Total institution

From Free net encyclopedia

Total institution, (also referred to as voracious institutions) as defined by Erving Goffman, is an institution where all the aspects of life of individuals under the institution is controlled and regulated by the authorities of the organization. Total institutions are a social microcosmos dictated by hegemony and clear hierarchy.

Total institutions include some boarding schools, concentration camps, prisons, mental institutions and boot camps.

Of these, concentration camps are largely illegal and therefore outside the legitimacies of the society. While prisons and mental institutions though legal involve the isolation of people out of the society. Boot camps, army barracks and submarine crew, involve total institutions where individuals join as non-civilian professionals. One of the few types of total institution which operate within a civil society are boarding schools.

Sociologists have pointed out that tourist venues such as cruise ships and theme parks are acquiring many of the characterisitcs of total institutions. Tourists may not be aware that they are being controlled, even constrained, but the environment has been designed to subtly manipulate the behavior of patrons. These venues differ from the traditional examples in that the influence is short term.

Some people view total institutions as places where rites of passage and indoctrination occur within their confines in such a way that the total institution acts as a secret society within the society, one which shapes newcomers willingly or unwillingly into a new and more or less permanent social role. This view is controversial.

Totalitarian Institutions

A kind of total institution not aiming towards a rational goal (keeping criminals off the streets, as in a prison, or providing adequate care to the mentally sick) but to a radical re-socialization of the individual. A totalitarian institution not only regulates every aspect of the individuals it encompasses, but it also isolates them from the outiside world, it does not have planned activities for the purpose of creating uncertainty and tension, nor does it formulate privilege systems. The goal of a totalitarian institution may be, through harassment and torture, to provide individuals with a context for deep re-construction of their identities, like the deep re-socialization process experienced by conscript soldiers, or may have no defined function towards the individuals it encompasses other than coercive enforcement of a set of rules, as in the case of concentration camps.

Every institution has total traits, but not all have traits of totalitarian institutions.