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

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.

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

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."

Asylums presents four interlinked essays that explore life in the 'total institutions': the closed systems of prisons, boarding schools, nursing homes and, most importantly, mental institutions. Focusing on the relationship between an inmate and the institution that contains them, Goffman unpicks how lives are managed 'on the inside', and how the setting more often than not works against the inmate's best interests. A radical exploration of the institutions that rule over the lives of men, women and children, Asylums is one of Erving Goffman's most insightful and long-lived works.