Erving Goffman

Canadian-American sociologist (1922-1982) · Canada · Academics · Died at 60

Erving Goffman is read about 639 times a day, in 52 languages.

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He argued that all of us are actors managing impressions, that asylums strip identity, that stigma is social machinery. His dramaturgical lens - everyday life as performance - reshaped how sociology reads human behavior.

Academics Academic Canada Americas 20th Century

A life in dates

1982Died19 November 19821976“For over a decade now in the literature of social psychology there has been good work on stigma - the situation of the individual who is disqualified from full social acceptance.”In their wordsPreface, lead paragraph. p.9 [Page numbers per the Penguin Books Pelican paperback, 1976 reprint.]Read the whole statement

1967“Approved attributes and their relation to face make every man his own jailer; this is a fundamental social constraint even though each man may like his cell.”In their wordsErving Goffman (1967: 10), as cited in: Trevino (2003,, p. 37).Read the whole statement

1963“But, When persons are present to one another they can function not merely as physical instruments but also as communicative ones.”In their wordsBehavior in Public Places, 1963Read the whole statement

“In this essay I want to review some work on stigma, especially some popular work, to see what it can yield for sociology.”In their wordsPreface - p.9-10Read the whole statement

1961“The total institutions of our society can be linked in five rough groupings.”In their wordsp. 4-5Read the whole statement

1959“Often, when two teams enter social interaction, we can identify one as having the lower general prestige and the other team the higher.”In their wordsp. 126Read the whole statement

1922Born11 June 1922

Also in Deutsch

Photos 5

E. Goffman c. 1940

Cfare fshihet pas asaj fytyre ? Cilën maske ke vënë?

Erving Goffman circa 1940

GoffmanE

Krijimi i identiteve

In their own words 10

Erving Goffman

10 statements, newest first

For over a decade now in the literature of social psychology there has been good work on stigma - the situation of the individual who is disqualified from full social acceptance.
1976, Preface, lead paragraph. p.9 [Page numbers per the Penguin Books Pelican paperback, 1976 reprint.], Own words
In our society, defecation involves an individual in activity which is defined as inconsistent with the cleanliness and purity standards expressed in many of our performances.
1973, p. 121 (1973 edition), Own words
Approved attributes and their relation to face make every man his own jailer; this is a fundamental social constraint even though each man may like his cell.
1967, Erving Goffman (1967: 10), as cited in: Trevino (2003,, p. 37)., Own words

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Awards

Guggenheim Fellowship

Family

Erving Goffman

Partners

Child Alice Goffman

Sibling Frances Bay

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About this person

Erving Goffman was born in Canada in 1922 and became an American sociologist whose work on symbolic interaction redefined the field. In 1956 he published The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, introducing dramaturgical analysis: the idea that social life is theater, each of us constantly performing and managing how others see us. Over the next twenty-five years he extended that vision into asylums, stigma, interaction rituals, and the frames through which experience gets organized - always dissecting the subtle mechanics of selfhood and social control. He served as the 73rd president of the American Sociological Association and by 2007 stood as the sixth most-cited author in the humanities and social sciences. He died in 1982, having spent a career showing that identity is not innate but assembled in every glance and gesture.

Country

Canada

Academics from Canada 6

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