Erving Goffman (1922-82) was an inspirational thinker, and one of the giants of 20th century sociology. Several of his books, notably The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), Asylums (1961), Relations in Public (1963), Stigma (1963) and Gender Advertisements (1979) are acknowledged as modern classics. Goffman fundamentally revised how we think of social life. After him, the study of social encounters, behavior in public, the construction and deconstruction of the self, stigma and forms of everyday communication, were never the same again. Without being obviously attached to any discrete research tradition, Goffman drew from the best thought on social interaction, applied it in his fieldwork, and produced a richly satisfying and extraordinarily influential approach to making sense of social life. He was a sociological virtuoso, producing unmatched insights into how life with others is sustained and why forms of interaction break down or cause personal damage. This unparalleled collection, edited by two acknowledged international experts on Goffman, produces a unique reference resource for researchers and students. It consists of the main critical responses to Goffman's oeuvre, offering readers a distillation of the main themes in Goffman's work and explaining how these themes relate to contemporary social thought. The collection is systematic and constitutes a unique asset in understanding this searching and wide-ranging thinker. The four volumes are thematically organized into nine sections: Section 1: Personal Reminiscences Goffman became internationally famous during the 1960s and 70s, at a moment when American sociology was growing by leaps and bounds. Although in some ways, an unusually reticent man, Goffman's success made him one of the `faces' of American sociology during these crucial years in the professional formation of the subject. Because Goffman's methods of analysis are so personal to the man himself, this section is a particularly useful guide to elucidating and applying Goffman's ideas. Section 2: Biography and Career In this section Goffman's career is systematically and critically presented. Included are reflections on Goffman's relation to the academic community, his central legacies and his highly daring and revisionist attempt to rethink social encounters and social life. Section 3: Goffman's Sociology & Modern Society Although Goffman produced one of the most significant and influential of all contemporary approaches to sociology, the application of his ideas to the central questions of the day is often hard to identify. He was never an overtly `political' thinker, nor did he engage in utopian theorizing. In this section, the relevance of Goffman's ideas for understanding modern society is pinpointed. Included are considerations of his dramaturgical method, his place in the politics of 60s Sociology, the relation of his ideas to questions of civility and etiquette and a discussion of how Goffman viewed human nature. Section 4: Methods Towards the end of his life Goffman sought to externalize the main methodological themes in his work. These had been mainly implicit in his popular writings in the late 1950s and 60s. However, in books like Forms of Talk (1981) and Frame Analysis (1986) he began to be more concrete about the key methodological elements in his work. This section includes discussions of Goffman's use of the concept of self, outlines the distinctive features of his method and indicates how his thought relates to `common sense'. Section 5: Textuality This section continues the theme of Goffman's methodology, by examining how he understood and applied forms of `reading' society and, in turn, how his readings have been `read'. The challenge his work poses to orthodox ethnography, the place of irony in his analysis, the virtuoso character of his sociology and Goffman's innovations and decoding interaction comprise the central themes of this section. Section 6: Central Sociological Concerns In this, the most lengthy section of the collection, Goffman's central sociological concerns are investigated. His work on interaction, self, frames, stigma, mental illness and total institutions is critically examined. The section reveals the amazing fertility of Goffman's insights and the astonishing range of his sociological imagination. Above all, a critical understanding of why Goffman is important for sociology, what his achievement constitutes, and the strengths and limitations of his sociology, emerges from these pages. Section 7: Goffman and the Classical Tradition Goffman's relation to the classical tradition is explored in this section. Comparisons with the ideas of Cooley, Simmel, Park, Hughes and the Chicago School are identified and elaborated. The section helps readers to understand the nature of the unusual crucible from which Goffman's approach emerged. Section 8: Goffman and His Contemporaries Goffman's ideas generated a huge amount of critical discussion in his own lifetime. This section provides readers with a comprehensive guide to Goffman's relationship to the work of Blumer, structuralism, existentialism, Sartre, Elias, Habermas and feminism. Again, the sheer range of Goffman's influence emerges most powerfully. Section 9: Goffman's Influence on Successors Although Goffman died in 1982, his work is still a major influence in contemporary social analysis. This section explains how Goffman's ideas have been used in contemporary work on conversation analysis, semiotics, consumer culture, postmodernism and the public sphere. This magisterial collection is a fitting critical tribute to the sociology of Erving Goffman. It enables readers to fully appreciate the achievement and originality of this seminal thinker.

Table of Contents:
Introduction - Gary Alan Fine, Philip Manning and Gregory W H Smith PART ONE: PERSONAL REMINISCENCES Erving Goffman - Pierre Bourdieu Discoverer of the Infinitely Small Erving Goffman - Allen D Grimshaw A Personal Appreciation Erving Goffman (1922-1982) - Dean MacCannell On the Importance of Being Erving - P M Strong Erving Goffman, 1922-1982 On Erving Goffman - Dell Hymes Role Models and Role Distance - Gary T Marx A Remembrance of Erving Goffman The Passing of Intellectual Generations - Randall Collins Reflections on the Death of Erving Goffman The Nature of Goffman - Robert Erwin PART TWO: BIOGRAPHY AND CAREER Erving Goffman - Judith Posner His Presentation of Self Erving Goffman and the Academic Community - Mark Oromaner Rebuttal to Oromaner Paper - Judith Posner Vicissitudes of the Sacred - Paul Creelan Erving Goffman′s Sociological Legacies - John Lofland A View From the Fort - Gaile McGregor Erving Goffman as Canadian Baltasound as the Symbolic Capital of Social Interaction - Yves Winkin An Interview with Erving Goffman, 1980 - Jef C Verhoeven PART THREE: GOFFMAN′S SOCIOLOGY AND MODERN SOCIETY Erving Goffman - Laurie Taylor Other Symptoms of the Crisis - Alvin Gouldner Goffman′s Dramaturgy and Other New Theories The Politics of Sociology - T R Young Gouldner, Goffman and Garfinkel Weird but Brilliant Light on the Way We Live Now - Marshall Berman A Fan Letter on Erving Goffman - Bennett M Berger Erving Goffman et le Temps du Soupcon - Luc Boltanski The Underworld-View of Erving Goffman - Alan Dawe Two on the Aisle - Richard Sennett The Decline of Civility - Peter K Manning A Comment on Erving Goffman′s Sociology Cold Sweat - Alan Bennett Embarrassment and Erving Goffman′s Idea of Human Nature - Michael Schudson Ethics as Etiquette - Laura Bovone The Emblematic Contribution of Erving Goffman PART FOUR: METHODS Self and the Revolt Against Method - Daniel C Foss Resemblances - Philip Manning Understanding Goffman′s Methods - Robin Williams Stating the Obvious - Frank Cioffi What Does Erving Goffman Really Tell Us? PART FIVE: TEXTUALITY An Appreciation of Sociological Tropes - Robin Williams A Tribute to Erving Goffman Sociology, Rhetoric and Personal Communication - Ricca Edmondson Goffman′s Poetics - Paul Atkinson A Partisan View - Gary Alan Fine and Daniel D Martin Sarcasm, Satire, and Irony as Voices in Erving Goffman′s Asylums Erving Goffman - Patricia Ticineto Clough Writing the End of Ethnography Autonomy and Credibility - Ira J Cohen and Mary F Rogers Voice as Method Reading Goffman on Interaction - Rod Watson PART SIX: CENTRAL SOCIOLOGICAL CONCERNS INTERACTION Life as Theater - Sheldon L Messinger with Harold Sampson and Robert D Towne Some Notes on the Dramaturgic Approach to Social Reality Opening Encounters - Deborah Schiffrin Couple Tie-Signs and Interpersonal Threat - Gary Alan Fine, Jeffrey L Stitt and Michael Finch A Field Experiment The Interaction Order Sui Generis - Anne Warfield Rawls Goffman′s Contribution to Social Theory Analyzing Gender in Public Places - Carol Brooks Gardner Rethinking Goffman′s Vision of Everyday Life Goffman′s Attitude and Social Analysis - N G Hartland Goffman and Interactional Citizenship - Paul Colomy and J David Brown Self Spontaneous Involvement and Social Life - James M Ostrow The Self as Work of Art - Alasdair MIntyre Maximising, Moralising and Dramatising - Alan Ryan Character is the Fundamental Illusion - Thomas Charles Hood Goffman, Positivism and the Self - Thomas G Miller Strangers to Themeselves - Andrew Travers How Interactants are Other than They Are Is the Presented Self Sincere? - Efrat Tseelon Goffman, Impression Management and the Postmodern Self Toward a Sociology of the Person - Spencer E Cahill FRAMES On Goffman′s Frame Analysis - Fredric Jameson Frame Analysis of Plea Bargaining - Douglas W Maynard Negative and Positive Keying in Natural Contexts - Raymond L Schmitt Preserving the Transformation Concept From Death Through Conflation Frame Paralysis - Avery Sharron When Time Stands Still Incidents, Accidents, Failures - Paul Bouissac The Representation of Negative Experience in Public Entertainment Reading Goffman′s Framing as Provocation of a Discipline - Lawrence Hazelrigg Stigma, Mental Illness and Total Institutions Miriam Siegler and Humphrey Osmond Goffman′s Model of Mental Illness The Two Cultures and the Total Institution - Nicholas Perry Asylums Revisited - Roger Peel, Paul V Luisada, Mary Jo Lucas, Diane Rudisell and Deborah Taylor Psycho-Medical Dualism - Peter Sedgwick The Case of Erving Goffman Goffman, Interactionism, and the Management of Stigma in Everyday Life - Simon Williams Goffman′s Concept of the Total Institution - Christie Davies Criticisms and Revisions Goffman′s Asylums and the Social Control of the Mentally Ill - William Gronfein Goffman′s Asylums and the Total Institution Model of Mental Hospitals - Raymond M Weinstein PART SEVEN: GOFFMAN AND THE CLASSICAL TRADITION Erving Goffman and the Development of Modern Social Theory - Randall Collins The Degradation of the Sacred - Paul Creelan Approaches of Cooley and Goffman Snapshots `Sub Specie Aeternitatis′ - Gregory W H Smith Simmel, Goffman and Formal Sociology Park, Doyle and Hughes - Gary D Jaworski Neglected Antecedents of Goffman′s Theory of Ceremony Georg Simmel and Erving Goffman - Murray S Davis Legitimators of the Sociological Investigation of Human Experience PART EIGHT: GOFFMAN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES Action vs. Interaction - Herbert Blumer Relations in Public - Microstudies of the Public Order by Erving Goffman Essential Features of Face-to-Face Interaction - George Psathas and Frances C Waksler `Situation′ vs `Frame′ - George Gonos The `Interactionist′ and the `Structuralist′ Analyses of Everyday Life Sincerity and Politics - J A Hall `Existentialists′ vs Goffman and Proust Frame Analysis Reconsidered - Norman K Denzin and Charles M Keller A Reply to Denzin and Keller - Erving Goffman L′Enfer, c′est les Autres - P D Ashworth Goffman′s Sartrism′ Goffman as a Systematic Social Theorist - Anthony Giddens Goffman and the Analysis of Conversation - Emmanuel A Schegloff Ritual Talk - Phil Manning Embarrasment and Civilization - Helmut Kuzmics On Some Similarities and Differences in the Work of Goffman and Elias Habermas, Goffman, and Communicative Action - James J Chriss Implications for Professional Practice Goffman in Feminist Perspective - Candace West PART NINE: GOFFMAN′S INFLUENCES ON SUCCESSORS Erving Goffman′s Sociology as a Semiotics of Postmodern Culture - Heinz-G[um]unter Vester Alienation and Everyday Life - Lauren Langman Goffman Meets Marx at the Shopping Mall The Linguistic Realization of Face Management - Thomas Holtgraves Implications for Language Production and Comprehension, Person Perception, and Cross-Cultural Communication Goffman Against Postmodernism - Michael L Schwalbe Emotion and the Reality of the Self Following Goffman, Following Durkheim into the Public Realm - Spencer E Cahill