Reading Assignment 8
Managing Institutional Careers and Identities
33. The Moral Career of the Mental Patient, Erving Goffman
34. Suspended Identity: Identity Transformation in a Maximum Security Prison, Thomas J.
Schmid, Richard S. Jones
Organizational Structures, Ideologies, and Recruitment: The
Backdrop Non-institutional 35. The Social Organization of Deviants, Joel Best, David F. Luckenbill
36. Managing the Action: Sports Bookmakers as Entrepreneurs, Phyllis Coontz
Points Possible: 20
Deliverable Length: 2-3 pages
Due: Friday, April 1, 11:55 am
Answer two questions:
1. Describe Goffman’s “moral career of the mental patient” through its three phases. How is the
patient’s self-identity thus gradually redefined in the context of the hospital as a total institution. 2. Summarize the Schmid and Jones suspended identity dialectic as graphically illustrated in
Figure 2 (p. 507). How does this model of identity transformation differ from that associated
with brainwashing or conversion?
3. List and discuss Best and Luckenbill’s five propositions for the sophistication of deviant
organizations
