The Social Thought of Erving Goffman

Download or read book The Social Thought of Erving Goffman written by Michael Hviid Jacobsen and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2014-08-06 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part of the SAGE Social Thinker series, this book serves as a concise and inviting introduction to the life and works of Erving Goffman, one of the most prominent social theorists in postwar sociology. Goffman’s ideas continue to influence scholars in various fields and have also attracted many readers outside conventional academia. Goffman’s overall research agenda was the exploration of what he termed the interaction order—that is, the micro social order that regulates the co-mingling of people in each other’s immediate presence. He coined several new concepts (face-work, impression management, role distance, civil inattention, etc.) with which to grasp and understand the complexities and basic social restructuring of everyday life, many of which are now part of sociology’s standard vocabulary.