In the Crawlspace of the Organization

Abstract

Although Goffman advocated comparative study of underlife at the time that he wrote Asylums, little work has been done by students of organization. The present paper offers a comparison of underlife in three different types of establishment by focusing on "crawlspace," those symbolic dimensions of organization which allow or compel participants to engage in secondary adjustment. The important dimensions are assumptions about self, normative patterns, sactions, and general meaning of membership/participation in the organization.