Review of Total institutions and reinvented identities.
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1468794113475418
By Bloor, Michael
Qualitative Research, Vol 13(3), Jun 2013, 385-386.
Reviews the book, Total Institutions and Reinvented Identities by Susie Scott (2011). Scott shifts the reader's attention from Total Institutions to Reinventive Institutions, more characteristic of late modernity and defined as 'material, discursive or symbolic structure[s] in which voluntary members actively seek to cultivate a new social identity, role or status. This is interpreted positively as a process of reinvention, self-improvement or transformation'. She carefully picks her way around the traditional (and not wholly deserved) criticisms of Goffman's approach to power, renewed by more recent analyses of Foucauldian governmentality in psy communities, arguing that those who exhibit willing compliance should not be dismissed as cultural dopes or falsely conscious. The scholarship is lightly worn with a minimum of Urry-esque abstractions, and if Palgrave Macmillan would bring out a paperback edition, it could even be a resource book for a third-year undergraduate course. As it is, it will be read with interest by symbolic interactionists and will hopefully inform a new generation of ethnographic studies of institutions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)