Goffman and Social Organization Studies of a Sociological Legacy

Erving Goffman is considered by many to have been one of the most important sociologists of the post-war era. His close observation of everyday life and his concern with the ways in which people play roles and manage the impressions they present to each other led to his pioneering creation of a new dramaturgical perspective for sociology. His later analysis explored the field of deviance and many of his works in this area are now considered as sociological classics, including Asylums, The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life and Stigma. This collection brings together many of today's leading sociologists to pursue and build upon the diverse aspects of Goffman's legacy.The contributors present chapters on key topics of Goffman's work. Issues covered include:* mental illness and institutionalism* the incorporation of literary intertexts in Goffman's writings* Goffman's relationship to ethnomethodology* the singularity of Goffman's ethnographyRanging from his critique of institutionalization to his understanding of the minute details of face-to-face interaction, this collection reveals the richness of Goffman's own work as well as his contribution to sociology today and will be essential reading for students and academics alike.

Notes on contributors, 1. Introduction: interpreting Goffman’s sociological legacy, 2. Erving Goffman: what is a life? The uneasy making of an intellectual biography, 3. Fine romances: two arrangements between the sexes in public places, 4. Role distance and the negational self, 5. Sundered selves: mental illness and the interaction order in the work of Erving Goffman, 6. Ethnographic coats and tents, 7. The omnipotence of the actor: Erving Goffman on ‘the definition of the situation’, 8. Reading Goffman on interaction, 9. Non-person and Goffman: sociology under the influence of literature, 10. Claiming the text: parsing the sardonic visions of Erving Goffman and Thorstein Veblen, Bibliography, Index

Greg Smith