Contexto institucional

During the admission phase, an institutional member goes through an identity transformation that involves ‘disidentification’ with their past lives and relationships (Lee & Newby, 1983, p. 334). Admission to the institution first involves a physical removal from the social networks in which notions of self were produced, followed by procedures that signify and ritualise the change in identity (Goffman, 1961, p. 35). Goffman argues that upon entry to the institution, the entrant “begins to learn about the limited extent to which a conception of oneself can be sustained when the usual setting of supports for it are suddenly removed” (Goffman, 1961, p. 148).

For the parliamentarian, the first stage of formal admission to parliament is departure from their homes and communities. On their arrival at parliament, they participate in historic rituals, including a swearing-in ceremony and a maiden speech. Media attention accompanies these events, heralding the person’s change in status. Parliamentarians’ accounts of entering the workplace recognise these moments as ones that signify something ‘new’ and a ‘world’ change. The experience of being successful in an election and the sense of moving ‘into’ the parliamentary world are part of the process of admission to the institution. One parliamentarian commented on successful first-time election as a time when

… everything is on a sort of a buzz and everything’s sort of swinging along … . … You’ve got no idea what you are walking into … (Parliamentarian F).

Entry to parliament is voluntary, yet undertaken without having a full understanding of what entry to the institution entails. Participants suggest the effect of physical distance

from personal relationships is hard to understand prior to taking up office. Sometimes veteran parliamentarians pass on advice to newcomers about this aspect of the work:

When I was first elected – [an outgoing electorate parliamentarian] said to me you have the right to use the telephone with national toll calls – use it, use it every day, ring your partner every day. Don’t ever let a day go by where you don’t talk to your partner on the phone because you will find that the distance is magnified if you don’t talk. It was the best advice that I received … that’s something that nobody is ever quite prepared for is the distance from family (Parliamentarian A).

As a tempering tactic, the advice of the outgoing parliamentarian offers a means of moderating the effect of the loss of connection to personal support networks, and the conceptions of self they allowed for.

During the admission stage, there are also changes in the availability of personal information about the institutional entrant. Their “past history” (Lee & Newby, 1983, p. 334) becomes of public interest and aspects of this past take on new relevance in light of their current status. In the psychiatric institution, the entrant finds staff suddenly has access to information that was previously ‘private’, and that as an institutional entrant they have no control over this access. As the implications of their new institutional identity sink in, parliamentarians too become aware that they have little control over what personal information enters into the public arena.

I think it’s the sense that you have no private life, that any aspect of your private life can be used as a weapon against you. … So opinions are formed about individual politicians regardless of their political persuasion through media impressions and issues ... There is initially an intense sense of frustration about that and the unfairness of it (Parliamentarian H).

In the parliamentarian’s case, it is not only staff who may gain access to their personal information, but media interest means there is a wider audience for information on parliamentarians. It is in this sense then that there is a “violation of [the parliamentarian’s] personal space” (Lee & Newby, 1983, p. 334).

Through admission to parliament, the parliamentarian recognises themselves as belonging to a particular category of worker. They become an insider to the parliamentary institution as they learn to identify themselves in ways that are in keeping with understandings of what ‘kind’ of person they should be. Admission requires parliamentarians to begin managing their performances of self accordingly, including demonstrating their understanding of how the parliamentarian should ‘feel’ in particular

situations. The subsequent stages of the moral career, mortification, adaptation and release, are dependent first on the parliamentarian going through this admission process. Admission marks a change in category from the ‘pre-parliamentarian’ self to a new self. This shift is consolidated through the next stage of the moral career, mortification.

Where the admission stage involves entry to the institution and a series of actions marking the beginning of ‘disidentification’, the mortification stage involves an intensification of the removal of the vestiges of ‘the old self’. During this stage, the implications of institutional membership on the experience of self become manifest. As prior notions of self are stripped away, the losses that accompany the new institutional identity are ‘felt’. The self becomes “systematically, if often unintentionally, mortified” (Goffman, 1997, p. 55) with the loss of relationships. There is a “… radical shift in [the] moral career, a career composed of the progressive changes that occur in the beliefs that [the person] has concerning [themselves] and significant others” (Goffman, 1997, p. 55).

Membership to parliament brings extensive demands for the parliamentarian’s physical presence at events. In addition to changes in their physical availability for other personal or social events, their new-found status also affects the meaning-making that takes place during interaction with others. One parliamentarian was told by an outgoing colleague to take a good look at the friends they had prior to entry to parliament because they were the relationships that could be assumed to be ‘genuine’. At the end of their tenure, these relationships would be the only ones left and those established during their parliamentary career would not survive their exit from parliament. Another parliamentarian said that even those prior relationships can come under threat.

We were told when we came in that most relationships that we come in with are gone by the time we leave again (Parliamentarian H).

For parliamentarians, the mortification of the self occurs through the loss of old relationships and the need to approach present and future relationships in a new and different way.

The experience of mortification of self presents a challenge to the new parliamentarian. Parliamentarian F earlier described admission to parliament as a ‘buzz’; however the ‘euphoria’ does not last long. The excitement of victory and the status that victory

accords, is soon replaced by a need for the parliamentarian to learn to manage the ‘feelings’ that accompany the work.

… When you come into parliament everybody goes through the same generalised process and that’s one, the honeymoon period and two, you end up going into a trough … The trough is when, things are tough and I would say that they’re emotionally tough too, but you, and I’m pretty sure that everybody goes through it, and you have just got to handle it. … You’ve got no idea of what you are walking into and then as you start to get thrown into it, because you’ve got to sink or swim, someone throws you into the water and you sink or swim, it’s literally like someone throwing you into the water (Parliamentarian F).

The requirements for change are met through the loss, mortification, or the ‘sinking’ of self. The work places expectations on the parliamentarian that cannot be met through old understandings and practices of self. Different skills and new understandings are required.

Although the totalising tendencies of the institution do not restrict parliamentarians in the same way that total institutions restrict inmates, barriers are created which limit the parliamentarian’s access to opportunities for the enactment of other ‘selves’. In particular, the plethora of requests for the parliamentarian’s presence at events, and the demand for polished performances in both public and workplace activities, involve vast amounts of time spent doing work-related tasks, leaving little time for other activities.

The demand is huge on one’s time. For a single person, like me, all-consuming. Yeah, all-consuming because people would begrudge me a moment that I might need to have for myself (Parliamentarian B).

…It’s restricted me as a person because the job is so all-consuming that the things that I like doing … all of those things are – seem – engaging with friends – are much restricted because I just don’t have time. I doubt if I would work less than a hundred hours a week. And it’s a seven days a week job. And I think that while it’s a very stimulating job, it’s probably also having a negative effect on my personal life and my relationships with people (Parliamentarian G).

The relationships and settings that give the parliamentarian a sense of ‘self’ not defined by occupational identity are affected by their membership in the institution and the expectations that accompany those who work as parliamentarians. Another parliamentarian noted the effect of becoming a parliamentarian on personal relationships.

[Friendships are] destroyed, destroyed. Ripped apart, stressed and distant. Friends I had prior to politics, yeah we had things in common, now we almost –

[have] zero, because I can’t unload on them stuff I know about, I don’t mean unload, but I mean discuss things because they aren’t in that sphere. I shouldn’t expect them to be. I have found I have got out of touch with what they might be interested in because of my all-consuming political life (Parliamentarian B). Immersion in the work of parliament becomes a barrier to social interaction with past friends or people outside of the workplace, but not only because of the demand on time. The ‘stuff’ of the job is not shared with old friends because ‘they aren’t in that sphere’. This parliamentarian undergoes a change in their “beliefs [concerning] themselves … and significant others” (Goffman, 1997 p. 55) which involves an understanding that there has been a decrease in the ‘things [they have] in common’ with friends from the past.

The loss of the pre-parliamentary self is accounted for as one of the costs that come with being a parliamentarian.

What cost to your personal life are you prepared to pay for a life in politics? … I find the cost quite high … it explodes into this incredibly demanding life. … I have had difficult times … so totally consumed and focussed on that, that I had lost recognition of what I was giving up, which was a piece of me all the time (Parliamentarian B).

The entrant to the institution has a number of avenues available to them through which a transformation of self may be enacted, but the transformation most likely to bring the parliamentarian success in their workplace is the “conversion of the self … to the role of [the] ‘perfect’ [parliamentarian]” (Lee & Newby, 1983, p. 335).