Breakfast at Spiro's: Dramaturgy and Dominance

Abstract

An approach is presented here for analyzing the relationship between cultural and social action in bureaucracy. Symbols and power are shown as the primary variables of sociocultural study, where symbolic forms and techniques are manipulated by asymmetrical groups in the articulation of basic interests. Through their interrelationship the organizational conditions of production are reproduced or transformed. Social drama is the processual unit through which power relations, symbolic action, and their interaction are played out, and through which social structure is made evident. This perspective is applied to data from an ethnographic study of an advertising agency.