Erving Goffman and the social drama

An expert in my field is Erving Goffman, sociologist and writer, who was considered “father of microsociology”. He was born in 1922, in Manville died in 1982. His parents Max and Ann, were Russian who immigrated to Canada by the World War I. At first, he studied chemistry in Manitoba and later, he worked making documentary films in Ottawa on the National Film Board. Here a friend convinced him about to study Sociology at University of Toronto, where Goffman read about Durkheim, Parsons, Margaret Mead, Radcliffe-Brown, Freud...

In 1952, and after of his graduation, he got marry Angelica Schuyber, a younger sociologist who, unfortunately, committed suicide 12 years later. But in 1981 he married again, with Gillian Sankoff, a linguist. Besides, Goffman was President of American Sociological Association. Finally, Goffman dies of stomach cancer in the same year.

Goffman was very important at the Second School of Chicago, for the Symbolic Interactionism of early twentieth century. For him, “The human behavior is like a continuous scenic representation”. All of us adapt our actions to the actions of others. We don’t talk or don’t do the same things with a friend, with a teacher, with our parents... with anyone. In everyday life, our speech and our movements depend of the context.

Language helps us to define the situations for the others and by the others. By Goffman, persons are “actors” who represent different roles every day, just like a play of theater. But actions of each one in front of society, also, have many things hidden, which Goffman called “the backstage of actor”. Besides, we control the information to the others and we try to get the most information possible from these others. People show to others only what they want to and not the complete reality. According this, men and women use “masks” by the situation which can be make up, kind of clothes, the race or the sex, appearance, the voice, the way you move and so on.

I think that his work is interesting, because while other sociologists were interested in big groups or even all the society, Goffman studied minimum units of interaction between persons.

If you liked the Goffman’s theory I suggest you to read:

• The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959)
• Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction (1961)
• Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (1963)