The Process of Association Forming in the Context of Mixed Social Situations

Abstract

The presented paper is a reflection on the participative research conducted by me, whose location in the interpretative orientation provides an opportunity to get to know the perspective of the participants (in this case, the homeless). The reconstruction of the process of getting associated reveals three phases: approaching the act of getting associated, (re)building, and surviving, internally differentiating into other subphases. These phases illustrate the theory on the biographical continuity of associations generated in the study. My research highlights the mechanism of stigmatization, both in the interactions between the homeless and the „home-full”; and also solely among the homeless (revealing the relational nature of the stigma). At the same time, the study unveils the twofold understanding of the context of mixed social situations (Goffman 2005): the first involves making the reference to the context in the course of the interaction; the second exists outside the interaction as continuous building of strategy before taking action. Looking for patterns in the process, I used the concept of working on the stigma coined by E. Goffman (2005), and made it more detailed thanks to the consideration of specific tactics and fitting it into broader generated categories illustrating the types of work undertaken.