Everything about Erving Goffman totally explained
Erving Goffman (
June 11,
1922 –
November 19,
1982), was a
Canadian sociologist and writer. The
73rd president of
American Sociological Association, Goffman's greatest contribution to
social theory is his study of
symbolic interaction in the form of
dramaturgical perspective that began with his 1959 book
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life and was developed throughout his life expanding to the topics of
deference and demeanor.
Biography
Goffman was born to Max and Anne Goffman in
Mannville, Alberta on June 11, 1922. Goffman's family moved back to
Manitoba as a child and Goffman attended
St. John's Technical High School,
Dauphin, Manitoba before studying chemistry at the
University of Manitoba, 1939, received his
B.A. at the
University of Toronto in
1945 and his
M.A. and
Ph.D. from the
University of Chicago in
1949 and
1953. He was married to Angelica Choate in 1952, with whom he'd one son, Tom. Angelica committed
suicide in 1964.
In 1981 he married the Canadian linguist
Gillian Sankoff, with whom he'd a daughter, Alice.
His sister,
Frances Bay, enjoyed a busy acting career with supporting roles in numerous TV shows and movies in the 1970s through the 1990s. She may be best known for playing the "marble rye" lady on the
Seinfeld sitcom.
On November 20, 1982, Goffman died of
stomach cancer.
Goffman as a sociologist
Goffman became one of the most influential sociologists of the twentieth century, on a par with
Mead, in whose footsteps he followed in developing a sociological social psychology. Goffman studied at the University of Chicago with
Everett Hughes,
Edward Shils, and
W. Lloyd Warner. He would go on to pioneer the study of face-to-face interaction, or micro-sociology, elaborate the "dramaturgical approach" to human interaction, and develop numerous concepts that would have a massive influence. Unlike many of the most influential sociologists, Goffman's influence continued to grow after his death.
Goffman's greatest contribution to social theory is his formulation of symbolic interaction as
dramaturgical perspective in his 1959 book
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Although Goffman is often characterized as a
symbolic interactionist, he tried to correct the flaws of symbolic interactionism. For Goffman, society isn't a homogeneous creature. We must act differently in different settings. The context we've to judge isn't society at large, but the specific context. Goffman suggests that life is a theatre, but we also need a parking lot and a cloak room: there's a wider context lying beyond the face-to-face symbolic interaction.
Author of the seminal text
Asylums, for which he gathered information at the
National Institute of Mental Health in
Washington, D.C., he describes "
institutionalization" as a response by patients to the bureaucratic structures and mortification processes of
total institutions such as mental hospitals, prisons and concentration camps. He always considered himself a social scientist, and didn't use phenomenology or postmodernism as his major epistemological approach. He was a sociologist who emphasized that "society always comes first".
He also wrote
Frame analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Many of his works form the basis for the sociological and media studies concept of
framing.
Awards
During his lifetime he was awarded the following:
Institutions
During his career Goffman served at the following institutions:
University of Chicago, Division of Social Sciences, Chicago, assistant, 1952-53, resident associate, 1953-54
National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland, visiting scientist, 1954-57
University of California, Berkeley, assistant professor, 1958-59, associate professor, 1959-62, professor of sociology, 1962-68
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and Sociology, 1969-82
He was also the 73rd president of American Sociological Association
Quotes
"Man isn't like other animals in the ways that are really significant: Animals have instincts, we've taxes."
"Society is an insane asylum run by the inmates."
"The world, in truth, is a wedding."
"Stigma is a process by which the reaction of others spoils normal identity."
Major works
1959: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, University of Edinburgh Social Sciences Research Centre.
1961: Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. New York, Doubleday.
1961: Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction - Fun in Games & Role Distance. Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill.
1963: Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Prentice-Hall.
1967: Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior. Anchor Books.
1969: Strategic Interaction. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press.
1971: Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order. New York: Basic Books.
1974: Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. London: Harper and Row.
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