Place where a lot of people (in the same condition) live together, cut off from society
A total institution or residential institution is a place of work and residence where a great number of similarly situated people, cut off from the wider community for a considerable time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life.[1]: 44 [2]: 855 [3] Privacy is limited in total institutions, as all aspects of life including
sleep,
play, and
work, are conducted in the same place.[4] The concept is mostly associated with the work of
sociologistErving Goffman.[5]
Etymology
The term is sometimes credited as having been coined and defined by
Canadian sociologist
Erving Goffman in his paper "On the Characteristics of Total Institutions", presented in April 1957 at the
Walter Reed Institute's Symposium on Preventive and Social Psychiatry.[5]: 1 An expanded version appeared in
Donald Cressey's collection, The Prison,[6] and was reprinted in Goffman's 1961 collection, Asylums.[1][3][5]: 1 Fine and Manning, however, note that Goffman heard the term in lectures by
Everett Hughes (likely during the late-1940s seminar, "Work and Occupations").[7] Regardless of whether Goffman coined the term, he can be credited with popularizing it.[8]
Typology
Total institutions are divided by Goffman into five different types:[3][9]
places established to care for people felt to be incapable of looking after themselves and a threat to the community, albeit an unintended one:
leprosariums,
mental hospitals, certain types of group homes, and tuberculosis
sanitariums.
institutions organised to protect the community against what are felt to be intentional dangers to it, with the welfare of the people thus sequestered not the immediate issue:
concentration camps,
P.O.W. camps,
penitentiaries, and
jails.
institutions purportedly established to better pursue some worklike tasks and justifying themselves only on these instrumental grounds:
colonial compounds, work camps,
boarding schools,
ships, army
barracks, and large
mansions from the point of view of those who live in the
servants' quarters.
establishments designed as retreats from the world even while often serving also as training stations for the religious; examples are
convents,
abbeys,
monasteries, and other
cloisters.
David Rothman states that "historians have confirmed the validity of Goffman's concept of 'total institutions' which minimizes the differences in formal mission to establish a unity of design and structure."[10]: xxix [11]: 101
According to S. Lammers and A. Verhey, some 80 percent of Americans will ultimately die not in their home, but in a total institution.[2]: 853
In recent decade the nursing home industry has quickly extended, and particular regions of the country have become huge territorial nursing homes where we hide the aged and they hide from us.[2]: 853 Long before their death, they are buried in the folds of the total institution, hidden, out of sight and out of mind.[2]: 853 In the United States, dying in a total institution has become a common experience.[13]: 495
Tourism
Sociologists have pointed out that
tourist venues such as
cruise ships are acquiring many of the characteristics of total institutions. Tourists may not be aware that they are being controlled, even constrained, but the environment has been designed to subtly manipulate the behavior of patrons. These examples differ from the traditional examples in that the influence is short term.[14][15]: 106
^George Ritzer and Allan Liska, "'McDisneyization' and 'Post-tourism:' Complementary Perspectives on Contemporary Tourism," Tourism: The Experience of Tourism, ed. Stephen Williams, vol. 4, New Directions and Alternative Tourism (London: Routledge, 2004), 65-82.