Impression management performances in a Brazilian mining company : the researcher as audience

Writing from an autoethnographic perspective, in this paper I re-visit Erving Goffman's ideas to examine impression management tactics used by staff from a large Brazilian mining company. The analysis is based on a 6-week fieldwork trip to Brazil in 2008 for the purpose of gathering qualitative data for a study on corporate social responsibility in the extractivist sector. Post-fieldwork reflections prompted the insight that during the data gathering phase of my research, I was subject to a series of impression management 'performances' by my corporate informants, carried out to foster a positive image of their company. In the paper I juxtapose data obtained during fieldwork and my personal reflections with selected excerpts from Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.