Erving Goffman

Canadian-American sociologist (1922–1982)

AI overview

Erving Goffman was a Canadian-American sociologist who studied how people behave and present themselves in everyday social situations, treating human interaction like a performance. His ideas fundamentally changed how sociologists understand social life, showing that people carefully manage how others perceive them much like actors performing roles on a stage.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Person · Open Library

Born: 1922
Died: 1982
Works: 69

Top works

Presentation of Self
Strategic interaction
Asylums
Frame analysis
Asylums Essays on the Social Situation

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type: Person
Gender: Female
Origin: Berlin

Discography

Lonely Girl at Heart2009

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners: 19
Total plays: 32

via Last.fm · Erving Goffman

Recent publications · Crossref

5 total works indexed

The Interaction Order: American Sociological Association, 1982 Presidential Address
· 1983 · cited 2,076x
On Face-Work
· 1955 · cited 1,648x
Universal Screening for SARS-CoV-2 in Women Admitted for Delivery
· 2020 · cited 810x
Footing
· 1979 · cited 756x
The arrangement between the sexes
· 1977 · cited 617x

via Crossref · CC0

Quotes

“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.”
“I mean this report to serve as a sort of handbook detailing one sociological perspective from which social life can be studied, especially the kind of social life that is organised within the physical confines of a building or plant. A set of features will be described which together form a framework that can be applied to any concrete social establishment, be it domestic, industrial, or commercial.”
“Society is organized on the principle that any individual who possesses certain social characteristics has a moral right to expect that others will value and treat him in an appropriate way.”
“In many kinds of social interaction, unofficial communication provides a way in which one team can extend a definite but non-compromising invitation to the other, requesting that and formality be increased or decreased, or that both teams shift the interaction to one involving the performance of a new set of roles.”
“In recent years there have been elaborate attempts to bring into one framework the concepts and findings derived from three different areas of inquiry: the individual personality, social interaction, and society. I would like to suggest here a simple addition to these inter-disciplinary attempts.”
“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.”

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Wikidata facts

Image: E. Goffman c. 1940.jpg

Show 4 more facts

date of birth: 1922-06-11
date of death: 1982-11-19
Commons category: Erving Goffman
name in native language: Erving Goffman

Sources (3)

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~34 min read

Article

Erving Goffman (/ˈɡɒfmən/; 11 June 1922 – 19 November 1982) was a Canadian-born American sociologist, social psychologist, and writer, considered by some "the most influential American sociologist of the twentieth century".

In 2007, The Times Higher Education Guide listed him as the sixth most-cited author of books in the humanities and social sciences.