Erving Goffman The Presentation Of Self In Everyday Life Summary

Erving Goffman is considered to be the most influential sociologist of the 20th century. Goffman was born the June 11, 1922 in Alberta, Canada to his parents Max and Anne Goffman who had fled from Ukraine to escape the Russian Revolution. He attended high school at St. John's High School. After graduating from high school Goffman attended the University of Manitoba, from 1941-43, to study Chemistry. A few years later he switched to the University of Toronto in order to get his B.A. in Sociology(he received in 1945). Soon after receiving his B.A., he decided to go back to school(the University of Chicago this time) to get his Ph.D.(he received in 1953). He got married to Angelica Choate while in the process of earning his Ph.D.In 1953 they had
His first ever published work was called, “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life”. This work was all based on his observations of people and their interactions in different social settings. He explores not just how people act but why they act a certain way in certain situations based on their internal and external environments. The writing refers life to theatre that every person is an actor and they are always in one of three stages socially; front stage, back stage, or offstage. The front stage is where the actor knows they are being watched and acts solely on the fact that there are people watching them, and gives the audience what they are expecting or what will please them. Back stage is when the actor is not in front of a audience, but rather alone and can be truly themselves. Lastly the offstage is where the actor is one-on-one with the audience members, and gets to interact with them based on what role they should play to that individual. Goffman’s fourth published writing is titled, “Stigma- Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity”. This piece is focused on the world of stigmatized people(or the people society classifies as “abnormal”) along with how they cope with the world of rejection and judgements. He gets most of his evidence for this book from autobiographies and case studies of the stigmatized people. This book discusses, rules that the “abnormals” should follow when in contact with the
One being, the “boom of suburbs” which was where people started to move into more of neighborhoods instead of living either on land in the rural areas or in an apartment in the city. Which cause a lot of new interactions between americans that they had to get used to. American was also struggling with segregation, and other groups of people(women's rights, homosexuals)standing up to fight for their rights. There were a great deal of boycotts and activists movements, along with the end of wars and the growth of the leberlism party. All of these attributes pushing Erving to write about, the interactions all of these people have, their roles, and how they should be classified in this new society. We see all of these issues in his writings and how he feels they should be changed or what needs to be done for both