Goffman, Erving (1922–82) The most influential micro-sociologist during the 1960s and 1970s, Goffman pioneered the
dramaturgical perspective for sociology. The influences on his work were many. After completing his first degree at the University of Toronto he pursued graduate work at Chicago during the late 1940s. Here he came under the influence of the
symbolic interactionists, especially Everett Hughes and Herbert
Blumer; of the neo-Durkheimians, especially Lloyd
Warner, Edward Shils, and Edward Banfield; and of
social anthropology. In this way, his attention was drawn to the importance of
symbol and
ritual in
everyday life, and to the research techniques of
participant observation.
He conducted his first major fieldwork study on one of the Shetland Islands off Scotland (whilst based in Edinburgh). His observations of everyday life in this crofting community subsequently informed his highly influential
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) in which he outlines his dramaturgical framework. In this early work Goffman analyses social life via the metaphor of the theatre, and is concerned with the ways in which people play
roles, and manage the impressions they present to each other in different settings. He also reveals his abiding concern with the interaction order—with what people do when they are in the presence of others.
His next two books continued his dramaturgical interest but applied this framework to the field of deviance.
Stigma (1964) provides a formal analysis of the features of those who experience
stigma, whilst
Asylums (1961), reports on fieldwork inside a mental hospital, and traces the moral
career of a mental patient. From this case-study, he developed a more general account of the workings of
total institutions. Both these studies were also very influential in the development of
labelling theory, the latter being particularly relevant to the critique of
institutionalization, and perhaps having some impact in encouraging the process of
decarceration.
Many of Goffman's other studies, including
Encounters (1961),
Behaviour in Public Places (1963), and
Relations in Public (1971), pursued the themes of dramaturgical analysis, and provided a dictionary of new sociological concepts which facilitate understanding of the minute details of face-to-face interaction—‘mini concepts’ as one commentator has called them. These have influenced a whole generation of scholars interested in studying everyday life. But by the late 1960s Goffman's works also show signs of an increasing interest in
phenomenology and
sociolinguistics. Thus, in
Frame Analysis (1974), there is an attempt to depict the organization of consciousness, and in
Forms of Talk (1981) language becomes a major focus.
Although Goffman has had many followers he remains unique in the annals of sociology. He broke almost all the rules of conventional methodology: his sources were unclear; his fieldwork seems minimal, and he was happier with novels and biography, than with scientific observation; his style was not that of the scientific report but of the essayist; and he was frustratingly unsystematic. Likewise, he is very hard to place in terms of social theory. Sometimes he is seen as developing a distinct school of symbolic interactionism, sometimes as a
formalist following in the tradition of Georg
Simmel, and sometimes even as a functionalist of the micro-order, because of his concern with the functions of rituals (especially talk) in everyday life. He appears to have had a notoriously difficult temperament, which adds to the popular view of him as an intellectual maverick.
He has had more than his share of critics. Apart from the confusions raised above, he has consistently been accused of neglecting the wider
macrosociological concerns of social structure, class, and the economy in his writings—a charge he accepted, saying that these were not his concerns, but they were more important than his concerns! Others accused him of conservatism, because of his emphasis on the importance of ritual, order, and (in his later works) gender, for preserving aspects of the status quo. In Alvin Gouldner's
Coming Crisis of Western Sociology he is depicted as an apologist for capitalism, overly cynical, and far too concerned with the trivial. However, others found his work too radical, since its constant demonstration of the fragile nature of routine life seemed akin to
anarchism or
ethnomethodology.
Goffman's prime contribution lies in showing the deeply textured way in which societies are ordered through a multiplicity of human interactions. He developed an array of concepts to help us see this, and through his writings challenged the aridity of a methodologically sophisticated sociology lacking in much substance. He attempted ceaselessly to show that the interaction order was the bridge between the micro and the macro concerns of social life and sociology. His last paper, ‘The Interaction Order’ (
American Sociological Review, 1983)
, lays out a summary of his major arguments. It is too soon to judge whether the corpus of his work, which was so widely influential in his lifetime, will become a significant influence on sociology in the future. See Jason Ditton ,
The View from Goffman (1980
). See also
FRAME;
IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT.
