Goffman’s study of organization was widened to include organizations which share certain characteristics with mental hospitals. They include prisons, concentration camps, orphanages, monasteries and army barracks, organizations Goffman refers to as ‘total institutions.
‘A total institution is defined as’ a place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated individuals, cut off from the wider society for an appreciate period of time, together lead an enforced, formally administered round of life’ Goffman draws on a range of published material – novels, auto-biographies and social science research – to suggest that there are basic similarities between many of the social processes which occur in such institutions.