- Civil inattention
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Civil inattention is the process whereby strangers who are in close proximity demonstrate that they are aware of one another, without imposing on each other. Civil inattention is "a sign of recognition that others have claims to a shared space or environment", as well as being a way to "signal to strangers a sense of boundary and self-enclosure".[1]
Contents
In practice
Civil inattention was described by Erving Goffman as part of the "surface character of public order ... individuals exert respectful care in regard to the setting and treat others present with civil inattention"[2] in order to make anonymised life in cities possible.
"Civil inattention is not ignoring someone, giving them non-person treatment, nor is it uncivil attention, as occurs when one person pointedly stares at another".[3] Rather, it involves for example "scanning upcoming pedestrians but doing so in an unobtrusive and non-threatening way".[4] Typically, on approaching a stranger on a public street, "at about 10–12 feet from one another we have a very brief exchange of eye contact, and then avert our eyes. In making eye contact we acknowledge that we see the other person, and will not invade their territory. In averting our gaze, we display our lack of recognition of the other and our unwillingness to become more familiar",[5] or invite conversation.
In short, "Goffman's description of 'civil inattention' refers to the manners of distancing oneself"[6] unobtrusively in public – something which can make privacy in a crowd possible.
Negative aspects
Newcomers to urban areas are often struck by such routines, and sometimes interpret them as callous or coldly indifferent – at best "a neutrality, opacity, and emotional mediocrity, that enable millions of human beings to live side by side without exterminating each other".[7] Civil inattention can lead to feelings of loneliness or invisibility, and it reduces the tendency to feel responsibility for the well-being of others.
"Sometimes civil inattention can seem more honoured in the breach ... public harassment includes shouted remarks, gratuitous insults and innuendoes, staring, stalking and the like".[8] Goffman noted that "when men and women cross each other's path at close quarters, the male will exercise the right to look for a second or two at the female ... Civil inattention, then, can here involve a degree of role differentiation regarding obligations".[9] Feminists took up the issue with reference to the public double standard, complaining that "women are 'open persons', open to casual comments on their appearance and behaviour".[10]
Insanity of place
In his article, "The Insanity of Place", Goffman stressed that "one very important organizational locus for mental symptoms consists of public and semi-public place – streets, shops, neighbourhoods, public transportation and the like. In these places a fine mesh of obligations obtains which ensures the orderly traffic and co-mingling of participants"[11] – civil inattention. He goes on to emphasise that "many classic symptoms of psychosis are precise and pointed violations of these territorial arrangements. There are encroachments, as when a mental patient visiting a supermarket gratuitously riffles through a shopper's cart, or ... 'hyperpreclusions', as when a patient shies away from passing glances".[12]
R.D. Laing pointed out that "the loss of the experience of an area of unqualified privacy, by its transformation into a quasi-public realm, is often one of the decisive changes associated with the process of going mad ... the 'loss of ego boundary'"[13] – a backhanded tribute to the utility of the (acquired) capacity for civil inattention.
See also
- Face
- Ideas of reference
- Persona
- Public space
References
- ^ Joanne Finkelstein, The Art of Self-Invention (2007) p. 109
- ^ Erving Goffman, Relations in Public (Penguin 1972) p. 385
- ^ Elaine Baldwin, Introducing Cultural Studies (2004) p. 396
- ^ Baldwin, p. 276
- ^ W.M. Mellinger, "Doing Modernity Through Civil Inattention"
- ^ Finkelstein, p. 109
- ^ Franco Moretti, Modern Epic (1996) p. 156
- ^ Baldwin, p. 396
- ^ Goffman, p. 249
- ^ Deborah Cameron, Feminism and Linguistic Theory (1992) p. 167
- ^ Goffman, p. 415
- ^ Goffman, p. 415
- ^ R.D. Laing, Self and Others (Penguin 1969) p. 36
Further reading
- Giddens, Anthony Sociology 2nd edition polity press 1994
- Bauman, Zygmunt & May, Tim Thinking Sociologically 2nd edition Blackwell Publishing 2001
- Goffman, E. (1984) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Harmondsworth: Penguin)
. Mellinger, Wayne M. "Doing Modernity Through Civil Inattention" in the blog "Doing Modernity" originally published in 1959
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