Back Stage

(noun)

Actions that only occur when the audience is not around.

Related Terms

Examples of Back Stage in the following topics:

  • Dramaturgy

    • An example of the difference between front stage and back stage behaviors would be the type of customer service embodied by baristas at the local coffee shop.
    • According to this perspective, individuals perform actions in everyday life as if they were performers on a stage.
    • Goffman explains this awareness in terms of front stage and back stage behaviors.
    • Front stage actions are those that are visible to the audience and are part of the performance, while back stage actions only occur when the audience is not around.
    • Erving Goffman uses the metaphor of a stage to explain human behavior in everyday life.

  • Levels of Analysis: Micro and Macro

    • Consider, for example, how front and back stage spaces are managed during a visit to the doctor.
    • When you arrive at the doctor's office, you are on stage as you present yourself to the receptionist.
    • As you are shown to an exam room, you are briefly ushered into a back stage space.
    • Once again, you are on stage.
    • There is a back region, or stage, that can also be considered a hidden or private place where individuals can be themselves and step out of their role or identity in society.

  • The Stages of Social Movements

    • Blumer, Mauss, and Tilly have described the different stages that social movements often pass through (see ).
    • In the next stage, movements generally become bureaucratized by establishing their own set of rules and procedures.
    • The concept dates back to Erving Goffman, and it discuss how new values, new meanings and understandings are required in order to understand and support social movements or changes.
    • This makes the actual stages the movement has passed through difficult to discern.
    • This graph depicts the various stages a social movement can undergo in the course of its development.

  • The Older Years

    • According to Erik Erikson's "Eight Stages of Life" theory, the human personality is developed in a series of eight stages that take place from the time of birth and continue on throughout an individual's complete life.
    • Despair," during which a person focuses on reflecting back on their life.
    • Successfully completing this phase means looking back with few regrets and a general feeling of satisfaction.
    • Discuss some of the implications of old age, particularly in relation to Erikson's "Eight Stages of Life" and age discrimination

  • Kohlberg and Moral Development

  • Piaget

    • The stages are as follows:
    • The sensorimotor stage is the first of the four stages in cognitive development that "extends from birth to the acquisition of language. " In this stage, infants construct an understanding of the world by coordinating experiences with physical actions–in other words, infants gain knowledge of the word from the physical actions they perform.
    • The pre-operational stage is the second stage of cognitive development.
    • The third stage is called the "concrete operational stage" and occurs approximately between the ages of 7 and 11 years.
    • The final stage is known as the "formal operational stage" (adolescence and into adulthood).

  • Demographic Transition Theory

    • An example of this stage is the United States in the 1800s.
    • Afghanistan is currently in this stage.
    • In stage three, birth rates fall.
    • Mexico’s population is at this stage.
    • Sweden is considered to currently be in Stage 4.

  • Age and Sexuality

    • Rather than a monolithic sexual career delimited between stages of aging, for example, researchers have revealed a wide variety of sexual practices, patterns, and cultural debates throughout the life course, and in so doing, have complicated previous assumptions regarding aging and sexual activity.
    • Further, researchers (dating back to at least the 1940's) have consistently demonstrated that sexualities shift and change in varied and nuanced ways throughout the life course, and that people establish, maintain, and / or adapt sexual beliefs, identities, practices, and desires via ongoing biological and social experiences and evolution throughout their lives.

  • Social Change

    • They drove the marchers back to Selma.
    • The different stages of social movements, as adapted from Blumer (1969), Mauss (1975) and Tilly (1978)

  • Gender Inequality in Politics

    • To appreciate the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment, one must look back to the mid-nineteenth century.
    • Women's suffrage took a back seat to the Civil War and Reconstruction, but America's entry into World War I re-initiated a vigorous push.
    • Women in politics took center stage in the 2008 election.