Terrorism,Identity, and Public Order: A Perspective From Goffman

From Erving Goffman's (1971) dramaturgical perspective, terrorism is interpretable as an indicator of, threat to, and frame for understanding public order. Public order emerges wherever strangers commingle. It is a foundation for social order more generally. Dramaturgically, public order is underwritten by inferences about strangers' identities based on appearances writ large. Those inferences in turn are warranted by moral assumptions that actors are who they appear to be and that apparent actors will act in dutiful ways that sustain selves and their meanings in the situation and into the future. These assumptions are warranted by the trust that persons in a common space bestow on each other. Terrorism violates the trust, moral assumptions, and identity inferences. As such, it generates an identity transitivity that weakens public order and threatens the security of identities in public space. The issue is to share cultural assumptions of self as inviolable and of appearances as trustworthy to warrant public order.