look convincing when they presented themselves to others at home, school, work, stores, and other microinteractive settings.
Goffman developed the front and backstage aspects of his theory by observing individual behavior. The front, he labeled as that part of the individual's performance that regularly functions in a fixed and general way. The actor is on stage, following the script and attempting to manipulate the audience. The back region, by contrast, is the place where actors drop their front and step out of character. The actors do not need to engage in impression management and can be themselves. Throughout his work, Goffman focused his primary attention on the smallest unit of interaction, two or more individuals in one another's presence and the discrepancies between deception and manipulation. He argued that the larger society is affected directly by the microscopic unit.
Foucault wrote on the macroscopic level. By looking at the ways in which people had written about madness and crime, Foucault examined the changes that had taken place over time. He then showed how much societies had changed in their general outlook toward excluded groups between the Middle Ages and modern times. The asylum and the prison exemplified the modern world to Foucault. He wrote that torture, public floggings, and executions were t
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