Erving Goffman Quotes

Erving Goffman was a Canadian-born sociologist, social psychologist, and writer, considered by some "the most influential American sociologist of the twentieth century". In 2007 he was listed by The Times Higher Education Guide as the sixth most-cited author in the humanities and social sciences, behind Anthony Giddens, Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault, and ahead of Jürgen Habermas.Goffman was the 73rd president of the American Sociological Association. His best-known contribution to social theory is his study of symbolic interaction. This took the form of dramaturgical analysis, beginning with his 1956 book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Goffman's other major works include Asylums , Stigma , Interaction Ritual , Frame Analysis , and Forms of Talk . His major areas of study included the sociology of everyday life, social interaction, the social construction of self, social organization of experience, and particular elements of social life such as total institutions and stigmas. Wikipedia  

✵ 11. June 1922 – 19. November 1982

Works

Stigma
Stigma
Erving Goffman
Asylums
Asylums
Erving Goffman
Erving Goffman: 29   quotes 6   likes

Famous Erving Goffman Quotes

“The self… is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented.”

p 252; Cited in: Javier Trevino, Goffman's Legacy. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003, p. 55.
1950s-1960s, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959

Erving Goffman Quotes about personality

“There seems to be no agent more effective than another person in bringing a world for oneself alive, or, by a glance, a gesture, or a remark, shriveling up the reality in which one is lodged.”

Erving Goffman (1971), Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction, p. 38; As quoted by R. D. Laing in The Politics of Experience
1970s-1980s

Erving Goffman Quotes

“When an individual appears before others, he wittingly and unwittingly projects a definition of the situation, of which a conception of himself is an important part. When an event occurs which is expressively incompatible with this fostered impression, significant consequences are simultaneously felt in three levels of social reality, each of which involves a different point of reference and a different order of fact.
First, the social interaction, treated here as a dialogue between two teams, may come to an embarrassed and confused halt; the situation may cease to be defined, previous positions may become no longer tenable, and participants may find themselves without a charted course of action…
Secondly, in addition to these disorganizing consequences for action at the moment, performance disruptions may have consequences of a more far-reaching kind. Audiences tend to accept the self projected by the individual performer during any current performance as a responsible representative of his colleague-grouping, of his team, and of his social establishment…
Finally, we often find that the individual may deeply involve his ego in his identification with a particular role, establishment, and group and in his self-conception as someone who does not disrupt social interaction or let down the social units which depend upon that interaction.”

Source: 1950s-1960s, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959, p. 155-6

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