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A 'total institution', also referred to as a 'voracious institution', as defined by Erving Goffman, is an institution where all parts of life of individuals under the institution are subordinated to and dependent upon the authorities of the organization. Total institutions are social microcosms dictated by hegemony and clear hierarchy.

Contents

Types and examples of total institutions

Tourism and the total institution

Alternative definition of the total institution

Totalitarian Institutions

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Types and examples of total institutions

Some boarding schools, concentration camps, colleges, prisons, summer camps, outdoor education programs, mental institutions, boot camps, monasteries, convents and orphanages fit this description.
Of these, concentration camps and death camps are the most extreme example of a total institution. Prisons and mental institutions, though legal, involve the involuntary isolation of people out of the society. Boot camps, army barracks and submarine crew, involve total institutions where individuals join as non-civilian professionals. Some of the few types of total institutions which operate within a civil society are boarding schools, small private colleges, orphanages and homes for troubled children.
The North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics could be considered an example of a civil total institution. Jamaica's Tranquility Bay is a total institution that straddles the boundary between civil and non-civil total institutions: While ostensibly a boarding school, it is perhaps more accurately described as a privately-owned prison for rebellious teenagers.

Tourism and the total institution

Sociologists have pointed out that tourist venues such as cruise ships and theme parks are acquiring many of the characteristics of total institutions. Tourists may not be aware that they are being controlled, even constrained, but the environment has been designed to subtly manipulate the behavior of patrons. These examples differ from the traditional examples in that the influence is short term.

Alternative definition of the total institution

Another view of total institutions defines them as places where rites of passage and indoctrination occur within their confines in such a way that the total institution acts as a secret society within the society, one which shapes newcomers willingly or unwillingly into a new and more or less permanent social role. Fraternities and sororities are exemplary of this definition of total institutions. This view is controversial.

Totalitarian Institutions

A totalitarian institution is a kind of total institution not concerned with a rational goal (keeping criminals off the streets, as in a prison, or providing adequate care to the mentally sick) but to a radical re-socialization of the individual. A totalitarian institution not only regulates every aspect of the individuals it encompasses, but it also isolates them from the outside world. It does not have planned activities for the purpose of creating uncertainty and tension; nor does it formulate privilege systems. The goal of a totalitarian institution may be, through harassment and torture, to provide individuals with a context for deep re-construction of their identities, like the deep re-socialization process experienced by conscript soldiers, or may have no defined function towards the individuals it encompasses other than coercive enforcement of a set of rules, as in the case of concentration camps.

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★ Total and Totalitarian Institutions

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