Erving Goffman

Paper Summary:

This paper looks at the life of Erving Goffman, one of the most influential sociologists of the century despite the fact that his practice was idiosyncratic and his interest in producing a general theory was, he claimed, nonexistent. It examines how Goffman was a "sociologist of everyday life" whose principal areas of interest were the social construction of the self and the role of cultural expectations in the shaping of self-image.

Outline
Introduction
Life, Education, and Career
Goffman's Individualism
Goffman's Conception of the Self and Social Interaction
Goffman's Major Assumptions
Goffman's Major Contributions to Sociology
Critique

From the Paper:

"Despite his radically personal approach, however, Goffman had an ability to probe the layers of human interaction and convey the results of his investigation that has seldom been equaled. At times it can even be shown that Goffman's personal approach was adequate, and he genuinely had no need of method. Kang, for example, deplores "Goffman's methodology, especially his sampling technique" in his 1978 study Gender Advertisements (983). Rather than a random sample of advertisements Goffman drew a purposive sample, that is, he selected examples that were "representative of his preconception" and, thus, "his sampling strategy was not chosen so generalization to a population of visual images could be made" (Kang 983). Kang's assessment deliberately ignores, of course, the fact that Goffman had no desire to create a replicable study of the type she describes."

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