Total institution

A total institution is a place of work and residence where a great number of similarly situated people, cut off from the wider community for a considerable time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life.:44:855 The concept is mostly associated with the work of sociologist Erving Goffman. A total institution is a place of work and residence where a great number of similarly situated people, cut off from the wider community for a considerable time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life.:44:855 The concept is mostly associated with the work of sociologist Erving Goffman. The term is sometimes credited as having been coined and defined by Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman in his paper 'On the Characteristics of Total Institutions', presented in April 1957 at the Walter Reed Institute's Symposium on Preventive and Social Psychiatry.:1 An expanded version appeared in Donald Cressey's collection, The Prison, and was reprinted in Goffman's 1961 collection, Asylums.:1 Fine and Manning, however, note that Goffman heard the term in lectures by Everett Hughes (likely during the late-1940s seminar, 'Work and Occupations'). Regardless of whether Goffman coined the term, he can be credited with popularizing it. Total institutions are divided by Goffman into five different types: In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault discussed total institutions in the language of complete and austere institutions.:231 According to S. Lammers and A. Verhey, some 80 percent of Americans will ultimately die not in their home, but in a total institution.:853