Erving Goffman archives

Brayden King points to this page of materials on sociologist Erving Goffman. Whenever I’ve read about Goffman, it always seems to be in conjunction with some story about his bad behavior–in that respect, King’s link above does not disappoint. In the absence of any context, it all seems mysterious to me Once or twice I’ve tried to read passages in books by Goffman but have never manage to get through any of it. (This is not mean as any kind of criticism, it’s just a statement of my lack of knowledge.) I was amused enough by the stories reported by King that I clicked through to the Biographical Materials section of the Goffman page and read a few. I still couldn’t really quite get the point, though, perhaps in part because I only know one of the many people on that list.

7 thoughts on “Erving Goffman archives

  1. Andrew,

    It might be best to begin with a book by one of Goffman's best students: Thomas Scheff and his Goffman Unbound: A New Paradigm for Social Science (2006).

    larry

  2. Michael Webster:

    Thanks for the pointer. I read the article on cooling the mark and it was indeed interesting. But I was bothered by a tone of smugness on Goffman's part; for example, here:

    In organizations patterned after a bureaucratic model, it is customary for personnel to expect rewards of a specified kind upon fulfilling requirements of a specified nature. Personnel come to define their career line in terms of a sequence of legitimate expectations and to base their self‑conceptions on the assumption that in due course they will be what the institution allows persons to become. Sometimes, however, a member of an organization may fulfill some of the requirements for a particular status, especially the requirements concerning technical proficiency and seniority, but not other requirements, especially the less codified ones having to do with the proper handling of social relationships at work.

    Goffman was a successful organization man and couldn't resist taking a swipe at the losers in the promotion game. It wasn't enough for him to say that some people don't ascend the ladder; he had to attribute that to not fulfilling the "less codified [requirements] having to do with the proper handling of social relationships at work."

    Well, no. In the current economic climate this is obvious, but even back in the 1960s there were organizations with too few slots at the top for all the aspirants at the bottom, and it seems a bit naive to suppose that not reaching the top rungs is necessarily a sign of improper handling of social relationships.

    In this instance, Goffman seems like the classic case of a successful person who things that, hey, everybody could be a success where they blessed with his talent and social skills. I haven't read his other work, though, so maybe there's more to the story.

  3. Goffman was one of my favourite authors when I studied sociology (next to GH Mead) and I would not have attributed this kind of simplistic thinking to him "everybody could be a success where they blessed with his talent and social skills"

    He likely was not kind to those who could not understand or keep up with him.

    One of my favourite incidents was when he sent his grad students to various hospitals to pretend being insane and getting admitted to do "participant observations" on what went on. I think all were successful.

    The hospital were incensed and complained that had they expected people to pretend to be insane few would have been admitted.

    Goffman bit and agreed to send out another batch of his grad students.

    The hospital indentified a fair number of apparent grad student faking to be insane.

    All to Goffman's delight as he had not sent out a single grad student (as he promissed he would).

    So maybe not a nice guy but he was dealing with a very serious issue and it would be my guess that he understood and counted on others fallibilities – even his own.

    Stigma:Note on the Management of a Spoiled Identity – is the one I wanted to re-read when I went to the beach this past summer :-(

    K?

  4. @K….

    Goffman did not send students out to psych hospitals pretending to be schizophrenic. That was D.L. Rosenhan: Being Sane in Insane Places. It is a fascinating read, btw.

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