Erving Goffman - Hardcover

Burns, Tom

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415064929 ISBN 13: 9780415064927

Publisher: Routledge, 1991

Synopsis

Few sociologists have commanded a larger readership than Erving Goffman. From his first book, The Presentation of Self In Everyday Life (1956), to his last, Forms of Talk (1981), his publications were eagerly awaited and his ideas widely discussed. In 1982 when he died at the age of 60, the response was that a figure of outstanding importance had left the stage of modern sociology. In this powerful study, Tom Burns provides a meticulous and incomparable examination of Erving Goffman's work. Burn's arranges Goffman's writings into a series of themes such as Social Order', Acting Out', normalisation', abnormalisation', grading and discrimination' and realms of being'. This is a useful device because it brings out the richness and diversity of Goffman's preoccupations. This richness and diversity is often lost in secondary accounts which insist on labelling Goffman as a micro-sociologist' or symbolic interactionist'. In a painstaking and accurate discussion Burns shows the meaning and application of Goffman's key concepts. He also guides the reader in the direct influences upon Goffman's thought. He shows more clearly than anyone else how Goffman was influenced by Durkheim, Simmel, the Chicago School, animal ethology and linguistic philosophy. The book ends with a crisp and incisive critical assessment of Goffman's sociology.

About this title

Product Description:

Decades after his death, the figure of Erving Goffman (1922-82) continues to fascinate. Perhaps the best-known sociologist of the second half of the twentieth century, Goffman was an unquestionably significant thinker whose reputation extended well beyond his parent discipline.

A host of concepts irrevocably linked to Goffman's name - such as 'presentation of self', 'total institutions', 'stigma', 'impression management' and 'passing' - are now staples in a wide range of academic discourses and are slipping into common usage. Goffman's writings uncover a previously unnoticed pattern in the minutiae of everyday interaction. Readers are often shocked when they recognize themselves in his shrewd analyses of errors and common predicaments. 

This superb study, written by one of the most respected sociologists at work today, is an indispensible guide to the sociology of Erving Goffman. This book offers a compact guide to Goffman’s key ideas and the debates they have engendered, and incorporates understandings generated by recent Goffman scholarship.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0415064929
• ISBN 13: 9780415064927
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 394