Short glosses for the frameworks the semester keeps coming back to, with where each one actually comes from.
Frameworks and readings#
The weekly Tutes and lectures name these frameworks in passing, assuming you already have a working sense of them by the time they come up a second or third time. This page is where that sense comes from: a paragraph per idea, and the source if you want to read further than a paragraph. If you’re looking for how to actually log an observation of one of these in the wild, that’s the log template instead.
Civil inattention#
Erving Goffman’s term for the specific, minimal courtesy strangers extend each other in public: a glance that registers “I see you, you’re a person, I’m not a threat,” immediately followed by looking away and granting the other person the right to pass unbothered. It isn’t the same as ignoring someone; true ignoring is a snub. Civil inattention is closer to a handshake that both parties perform automatically and neither remembers doing.
Goffman, E. (1963). Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. Free Press.
The interaction order#
Goffman’s broader claim: that face-to-face conduct between people who share a physical space runs on its own stable set of rules, distinct from whatever institutional or legal rules also apply. Coexistence 101 mostly lives here: the interaction order is what a shared kitchen, an open-plan office and a bus queue all have in common, even though almost nothing else about them is the same.
Goffman, E. (1983). The interaction order. American Sociological Review, 48(1), 1–17.
Tie-signs and remedial interchanges#
Two smaller Goffman terms worth having a name for. A tie-sign is a public display that announces the nature of a relationship without saying it in words: walking arm in arm, sitting closer than a stranger would. A remedial interchange is the small ritual that repairs a minor breach of shared-space etiquette after it happens: “sorry,” a nod, stepping back. Watch for both once you know to look.
Goffman, E. (1971). Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order. Basic Books.
Proxemics#
Edward Hall’s framework for interpersonal distance, split into four zones (intimate, personal, social and public), each associated with a different kind of relationship and a different register of voice and touch. Which zone two people default to is rarely a conscious choice, and watching it is one of the fastest ways to read a room’s actual social structure rather than its stated one.
Hall, E. T. (1966). The Hidden Dimension. Doubleday.
Third place#
Ray Oldenburg’s name for a category of space that is neither home (the “first place”) nor work (the “second place”): low stakes, no fixed rank, and a habit of showing up that isn’t tied to any obligation. A café with regulars, a community garden, the same bench at the same time most days. Oldenburg argued that a person or a society without enough third places loses something civic life depends on; this course treats that as a testable claim about a specific space, not a nostalgic one.
Oldenburg, R. (1989). The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community. Paragon House.
Personal and social capability#
The Australian Curriculum’s existing general capability covering self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and social management at a school level. Coexistence 101 covers overlapping ground but stays hands-on and field-based rather than staying at the level of a capability statement; see Week 10 for where the two frameworks actually diverge.