Total institution

Total institution is a sociological term developed by Erving Goffman . The name was first used by the French architect Louis-Pierre Baltard (1764-1846).

The term denotes institutional forms (organizational forms) which are suitable or intended to regulate and control all expressions of life of a social actor . Conventional examples of this are monasteries, prisons, psychiatric hospitals and ship crews.

Hyperinclusion is differentiated from total inclusion, which is dictated by a total institution such as B. of psychiatric clinics , prisons , monasteries or guilds in the feudal society .

If there is an integration into a single institution, a consideration as a total institution as well as a consideration as a greedy institution can be used in sociology . However, it is also possible to be involved in two greedy institutions at the same time, for example family and military service, which creates a tense relationship.

Total institutions at Goffman

According to Goffman, the total institution is a sub-form of the more general term “social institution”, which he defines as “rooms, apartments, buildings or companies in which a certain activity is regularly carried out”. In principle, you can use criteria such as B. Differentiate between accessibility, purpose and comprehensiveness. The total institution is an extreme case on the latter scale, since it assumes an “all-encompassing or total character” “through restrictions on social intercourse with the outside world”. An institution like a football club or a laboratory therefore only takes up part of life, whereas an inmate in a total institution like a prison or a closed ward spends all of his time there.

According to Goffman, a total institution has the following characteristics:

• Total institutions are all-encompassing. The life of all members only takes place in this single place and they are subject to a single central authority .
• The members of the institution carry out their everyday work in the immediate (formal) society and (informal) community of their fellow destinies.
• All activities and other manifestations of life are precisely planned and their sequence is by explicit rules and by a staff of functionaries prescribed.
• The various activities and expressions of life are monitored and combined into a single rational plan which serves to achieve the official goals of the institution.

Upon entering the institution, the individual is isolated from society and experiences a break with previous roles. Goffman speaks of the civil death of the individual and a disculturation that "[...] consists in the fact that someone loses certain habits that are required in the broader area of ​​society or cannot acquire them." according to Goffman a limitation of the self .

Goffman goes into the various forms of admission procedure that humiliate the future inmate and deprive him of his freedom and dignity. Undressing, the taking away of property and the loss of one's full name or address contribute considerably to the mutilation of the self. Here Goffman emphasizes the importance of clothing and other belongings, which he calls identity equipment and which thus serve to maintain the personal facade. The removal of this identity equipment leads to a personal distortion, because it prevents the individual from presenting his or her self-image to others .

According to Goffman, the behavior of the inmates of a total institution is made up of a combination of "secondary adjustments, conversion, colonization and loyalty":

• He understands colonization as an adaptation to the world of the institution: “The inmate takes the part of the outside world that the institution offers for the whole, and from the maximum satisfaction that can be achieved in the institution, a stable, relatively satisfied existence is built . ”A colonized inmate tries to organize a free community life within the given limited possibilities.
• During the conversion, the inmate internalizes the official judgment about himself and plays the role of a perfect inmate. A convert's attitude is more disciplined, moralistic, and monochrome.
• Other possible forms of adaptation can be taking an uncompromising point of view (rebellion) or complete withdrawal ( regression , hospitalism ).

Five groups of total institutions according to objectives

• for the care of dependent and harmless people ( homes for the blind, old people , children's homes , orphanages and psychiatric clinics )
• for the care of dependent persons who pose a threat to society in any way ( tuberculosis sanatoriums , forensic-psychiatric clinics )
• to protect society from people who are considered dangerous; not primarily for the benefit of isolated people ( prisons , prisoner of war camps , concentration camps )
• with work-like goals ( barracks , boarding schools , ships , labor camps )
• as a place of refuge or religious training centers ( abbeys , monasteries )

Regardless of the different goals, the central feature of the institutions is "the handling of a range of human needs through the bureaucratic organization of whole groups of people", which automatically creates a separation between administrators (the staff ) and administrators (the inmates). This separation is the main source of social conflict and problems within the institution.

See also

• Greedy Institutions
• Hyperinclusion
• Heterotopia (humanities)

literature

• Louis-Pierre Baltard: Architectonography des prisons. 1829.
• Erving Goffman: Asylums. About the social situation of psychiatric patients and other inmates. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1973 [orig .: Asylums. Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and other Inmates. Anchor Books, Garden City, NY 1961].
• Ralf Lisch : Total ship institution. Duncker and Humblot, Berlin 1976, ISBN 3-428-03664-6 .
• Fabian Göbel: Inpatient work for the disabled: terms, comparisons, outlooks. AV Akademikerverlag, Saarbrücken 2012, ISBN 978-3-639-39812-0 .
• Vicki Täubig: Total institution asylum: empirical findings on everyday life in organized disintegration. Juventa-Verlag, Weinheim; Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-7799-1793-9 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Erving Goffman : Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates . Anchor Books, New York 1961.
2. ↑ Note: The term hyperinclusion is also occasionally applied to total institutions; see e.g. B .: Peter Sommerfeld, Lea Hollenstein, Raphael Calzaferri: Integration and Lifestyle: A Research- Based Contribution to Theory Development of Social Work. Springer, 2011, ISBN 978-3-531-93333-7 , p. 16.
3. ↑ See the example of top-class sport, which is presented as a greedy institution on the one hand and hyperinclusion on the other: Jochen Gläser, Grit Laudel: Expert interviews and qualitative content analysis as instruments for reconstructive investigations. 3. Edition. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-531-93033-6 , p. 266.
4. ^ MW Segal: The Military And the Family As Greedy Institutions , Armed Forces & Society (1986), Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 9-38, doi : 10.1177 / 0095327X8601300101 (abstract, in English).