ANTHROP 1AA3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Erving Goffman, Grammatical Gender, Social Anthropology
27 Nov 2016
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If we cannot understand those signals or none are being presented or cannot read them, then it is almost impossible to have any further social interaction with the person. Those people that present themselves as hergongenis (ie. not tting into the typical masculine and feminine gender roles of their society) pose a challenge to a cultural system that"s dependent on those categories being played. If this clarity in not achieved, everything falls apart. Erving goffman (social anthropologist): what advertising tells us about ourselves. We"re always playing what we think is the appropriate role (stage actor) for the situations we encounter in our daily activities. Goffman argues that there"s nothing natural about gender identity (we"re not born with our gender identity imprinted in/on us. It"s a process where we learn how to take on gender attributes that are appropriate of our understanding of self in gender terms.
