Selections from "Conditions of successful degradation ceremonies." by Harold Garfinkel

Harold Garfinkel

"Conditions of successful degradation ceremonies."

American Journal of Sociology 61: 420-424, 1956.

Of course all this applies to successful grad(u)ation ceremonies. Of course, this is one of the main inspiration for my work with Ray McDermott (Successful Failure, 1998). It is about macro-sociological matters that are much broader than on-going assessments or instructions about which the conversational analysts wrote extensively, or about the on-going instructions about which Garfinkel would write later. These are the matters that concerned Foucault.

The identities referred to must be "total" identities. That is, these identities must refer to persons as "motivational" types rather than as "behavioral" types, not to what a person may be expected to have done or to do (in Parsons' term, to his "performances") but to what the group holds to be the ultimate "grounds" or "reasons" for his performance. (p. 420)

"identity" in the one manner that makes sense to me (as long as one reads this along with Lévi-Strauss on Totemism)

Taken together, the grounds, as well as the behavior that the grounds make explicable as the other person's conduct, constitute a person's identity. Together, they constitute the other as a social object.

It will always have been the case that ... (note the re-statement of Durkheim's argument in the Division of Labor)

Degradation ceremonies fall within the scope of the sociology of moral indignation.

"I hereby grant you degrees and privileges ..."

The paradigm of moral indignation is public denunciation. We publicly deliver the curse: "I call upon all men to bear witness that he is not as he appears but is otherwise and in essenct!' of a lower species." ... moral indignation may reinforce group solidarity. In the market and in politics, a degradation ceremony must be counted as a secular form of communion. Structurally, a degradation ceremony bears close resemblance to ceremonies of investiture and elevation. How such a ceremony may bind persons to the collectivity we shall see when we take up the conditions of a successful denunciation. ... In the statement that moral indignation brings about the ritual destruction of the person being denounced, destruction is intended literally. The transformation of identities is the destruction of one social object and the constitution of another. The transformation
does not involve the substitution of one identity for another... . One declares, "Now, it was otherwise in the first place." (p. 421)

How can one make a good denunciation? To be successful, the denunciation must redefine the situations of those that are witnesses to the denunciation work. The denouncer, the party to be denounced (let us
call him the "perpetrator"), and the thing that is being blamed on the perpetrator (let us call it the "event") must be transformed as follows : (p. 422)

1. Both event and perpetrator must be removed from the realm of their everyday character and be made to stand as "out of the ordinary."

2. Both event and perpetrator must be placed within a scheme of preferences that shows the following properties:

A. The preferences must not be for event A over event B, but for event of type A over event of type B. The same typing must be accomplished for the perpetrator. Event and perpetrator must be defined as instances of a uniformity and must be treated as a uniformity throughout the work of the denunciation. The unique, never recurring character of the event or perpetrator should be lost. Similarly, any sense of accident, coincidence, indeterminism, chance, or monetary occurrence must not merely be minimized....

B. ... If the denunciation is to take effect, the scheme must not be one in which the witness is allowed to elect the preferred. Rather, the alternatives must be such that the preferred is morally required. Matters
must be so arranged that the validity of his choice, its justification, is maintained by the fact that he makes it.

3. The denouncer must so identify himself to the witnesses that during the denunciation they regard him not as a private but as a publicly known person. He must not portray himself as acting according to his
personal, unique experiences. He must rather be regarded as acting in his capacity as a public figure, drawing upon communally entertained and verified experience. He must act as a bona fide participant in the
tribal relationships to which the witnesses subscribe.

4. The denouncer must make the dignity of the supra-personal values of the tribe salient and accessible to view, and his denunciation must be delivered in their name.

5. The denouncer must arrange to be invested with the right to speak in the name of these ultimate values.

6. The denouncer must get himself so defined by the witnesses that they locate him as a supporter of these values.

7 . Not only must the denouncer fix his distance from the person being denounced, but the witnesses must be made to experience their distance from him also.

8. Finally, the denounced person must be ritually separated from a place in the legitimate order, i.e., he must be defined as standing at a place opposed to it. He must be placed "outside," he must be made
"strange." (p. 423)


created on Mon Oct 15 09:19:24 2012