The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Introduction

Erving Goffman first published the book in 1956 as a monograph of the University of Edinburgh’s Social Sciences Research Centre, drawing partly on his fieldwork on the Shetland island of Unst; an expanded edition appeared in the United States in 1959. It develops a dramaturgical vocabulary – performance, setting, front, team, regions, discrepant roles – for what Goffman calls impression management. With examples from hotels, funeral parlours, shops and hospitals he shows how people cooperate to sustain a shared definition of the situation and how embarrassment arises when it collapses. The book is one of the most widely read works of 20th-century sociology.

Connections

Taken up in

• The Managed Heart1983 · Arlie Russell Hochschild