Erving Goffman

A notable contribution to our understanding of ourselves. This book explores the realm of human behavior in social situations and the way that we appear to others. Dr. Goffman uses the metaphor of theatrical performance as a framework. Each person in everyday social intercourse presents himself and his activity to others, attempts to guide and cotnrol the impressions they form of him, and employs certain techniques in order to sustain his performance, just as an actor presents a character to an audience. The discussions of these social techniques offered here are based upon detailed research and observation of social customs in many regions.

The author of The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life analyzes a person’s feelings about himself and his relationship to people society calls “normal.” Stigma is an illuminating excursion into the situation of persons who are unable to conform to standards that society calls normal. Disqualified from full social acceptance, they are stigmatized individuals. Physically deformed people, ex-mental patients, drug addicts, prostitutes, or those ostracized for other reasons must constantly strive to adjust to their precarious social identities. Their image of themselves must daily confront, and be affronted by, the image others reflect back to them. Drawing extensively on autobiographies and case studies, sociologist Erving Goffman analyzes the stigmatized person’s feelings about himself and his relationship to “normals” He explores the variety of strategies stigmatized individuals employ to deal with the rejection of others, and the complex sorts of information about themselves they project. In Stigma, the interplay of alternatives the stigmatized individual must face every day is brilliantly examined by one of America’s leading social analysts. “This short book established the conceptual understanding of stigma that continues to buttress contemporary sociological thinking.” —Sociological Review

This new volume in the Social Thinkers series serves as an introduction to the life, work, and ideas of Erving Goffman.

Few sociologists have commanded a larger readership than Erving Goffman. From his first book, The Presentation of Self In Everyday Life (1956), to his last, Forms of Talk (1981), his publications were eagerly awaited and his ideas widely discussed. In 1982 when he died at the age of 60, the response was that a figure of outstanding importance had left the stage of modern sociology. In this powerful study, Tom Burns provides a meticulous and incomparable examination of Erving Goffman's work. Burn's arranges Goffman's writings into a series of themes such as 'Social Order', 'Acting Out', normalisation', 'abnormalisation', 'grading and discrimination' and 'realms of being'. This is a useful device because it brings out the richness and diversity of Goffman's preoccupations. This richness and diversity is often lost in secondary accounts which insist on labelling Goffman as a 'micro-sociologist' or 'symbolic interactionist'. In a painstaking and accurate discussion Burns shows the meaning and application of Goffman's key concepts. He also guides the reader in the direct influences upon Goffman's thought. He shows more clearly than anyone else how Goffman was influenced by Durkheim, Simmel, the Chicago School, animal ethology and linguistic philosophy. The book ends with a crisp and incisive critical assessment of Goffman's sociology.

A total institution is defined by Goffman as a place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated, individuals, cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life. Prisons serve as a clear example, providing we appreciate that what is prison-like about prisons is found in institutions whose members have broken no laws. This volume deals with total institutions in general and, mental hospitals, in particular. The main focus is, on the world of the inmate, not the world of the staff. A chief concern is to develop a sociological version of the structure of the self. Each of the essays in this book were intended to focus on the same issue--the inmate's situation in an institutional context. Each chapter approaches the central issue from a different vantage point, each introduction drawing upon a different source in sociology and having little direct relation to the other chapters. This method of presenting material may be irksome, but it allows the reader to pursue the main theme of each paper analytically and comparatively past the point that would be allowable in chapters of an integrated book. If sociological concepts are to be treated with affection, each must be traced back to where it best applies, followed from there wherever it seems to lead, and pressed to disclose the rest of its family.

While Erving Goffman’s books are among the most widely read sociological works, covering issues including the presentation of the self, total institutions, interaction order to frame analysis, they are in fact guided by a single theme: the analysis of the form of interaction in social situations and the role that individuals play in it. This book stresses Goffman’s central role as a sociological theorist, exploring the potentials of his work and uncovering the recondite layers of his oeuvre. In opening a path to understanding the complexity of his writings, it offers new directions for social theory and empirical research.

This book brings together five of Goffman's seminal essays: "Replies and Responses," "Response Cries," "Footing," "The Lecture," and "Radio Talk."

"Not then, men and their moments. Rather, moment and their men," writes Erving Goffman in the introduction to his groundbreaking 1967 Interaction Ritual, a study of face-to-face interaction in natural settings, that class of events which occurs during co-presence and by virtue of co-presence. The ultimate behavioral materials are the glances, gestures, positionings, and verbal statements that people continuously feed into situations, whether intended or not. A sociology of occasions is here advocated. Social organization is the central theme, but what is organized is the co-mingling of persons and the temporary interactional enterprises that can arise therefrom. A normatively stabilized structure is at issue, a "social gathering," but this is a shifting entity, necessarily evanescent, created by arrivals and killed by departures. The major section of the book is the essay "Where the Action Is," drawing on Goffman's last major ethnographic project observation of Nevada casinos. Tom Burns says of Goffman's work "The eleven books form a singularly compact body of writing. All his published work was devoted to topics and themes which were closely connected, and the methodology, angles of approach and of course style of writing remained characteristically his own throughout. Interaction Ritual in particular is an interesting account of daily social interaction viewed with a new perspective for the logic of our behavior in such ordinary circumstances as entering a crowded elevator or bus." In his new introduction, Joel Best considers Goffman's work in toto and places Interaction Ritual in that total context as one of Goffman's pivotal works: "His subject matter was unique. In sharp contrast to the natural tendency of many scholars to tackle big, important topics, Goffman was a minimalist, working on a small scale, and concentrating on the most mundane, ordinary social contacts, on everyday life.'"