Institutions are the foundation for social-system self-presentation through Goffman’s teams

Evidence

The sources of such assurance in presentation can be very varied. They include natural abilities of imagination and quick reaction, fortune or misfortune in inherited status, education, practical experience and career success, environmental conditions of having understanding, sensitive, like-minded partners or inferior opponents. For the presentation of social systems what must be added above all is the institutionalization of what Goffman calls ‘teams’. Certainly there are several ‘equifinal’ ways of reaching that state, just as very varied personality constellations can underlie an emotional attachment which is similar in its effect. Linear causal explanations in terms of single factors come to grief on this ‘open’ relationship of function and structure. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 295

Categorization

• XREF: The institutionalization of teams is precisely the expert-system scaffold Giddens describes — and the ‘team’ of Darlington Hall under Stevens is the institutional self-presentation that lets him outsource trust to the hierarchy. — connects to: Existentialist categories migrated into postwar social science via Riesman, Goffman, and Arendt — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 895
• DEFINE: Introduces Goffman’s ‘teams’ as the institutional extension of self-presentation — a key bridging concept between Luhmann and Giddens’s systems.