To confront or not to confront? Seeing minorities’ responses to ethnoracial stigmatisation through Goffman’s ritual interaction order

Abstract

The last decade has seen a proliferation of sociological research on minorities’ responses to ethnoracial stigmatisation. Compared to social and cultural structures, face-to-face interaction has thus far received insufficient theoretical attention, even though social situations are a prime site for stigmatisation. This has resulted in three shortcomings in the research: (1) a tacit individual–structure dualism; (2) neglect of situational variation; and (3) neglect of dialogical concerns behind people’s responses. Building on 20 in-depth qualitative interviews with Norwegians of ethnic and/or racial minority backgrounds, and homing in on non-confrontations to ambiguous stigmatisation, we investigate the role of face-to-face interaction as such. We rely on Erving Goffman’s theories of interaction order and interaction ritual. The interaction order highlights social interaction’s semi-autonomous existence vis-a-vis both human personalities and social structures, and is sustained by interaction ritual, that is, the mutual protection of selves in interaction. Among our key findings is that non-confrontations are concurrently self- and other-oriented, mirroring Goffman’s concept of facework. Regarding situational variation, we distinguish, for instance, situations of hierarchy from those of assumed equality; interactions with strangers from established relations; situations framed by professional ethics from those not; work from private settings and public spaces.