goffman has little to offer in theway of explicating organizational behavior,my next step was to determine what litera-ture or traditions of thought guided the day-to-day theories-in-use of these professional

"• There may also exist within organizationshigh levels of skepticism toward intellectuals oracademicians in general, regardless of their theo-retical or philosophical orientation, especiallythose who are not well known to members of theorganization, Kanter's (1977) fieldwork appearsto confirm this atmosphere of anti-intellectualismin formal organizations: "Emphasis was placedon getting along, 'keeping your nose clean,' andon having a smooth interpersonal style. Introspec-tion was out. Intellectuals were suspect" (p, 41),

practitioners, especially the evaluators andconsultants at the foundation with whom Ihad regular contact,'^

As we saw in an earlier section, a sizableportion of the research tradition guiding or-ganizational evaluators and consultants isrepresented by Argyris's (1993a, 1993b;Argyris and Schon 1974, 1989) and Schon's(1983) "action research," This tradition is inturn derived from Lewin's (1943, 1951) re-search on small groups, and it is importantto note here the major aims of Lewin'sproject. As a (psychological) social psy-chologist, Lewin was attempting to establishin systematic fashion the links between anindividual's behavior and attitudes and cer-tain characteristics of groups; he devoted at-tention to the spatial and temporal character-istics determining group stability or change,Lewin's work was originally formulatedwithin the context of problems communitiestypically face with regard to attitude change,loyalty, and in-group/out-group relations.

What emerges, then, from this brief reviewof Lewin's program is the realization thatLewin was not satisfied merely to documentor describe the vagaries of face-to-face be-havior or group life; his primary goal was tounderstand and establish the conditions un-der which attitude change could be affectedor facilitated. As Back (1981) explains.

The kind of group that emerges from [Lewin's]model is one that has meaning for the membersand that is especially effective in producing orpreventing attitude change in its members. The

'̂ I am not implying here that Ingram's ownassessment of Goffman is negative, Ingram sim-ply points out that Goffman's work in Asylumswas important and influential primarily becauseit documented the ways persons cope in the faceof the stringent demands of a coercive organiza-tional or social structure. An underlife then be-comes a survival tactic, a way of shoring up orsaving identities under siege. But academics orconsultants who go into organizations with theintent of observing organizational behavior andwho are known to be sympathetic to Goffman'sapproach may be seen by organizational actors ascarrying with them an implicit assumption of thecoercive nature of organizations. This, then, ex-plains the source of suspicion and negative as-sessments of the research observer (and ofGoffman) by organizations or their representa-tives.


model thus examines the conditions underwhich members change and begin to exhibit at-titudes and beliefs similar to the group, or toact in a similar way. . . . Lewin's interest wasin investigating conditions that could produceattitude and habit changes. (Pp. 330-31)

This instrumentalist, therapeutic impulseof Lewin's work was carried over into thetradition of organizational behavior (OB), inwhich the aim of research is to help organi-zations influence change, presumably for thebetter. Argyris's action research (1993a,1993b) is one such program in the appliedsocial psychology of organizations.'^

Argyris and Schon (1974) tend to viewGoffman's characterization of social actors(especially his position on impression man-agement and the presentation of self) as a fairapproximation of the naturally occurring butultimately destructive tendencies toward self-sealing, defensive, and insincere behavior.This naturally occurring Model I behaviorcould, according to action research, be over-come through a program that heightens or-ganizational actors' self-realizations—thatis, a program that brings actors' espousedtheories more into line with their actual theo-ries-in-use. And through this change of atti-tudes or behaviors, organizational learningcould thereby be advanced.

Habermas's program is also based on anameliorative plan, namely the effort to assurereasoned or noncoerced communication inthe face of multiple organizational structuressupporting inequality and differential powerthat serve to cut off the possibility of con-sensus or intersubjective understandingthrough fair discussion or argumentation.But unlike Lewin's program or the programof action research, Habermas does not seeGoffman's dramaturgical theory of action asrepresenting some fundamental, albeitflawed, description of the human conditionthat could somehow be overcome through acritical program of attitude change or self-re-alization. This is because Goffman's drama-turgy cannot assure intersubjective under-standing between actors because, inHabermas's view, it has no way of providing

access to the social (normative) world, oneof Habermas's three key analytical worlds(the others being the objective and subjectiveworlds). In other words, communicative ac-tion can be realized only if social actors havefree and undistorted access to the three va-lidity claims of propositional truth, norma-tive rightness, and subjective truthfulness.

CONCLUSION

How has Habermas's ameliorative programof communicative action been received in theliterature on organizations and professions,and how does it compare to the reception ofGoffman's work? It is safe to say thatHabermas's work, and critical theory moregenerally, has been much more influentialand more seriously discussed in these fieldsthan has Goffman's work." A good exampleof this is Holmes's (1992) paper, entitled"The Drama of Nursing." In the recent litera-ture on organizations and the professions,much has been made of conceiving of pro-fessions as a form of aesthetic praxis, thegoal being to provide a more stable analyti-cal foundation for the concept "profession"through the identification and linking ofthese so-called performative practices to theconcept itself. Holmes's (1992) contrast be-tween Goffman and critical theory is instruc-tive for our discussion:

In contrast to Goffman's dramaturgy, whichstresses the artifice of social relations and sug-gests a cynical view of human interactions, acritical theory of dramatic praxis introduces anormative dimension in which performancemay become self-realizing and emancipatory asit aspires to the status of aesthetic practice.Conceived in such terms, nursing practice be-comes a powerful form of self-expressionwhich has the potential to become liberatingfor the nurse and the patient. (P. 941)

Holmes's insistence that critical theoryadds a normative dimension to the under-standing of actors' performances points tothe same failings of the dramaturgical modelidentified earlier by Habermas, namely thatGoffman's theory of action cannot explain

" Lewin's work was also influential in the de-velopment of the organizational development(OD) model of attitude or behavior change (seeAguinis 1993; Marshak 1993).

" See for example Burrell's (1994) overviewof Habermas's contribution to organizationalanalysis.


why actors would ever engage, or choose toengage, in norm-conformative behavior.^"

Again, it should be pointed out that thisincongruity between critical theory andGoffman's theory on the issue of actors' ac-cess to the validity claim that assures, or atleast makes possible, appropriate social re-lations and normative rightness, evolvesfrom a disagreement over the ontology ofself-presentation and impression manage-ment. I have already discussed at somelength Goffman's position and my own de-fense of him on this issue, and the reasonsfor this disagreement should now be clear.In the final analysis, the contention betweenHabermas and Goffman comes down to afundamental question: Is the presented self asincere self? As I suggested in my attemptto reconcile the views of Goffman andHabermas (pp. 13-14), Tseelon (1992a,

•̂ " For an even more explicit treatment ofHabermas's importance to nursing practice, seePorter (1994). Even given this preference forHabermas or critical theory over Goffman amongauthors concerned with issues of professionalpractice, Habermas's program is neverthelessviewed by many as overly abstract and hopelesslydetached from the empirical social world.Robinson's (1994) discussion of Habermas withrespect to the field of education and pedagogy isillustrative of this sentiment: "[Habermas's] workdoes not provide a methodology that is applicableto the conduct or evaluation of dialogical prac-tice. Habermas's theory of communicative actionis concerned to defend an ideal of rationality,founded in the universal presuppositions ofspeech, and this ideal cannot be directly appliedto everyday situations" (p. 72). What we need,suggests authors such as Robinson (1994),Frankford (1994), and Young (1989), is a way tomove from Habermas's "universal pragmatics" toan "empirical pragmatics," the latter referring tothe study of actual utterances that occur in spe-cific social contexts. Given this emphasis onempiricizing actual speech in concrete settings, itis interesting that Goffman's work in this area(e.g., 1971, 1974, 1981, 1983a) has been largelyignored. Finally, in offering suggestions for pos-sible resources for pursuing such a critical in-quiry, Robinson (1994) points to Argyris's(1993a, 1993b; Argyris and Schon 1974) actionresearch: "The work of Argyris offers a norma-tive theory which is compatible with the valuebase of critical theory and which incorporates amethodology by which it can be applied to dia-logical sequences" (p. 72).

1992b) goes a long way toward answeringthis question.^' Tseelon (1992a) argues thatthe tradition known as impression manage-ment (IM) (see Arkin 1980; Schlenker 1980;Tedeschi 1981; Tedeschi and Melburg1984), although rooted in Goffman's (1959)seminal work on the presentation of self,has veered away from Goffman's originalintent in a number of crucial ways. Most im-portant, whereas Goffman's idea of"frontstage" and "backstage" attemptedmerely to illustrate how selves can be parti-tioned in terms of self-presentations beforea variety of audiences, IM's interpretationof this partitioning is that individuals pos-sess distinctively "true" private selves anddistinctively "false" public selves.^^ Goff-man's actor puts on a variety of faces invarious settings and before particular audi-ences in an effort to comport him- or herselfto the exigencies of the social gathering andto uphold the definition of the situation.IM's social actor, on the other hand, has ahidden agenda as he or she goes about thebusiness of presenting the self; there is al-ways a concerted effort to keep a private re-ality from surfacing during any particularpublic presentation.

Tseelon (1992a) explains the disjunctionbetween the Goffman tradition and IM as fol-lows:

The Goffmanesque approach views people'spresentational behaviour as a process of nego-tiation. It is a game of representation. In con-trast, the position advanced by IM researchersviews presentational behaviour as manipula-tive. According to this view people presentvarious images of themselves as a strategic

'̂ Welsh (1984) argues that the presented selfis a product of a capitalist society which places apremium on appearances. That is, because bu-reaucratic actors are constantly monitored and as-sessed with regard to their job performance andeffectiveness, this fetish of appearance has givenrise to an overweening emphasis on impressionmanagement on the part of these actors (also seeWillmott 1993). This view of the actor is closerto impression managements's, and even Haber-mas's, more cynical view of the actor as a savvymanipulator concerned merely with working thesystem for the enhancement of self.

^̂ For useful discussions of the divergence ofGoffman and IM within the context of organiza-tional behavior, see Giacalone and Beard (1994)and Rosenfeld, Giacalone, and Riordan (1994).


move. Unlike Goffman's approach, this 'game'is not an end in itself but a means to an end ofgaining benefits. It is a game of misrepresenta-tion. (P. 116)

It is my contention that Habermas, as wellas many researchers working on therapeuticapproaches to improving communication andinteraction practices in professions or orga-nizations, tend to make the mistake of lump-ing together Goffman's work and that of IM.What Habermas and many other astute socialthinkers have failed to understand clearly isthat, although all deceptive presentations arestaged, not all staged presentations are de-ceptive or geared toward obfuscation or dis-tortion.

The theory of communicative action, then,must address two difficult and interrelatedissues—one ontological, one epistemologi-cal—if it is to advance any further. With re-spect to ontology, the theory must specifymore concretely the nature of impressionmanagement, or rather, it must be able to an-swer the question, to what extent is the pre-sented self a naturally occurring aspect ofhuman interaction? With respect to episte-mology, the theory must be able to addressthe question, how are we to know the aimsor intent of the presented self? And knowingthis, how then can we reconcile the realitiesof impression management with the potentialfor communicative action contained in theanalytic of the presented self?

These and others issues point the way to-ward a continuing refinement of the theoryof communicative action and reaffirm theimportant role that Goffman's dramaturgicaltheory of action can play in achieving thisend. Most significantly, the achievement ofsuch an empirically-grounded theory of com-municative action holds the potential for ush-ering in a new era in applied sociology, es-pecially with respect to the study and expli-cation of organizational behavior and com-munication.

In fact, I envision a refinement of theHabermas-Goffman communicative actionschema which could eventually serve as thebasis for a clinical sociology practice. Thisprofessional practice would involve helpingpeople, groups, or organizations that are hav-ing difficulty—communicative or other-wise—in their daily relationships. This

would not be a counseling service per se, aswould be typical of social work or psycho-therapeutic practice (see Kubacki 1994), butwould involve applying the skills ofVerstehen to everyday situations, stressingthe social or cultural factors, rather than theindividual, psychological, or symptomo-logical factors, implicated in such distur-bances. I hope to develop and present thisapplied schema in a future work.

James J. Chriss recently completed his Ph.D. insociology at the University of Pennsylvania. Hismain areas of interest are sociological theory,criminology, and organizational behavior. Hiscurrent projects include a study of how males andfemales differ in their attitudes toward participa-tion in popular dance, the sociology of consult-ing in organizations, embezzlement as an ongo-ing practical accomplishment, and getting ErvingGoffman's dissertation published.

REFERENCES

Adorno, T. W., Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J.Levinson, and R. Nevitt Sanford. 1950. TheAuthoritarian Personality. New York: Harperand Brothers.

Agger, Ben. 1992. The Discourse of Domination:From the Frankfurt School to Postmodernism.Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Aguinis, Herman. 1993. "Action Research andScientific Method: Presumed Discrepanciesand Actual Similarities." Journal of AppliedBehavioral Science 29:416-31.

Argyris, Chris. 1993a. On Organizational Learn-ing. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

. 1993b. Knowledge for Action. San Fran-cisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Argyris, Chris, Robert Putnam, and Diana Mc-Lain Smith. 1985. Action Science. San Fran-cisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Argyris, Chris and Donald A. Schon. 1974.Theory in Practice: Increasing ProfessionalEffectiveness. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

. 1989. "Participatory Action Research andAction Science Compared." American Behav-ioral Scientist 32:612-23.

Arkin, Robert M. 1980. "Self-Presentation." Pp.158-82 in The Self in Social Psychology, ed-ited by D. M. Wegner and R. M. Vallacher. Ox-ford, England: Oxford University Press.

Back, Kurt W. 1981. "Small Groups." Pp. 320-43 in Social Psychology: Sociological Perspec-tives, edited by M. Rosenberg and R. H. Turn-er. New York: Basic Books.

Baldamus, Willhelm. 1992. "UnderstandingHabermas's Methods of Reasoning." History of


the Human Sciences 5:97-115,Barnard, Chester I, 1947, The Functions of the

Executive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-sity Press,

Bateson, Gregory, 1972, Steps to an Ecology ofMind. New York: Ballantine,

Bell, Allan, 1984, "Language Style as AudienceDesign," Language in Society 13:145-204,

Benhabib, Seyla, 1992, Situating the Self: Gen-der, Community and Postmodernism in Con-temporary Ethics. New York: Routledge,

Bottomore, Tom, 1984, The Frankfurt School.London, England: Tavistock,

Burrell, Gibson, 1994, "Modernism, Postmodern-ism and Organizational Analysis 4: The Con-tribution of Jurgen Habermas," OrganizationStudies 15:1-19,

Chriss, James J, 1992, "Habermas and Goffman:Some Suggestions for Future Research," Per-spectives: The Theory Section Newsletter 15:6,

, 1993, "Durkheim's Cult of the Individualas Civil Religion: Its Appropriation by ErvingGoffman," Sociological Spectrum 13:251-75,

-, 1994a, "Goffman, Parsons, and Contem-porary Sociology: Working towards Integra-tion," Ph,D, dissertation. Department of Soci-ology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadel-phia, PA,

-, 1994b, "Spain on Status and Space: AComment," Sociological Theory 12:106-109,

-, Forthcoming, "Role Distance and the Ne-gational Self," In Goffhian's Patrimony, editedby G, W, H, Smith, London, England: Rout-ledge,

Collins, Randall and Michael Makowsky, 1993,The Discovery of Society. 5th ed. New York:McGraw-Hill,

Cooke, Maeve, 1994, Language and Reason: AStudy of Habermas's Pragmatics. Cambridge,MA: MIT Press,

Dahl, Goran, 1995, "Critique, Conservatism, Ide-ology: The Frankfurt School's Critique of theSociology of Knowledge Revisited," Pp, 155-79 in Current Perspectives in Social Theory,vol, 15, edited by B, Agger, Greenwich, CT:JAI Press,

Dahrendorf, Ralf, 1958, "Out of Utopia: Towarda Reorientation of Sociological Analysis,"American Journal of Sociology 64:115-27,

Felts, Arthur A, 1992, "Organizational Commu-nication: A Critical Perspective," Administra-tion and Society 23:495-513,

Forester, John, 1989, Planning in the Face ofPower. Berkeley, CA: University of CaliforniaPress,

, 1992, "Critical Ethnography: On Field-work in a Habermasian Way," Pp, 46-65 inCritical Management Studies, edited by M,Alvesson and H, Willmott, London, England:Sage,

Frankford, David M, 1994,"The Critical Potentialof the Common Law Tradition" (Review Essayof David Sciulli's Theory of Societal Constitu-tionalism). Columbia Law Review 94:1076-123,

Garfinkel, Harold, 1967, Studies in Ethnometho-dology. Engiewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,

Giacalone, Robert A, and Jon W, Beard, 1994,"Impression Management, Diversity, and Inter-national Management," American BehavioralScientist 37:62\-36.

Goffman, Erving, 1953, "Communication Con-duct in an Island Community," Ph,D, disserta-tion. Department of Sociology, University ofChicago, Chicago, IL,

, 1959, The Presentation of Self in Every-day Life. New York: Doubleday Anchor,

-, 1961a, Asylums: Essays on the SocialSituation of Mental Patients and Other In-mates. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor,

, 1961b, Encounters: Two Studies in theSociology of Interaction. Indianapolis, IN:Bobbs-Merrill,

, 1963a, Behavior in Public Places: Noteson the Social Organization of Gatherings. NewYork: Free Press,

-, 1963b, Stigma: Notes on the Manage-ment of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:Prentice-Hall,

-, 1967, Interaction Ritual: Essays onFace-to-Face Behavior. Garden City, NY:Doubleday Anchor,

-, 1969, Strategic Interaction. Philadelphia,PA: University of Philadelphia Press,

, 1971, Relations in Public: Microstudiesof the Public Order. New York: Basic Books,

-, 1974, Frame Analysis: An Essay on theOrganization of Experience. Boston, MA:Northeastern University Press,

-, 1978, "Response Cries," Language 54:787-815,

, 1981, Forms of Talk. Philadelphia, PA:University of Pennsylvania Press,

, 1983a, "Felicity's Condition," AmericanJournal of Sociology 89:1-53,

, 1983b, "The Interaction Order," Ameri-can Sociological Review 48:1-17,

Gouldner, Alvin W, 1970, The Coming Crisis ofWestern Sociology. New York: Basic Books,

Grice, H, P, 1975, "Logic and Conversation," Pp,64-75 in The Logic of Grammar, edited by D,Davidson and G, Harman, Encino, CA:Dickenson,

Habermas, Jurgen, 1971, Knowledge and HumanInterests. Translated from German by J, J,Shapiro, Boston, MA: Beacon Press,

, 1975, Legitimation Crisis. Translatedfrom German by T, McCarthy, Boston, MA:Beacon Press,

, 1979, "Comments on Papers by Ekman


and Goffman." Pp. 241-45 in Human Ethol-ogy: Claims and Limits of a New Discipline,edited by M. von Cranach, K. Foppa, W.Lepenies, and D. Ploog. Cambridge, England:Cambridge University Press.

-. 1984. The Theory of Communicative Ac-tion. Vol. 1. Translated from German by T.McCarthy. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

-. 1987. The Theory of Communicative Ac-tion. Vol. 2. Translated from German by T.McCarthy. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Hakel, Milton D. 1994. "The Past, Present, andFuture of OB Applications by Consulting Aca-demicians." Pp. 275-87 in Organizational Be-havior: The State of the Science, edited by J.Greenberg. Hiilsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Hayim, Gila J. 1992. "Naturalism and the Crisisof Rationalism in Habermas." Social Theoryand Practice 18:187-209.

Hinkle, Gisela J. 1992. "Habermas, Mead, andRationality." Symbolic Interaction 15:315-31.

Holmes, Colin A. 1992. "The Drama of Nursing."Journal of Advanced Nursing 17:941-50.

Horowitz, Irving L. 1993. The Decomposition ofSociology. New York: Oxford UniversityPress.

House, Robert, Denise M. Rousseau, and MelissaThomas-Hunt. 1995. "The Meso Paradigm: AFramework for the Integration of Micro andMacro Organizational Behavior." Pp. 71-114in Research in Organizational Behavior, vol.17, edited by L. L. Cummings and B. M. Staw.Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Ingram, Larry C. 1986. "In the Crawlspace of theOrganization." Human Relations 39:157-86.

Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. 1977. Men and Womenof the Corporation. New York: Basic Books.

Kincheloe, Joe L. and Peter L. McLaren. 1994."Rethinking Critical Theory and QualitativeResearch." Pp. 138-57 in Handbook of Quali-tative Research, edited by N. K. Denzin and Y.S. Lincoln. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Kingwell, Mark. 1993. "Is It Rational to Be Po-lite?" Journal of Philosophy 90:387-404.

Kubacki, Steven R. 1994."Applying Habermas'sTheory of Communicative Action to Values inPsychotherapy." Psychotherapy 31:463-77.

Ledoux, Yves. 1981. "Theorie critique et recher-che-action: l'heritage habermassien" (CriticalTheory and Action Research: The HabermasianHeritage). Revue de I'lnstitut de Sociologie3:623-35.

Lewin, Kurt. 1943. "Defining 'The Field of aGiven Time..'"Psychological Review 50:292-310.

. 1951. Field Theory in Social Science: Se-lected Theoretical Papers. New York: Harper.

Lidz, Victor M. 1986. "Parsons and EmpiricalSociology." Pp. 141-82 in The Nationalizationof the Social Sciences, edited by S. Z. Klausner

and V. M. Lidz. Philadelphia, PA: Universityof Pennsylvania Press.

Marshak, Robert J. 1993. "Lewin Meets Con-fucius: A Re-View of the OD Model ofChange." Journal of Applied Behavioral Sci-ence 29:292-415.

Mills, C. Wright. 1959. The Sociological Imagi-nation. London, England: Oxford UniversityPress.

Munch, Richard. 1993. Sociological Theory. Vol2. Chicago, IL:Nelson-Hall.

Parsons, Talcott. 1937. The Structure of SocialAction. New York: Free Press.

. 1951. The Social System. New York: FreePress.

-. 1978. Action Theory and the HumanCondition. New York: Free Press.

Porter, Sam. 1994. "New Nursing: The Road toFreedom?" Journal of Advanced Nursing20:269-74.

Rawls, Anne W. 1987. "The Interaction Order 5«iGeneris: Goffman's Contribution to SocialTheory." Sociological Theory 5:136-49.

Robinson, Viviane M. J. 1994. "The PracticalPromise of Critical Research in EducationalAdministration." Educational AdministrationQuarterly 30:56-76.

Rosenfeld, Paul, Robert A. Giacalone, andCatherine A. Riordan. 1994. "Impression Man-agement Theory and Diversity: Lessons for Or-ganizational Behavior." American BehavioralScientist 37:601-04.

Rosenthal, John. 1992. "What Is Life? A Haber-mas Critique." Social Science Information31:5-42.

Schlenker, Barry R. 1980. Impression Manage-ment. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Schon, Donald A. 1983. The Reflective Practitio-ner. New York: Basic Books.

Schroyer, Trent. 1973. The Critique of Domina-tion. Boston, MA: Beacon.

Sciulli, David. 1989. "Analytical Limits of Com-municative Action: Two Requirements ofHabermas' Critical Theory and of SocietalConstitutionalism." Current Perspectives inSocial Theory 9:55-90.

. 1992a. Theory of Societal Constitution-alism: Foundations of a Non-Marxist CriticalTheory. New York: Cambridge UniversityPress.

. 1992b. "Habermas, Critical Theory, andthe Relativistic Predicament." Symbolic Inter-action 15:299-313.

Scott, Robert A. 1969. The Making of Blind Men.New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Stein, Howard F. 1994. Listening Deeply: An Ap-proach to Understanding and Consulting inOrganizational Culture. Boulder, CO: West-view Press.

Tedeschi, James T., ed. 1981. Impression Man-


agement Theory and Social Psychological Re-search. New York: Academic Press.

Tedeschi, James T. and Valerie Melburg. 1984."Impression Management and Influence in theOrganization." Pp. 31-58 in Research in theSociology of Organizations, vol. 3, edited byS. B. Bacharach and E. J. Lawler. Greenwich,CT: JAI Press.

Torbert, William R. 1991. The Power of Balance:Transforming Self, Society, and Scientific In-quiry. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Tseelon, Efrat. 1992a. "Is the Presented Self Sin-cere? Goffman, Impression Management andthe Postmodern Self." Theory, Culture and So-ciety 9:\\5-2S.

. 1992b. "Self-Presentation through Ap-pearance: A Manipulative vs. a DramaturgicalApproach." Symbolic tnteraction 15:501-13.

von Cranach, M., K. Foppa, W. Lepenies, and D.Ploog, eds. 1979. Human Ethology: Claims and

Limits of a New Discipline. Cambridge, En-gland: Cambridge University Press.

Welsh, John F. 1984. "The Presentation of Selfin Capitalist Society: Bureaucratic Visibility asa Social Source of Impression Management."Humanity and Society 8:253-71.

Whyte, William Foote. 1991. Participatory Ac-tion Research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Wiley, Norbert. 1994. The Semiotic Self Chicago,IL: University of Chicago Press.

Willmott, Hugh. 1993. "Strength Is Ignorance,Slavery Is Freedom: Managing Culture inModern Organizations." Journal of Manage-ment Studies 30:515-52.

Wrong, Dennis H. 1961. "The OversocializedConception of Man in Modern Sociology."American Sociological Review 26:183-93.

Young, Robert E. 1989. A Critical Theory of Edu-cation: Habermas and Our Children's Future.New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

Habermas, Goffman, and Communicative Action

Documents

Transcript of Habermas, Goffman, and Communicative Action