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- Title
The Airplane Passenger: Protection of Self in an Encapsulated Group.
- Authors
Zurcher Jr., Louis A.
- Abstract
Data from participant observation and unstructured interviews demonstrate that being a passenger on commercial airplane leads to membership in an "encapsulated group." Encapsulated groups are collectivities of individuals who voluntarily or involuntarily share physical but not necessarily social closeness for the purpose of attaining some goal or reaching some destination. Encapsulated groups flow through "people pipelines," a network of social and physical channels for processing human beings in contemporary urban society, especially in bureaucratic organizations. The role of airplane passenger is analyzed to demonstrate how individuals defend self-integrity in the encapsulated group. The passenger enactment process and the encapsulated group are shown to manifest several characteristics of total institutions (Goffman, 1961a).
- Subjects
AIRPLANES; PARTICIPANT observation; SOCIAL sciences fieldwork; OBSERVATION (Psychology); INTERVIEWING; SOCIETIES
- Publication
Qualitative Sociology, 1979, Vol 1, Issue 3, p77
- ISSN
0162-0436
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/BF02429895