Erving Goffman

Agora

Erving Goffman

1922–1982

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

In everyday encounters we perform roles like actors on a stage, managing the impression we make and helping others save face.

Placement

Sociology & Social Theory · North America · Society & History, Mind & Consciousness

Sociologist of face-to-face encounters: in everyday life we stage ourselves like actors, guard our face and play by unwritten rules – down to the closed world of the asylum.

Key ideas

Presentation of self (front and back stage)
Face-work and interaction ritual
Total institutions
Stigma
Frame analysis

Students: Arlie Russell Hochschild

Open in the star map

Influence

Influenced by 6

William James

influenced by
Goffman opened Frame Analysis (1974) with James’s question under what circumstances we think things real and his account of the many ‘sub-universes’ of reality. E. Goffman, Frame Analysis (1974); W. James, The Principles of Psychology (1890), “The Perception of Reality”; SEP “William James”
Evidence: AI draft
William James › 1842–1910
Émile Durkheim

influenced by
Goffman applied Durkheim’s notion of the sacred to everyday encounters: the self is honoured in small rituals of deference and demeanour (Interaction Ritual, 1967). E. Goffman, “The Nature of Deference and Demeanor”, American Anthropologist 58 (1956), in Interaction Ritual (1967); É. Durkheim, Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse (1912)
Evidence: AI draft
Émile Durkheim › 1858–1917
Georg Simmel

influenced by
Goffman took Simmel’s ‘ideal sphere’ around every person as the basis of avoidance rituals that keep a respectful distance from others (‘The Nature of Deference and Demeanor’, 1956). E. Goffman, “The Nature of Deference and Demeanor” (1956), in Interaction Ritual (1967); G. Simmel, Soziologie (1908), “Das Geheimnis und die geheime Gesellschaft”
Evidence: AI draft
Georg Simmel › 1858–1918
George Herbert Mead

influenced by disputed
How far Goffman drew on Mead is disputed: he is often counted a symbolic interactionist, but commentators stress his debts to Durkheim and Simmel (Presentation of Self, 1956). E. Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1956; 1959); T. Burns, Erving Goffman (1992); G. Smith, Erving Goffman (2006); SEP “George Herbert Mead”
Evidence: AI draft
George Herbert Mead › 1863–1931
Alfred Schutz

influenced by
In Frame Analysis (1974) Goffman built on Schutz’s finite provinces of meaning, after James, but shifted from consciousness to the frames that organise definitions of situations. E. Goffman, Frame Analysis (1974); A. Schutz, “On Multiple Realities” (1945); SEP “Alfred Schutz”
Evidence: AI draft
Alfred Schutz › 1899–1959
Herbert Blumer

influenced by
Goffman studied at Chicago while Blumer taught there and came to Berkeley at his invitation (1958); he shared Blumer’s focus on interaction but declined the label symbolic interactionist. H. Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism (1969); T. Burns, Erving Goffman (1992); J. Verhoeven, “An Interview with Erving Goffman, 1980”, Research on Language and Social Interaction 26 (1993)
Evidence: AI draft
Herbert Blumer › 1900–1987

Influenced 2

Anthony Giddens

influenced ✓
Giddens treated Goffman as a systematic theorist of co-presence, using his analyses of encounters, front and back regions and tact in structuration theory (The Constitution of Society, 1984). A. Giddens, The Constitution of Society (1984); “Goffman as a Systematic Social Theorist”, in P. Drew and A. Wootton (eds.), Erving Goffman: Exploring the Interaction Order (1988)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Anthony Giddens › b. 1938
Arlie Russell Hochschild taught

taught
Hochschild studied sociology at Berkeley (MA 1965, PhD 1969) and names Goffman among the teachers there she was privileged to work with; The Managed Heart (1983) builds on his dramaturgy. Classroom teaching, not supervision. UC Berkeley, Department of Sociology, alumni page “Arlie Hochschild (1962)”; A. R. Hochschild, The Managed Heart (1983)
Evidence: AI draft
Arlie Russell Hochschild › b. 1940

Works

1956The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
Social life as theatre: we perform for audiences, manage impressions on the front stage and drop the role backstage.

Position

Goffman studied what he called the interaction order: what happens whenever people are in one another’s presence. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1956; expanded 1959) uses the language of the theatre. In every encounter we perform for others, maintaining a “front” – setting, appearance, manner – while we prepare and relax in a “back region”, as waiters do between the dining room and the kitchen. Such impression management is not mere deception: social order depends on everyone helping everyone else to sustain the shared definition of the situation. In Interaction Ritual (1967) he described the work of saving “face”, drawing on Durkheim’s idea that the self is something sacred, honoured in small rituals of deference and demeanour. Asylums (1961) analysed “total institutions” – psychiatric hospitals, prisons, barracks, monasteries – that strip inmates of their former selves, and became a key text of the critique of psychiatry. Stigma (1963) examined how people with a “spoiled identity” manage information about themselves. Frame Analysis (1974) asked how we know what kind of situation we are in. Goffman refused to belong to any school, but many of his concepts have entered everyday language.

Life & context

Erving Goffman was born in 1922 in Mannville, Alberta, to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants. He studied sociology and anthropology at the University of Toronto and went on to the University of Chicago, where he took his doctorate in 1953. For his dissertation he spent some eighteen months on Unst, one of the Shetland Islands, observing everyday conduct in a small community, partly from the kitchen of the local hotel. In 1955–56 he did fieldwork at St Elizabeths, a large psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C. He taught at Berkeley from 1958 and from 1968 at the University of Pennsylvania. Elected president of the American Sociological Association, he died of cancer in 1982 before he could deliver his presidential address, “The Interaction Order”.