Observation Of Social Interaction

Each day we are partake in various interactions with other people. Often times, we are not aware of how we participate and cooperate in these interactions. When we step back from our daily interactions we are able to observe the way others interact with each other. We can see these interactions through gatherings or “Sets of two or more individuals whose members include all and only those who are at the moment in one another’s immediate presence” (Goffman 18). Interactions can also be seen through involvement or “The capacity of an individual to give, or withhold from giving, his concerted attention to some activity at hand” (Goffman 43). In figure 1, the first observed with, or part of the gathering with a set of people acting together at …show more content…
There was one man sitting on the end and three women sitting to his left speaking to one another. The involvement of this man was away, or “Outwardly participating in an activity within a social situation, an individual can allow his attention to turn from what he and everyone else considers the real or serious world, and give himself up for a time to a playlike world in which he participates alone” (Goffman 69). It was very obvious that this man was no longer involved in the conversation between the three women he was sitting with watching the game. Goffman describes an away by saying, “At such times the individual may demonstrate his absence from the current situation by a preoccupied faraway look in his eyes” (Goffman 70). Whether this man was reminiscing on a memory in his head or was no longer interested in what the women were saying, it was very clear he had zoned off into space for a few minutes before catching focus back to the game. The formation these four people were sitting in was an “I” formation, allowing them to be open to others and not having a closed off exclusive conversation. These people were also sitting very close together in the stands because of the tightness in space. I observed their personal space was violated because when the would turn to speak to one another they were very close in the face and their bodies were touching. Rather than the gathering staying multifocused on the football game, it switched because the man was no longer engaged in the gathering creating a partly-focused gathering. As time went on the dynamics began to change, the four person with broke up into a three person when the one man got up from his seat and walked away. This three person with consisted of the facing formation of the women to change from an “I” to a “C” which allowed for a partially closed interaction. The