"Situation" versus "Frame": The "Interactionist" and the "Structuralist" Analyses of Everyday Life

Abstract

Situation and 'frame, the elementary units of analysis of two versions of micro-sociology, are compared in order to elucidate the currently existing, but (as such) barely recognized, interactionist and structuralist approaches that they represent and to demonstrate that they contain widely divergent understandings of everyday life. After certain of the notions that underlie each of them are made clear, the contrasting positions of these two approaches are reviewed with respect to common issues, including the nature of the self, the place of meanings and subjectivity in analysis, and what are appropriate research methods. These considerations provide the basis for a general interpretation of Goffman's work, something the sociological literature has lacked. Though Goffman is most often treated as a symbolic interactionist, this paper argues that a better understanding of his work results from reading it as a version of contemporary structuralism. The fundamental ways in which his structuralism is distinct from the cultural (as well as the interactionist) approach also are given.