3. Erving Goffman - education
• Interested in chemistry
• Attended St. John Technical High School, then
BSc. At University of Manitoba
• Early 1940s – first encounters with sociology
(Dennis Wrong)
• 1945 – graduated at University of Toronto
• 1949 – 1951 Collecting data for doctoral
dissertation (Island of Unst – Scotland)
5. Erwing Goffman
• 1958 – Invited to teach at the University of
California in Berkley
• 1959 – The presentation of Self, 1961 – Asylum
• Progressed rapidly, 1962 full professor
• Stock market, Blackjack
• 1964 – His wife commited suicide
• 1969 The Insanity of Place rumored to be
autobiographical
6.
7. Erving Goffman
• 1968 resigned his position in Berkley
• Benjamin Franklin Chair in Sociology and
anthropology at the university of Pennsylvania
• Frame Analysis, published 1974, hoped to be
his magnum opus
• 1981 - 73rd president of American Sociological
Association,
• 1982 - died from Stomach cancer, in
Philadelphia
8. No matter where
you are, you
always “put a
mask” to get
where you want
and to be part of
something.
“The World is like a stage”
14. DRAMATURGY
The Theatrical Representation of life
Consist from Front Stage and Back Stage
Uses Impression Management as a tool
15. “And to the degree that the individual maintains a
show before others that he himself does not believe, he
can come to experience a special kind of alienation
from self and a special kind of wariness of others.”
Erving Goffman:
19. Erving Goffman’s work was overly impressionistic
Unsystematic: he mainly focused on small groups
Lack of reliability, operationalization and testing.
20. Impact that Goffman had on the society
He is considered the most influential
American sociologist of the twentieth
century"
