Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman (June 11, 1922 – November 19, 1982), was a Canadian and American 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. His sister, Frances Bay says that Erving "was a real prankster as a kid, and they never thought he'd amount to anything." [Michael Posner, "Seinfeld's marble rye lad honoured." "Toronto Globe and Mail", Sept 6, 2008: R4.]

Goffman attended St. John's Technical High School, Dauphin, Manitoba before studying chemistry at the University of Manitoba in 1939. He received his B.A. at the University of Toronto in 1945 (where he dated social network pioneer Elizabeth Bott [ Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Linton Freeman and Barry Wellman. "A Note on the Ancestral Toronto Home of Social Network Analysis." "Connections" 18, 3 (November, 1996): 15-19] , 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 had one son, Tom. Angelica committed suicide in 1964. In 1981 he married the Canadian linguist Gillian Sankoff, with whom he had 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 was a distinguished sociologist in his time. Along with many other sociologists of his cohort, he was heavily influenced by George Herbert Mead in developing his sociological theory. 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 is not a homogeneous creature. We must act differently in different settings. The context we have to judge is not 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 is 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 did not 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:
* Doctor of Laws (LL.D.), University of Manitoba, 1976
* Guggenheim fellowship, 1977-78
* In Medias Res, International Prize for Communicating, 1978
* Doctor of Hebrew Literature/Letters (D.H.L.), University of Chicago, 1979
* Mead-Cooley Award in social psychology
* Forms of Talk was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award, 1981

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 [http://www.asanet.org/page.ww?name=Erving+Goffman&section=Presidents ASA Bio note] . Last accessed on 14 January 2006.]

Quotes

*"Man is not like other animals in the ways that are really significant: Animals have instincts, we have 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. ISBN 978-0140135718
*1961: "". New York, Doubleday.
*1961: "". Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill.
*1963: "", The Free Press.
*1963: "". Prentice-Hall.
*1967: "". Anchor Books.
*1969: "Strategic Interaction." Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
*1971: "" New York: Basic Books.
*1974: "" London: Harper and Row. ISBN 978-0060903725
*1981: "Forms of Talk", Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0812277906

References

External links

:Bios
* [http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/goffmanbio.html Biography]
* [http://www.blackwood.org/Erving.htm Biography]
* [http://sobek.colorado.edu/SOC/SI/si-goffman-bio.htm Biography]
* [http://www.sociologyprofessor.com/socialtheorists/ervinggoffman.php Biography] :Resources
* [http://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas/goffman.htm Articles on Goffman]
* [http://www.tau.ac.il/~algazi/mat/bib-goffman.htm Erving Goffman: A Bibliography]
* [http://www.mdx.ac.uk/WWW/STUDY/xgof.htm Extracts]
* [http://bank.UGent.be/da/da.htm#eg Goffman and the sociology of order in interaction]