Erving Manuel Goffman: Biographical Sources of Sociological Imagination

Matt Dawson and Dmitri N. Shalin discuss Erving Manuel Goffman: Biographical Sources of Sociological Imagination on the New Books Network Erving Goffman is the most cited American sociologist. There is no shortage of studies exploring Goffman’s scholarship but no extant biography of Erving Goffman. The chief reason is that a man who looked behind the facades people erect to protect their private selves, zealously guarded his own backstage. This book is the first comprehensive biography of Goffman, an intellectual of Russian-Jewish descent, who turned the “Potemkin village” trope into a powerful research program. The present study shows how key turns in Goffman’s career reflected dramatic events in his family and personal history. It is based on the materials gathered in the Erving Goffman Archives, a repository curated by the author who has been collecting documents and conducting interviews with Goffman’s relatives, colleagues, and friends. The archival work turned up documents which improve our understanding of Goffman the scholar, the teacher, and the man. The approach adopted in this investigation sheds new light on Goffman’s scholarship which has had an enormous and continuous impact across the social sciences and humanities.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1 Leaving the tribe 2 Learning the trade 3 Waxing Academic 4 Coping with madness 5 Taking a gamble 6 Mastering the game 7 Gendering sex 8 Breaking the frame 9 Facing death 10 Conjuring a legacy Conclusion Appendix A: Goffman Archives Appendix B: Immigration Records Appendix C: Photo Gallery Appendix D: Biographical Timeline References

About the Author :
Dmitri N. Shalin is professor of sociology and director of the Center for Democratic Culture at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Dr Shalin is coordinator of Justice & Democracy Forum series, editor of the Social Health of Nevada Report, director of the Erving Goffman Archives and International Biography Initiative, and organizer of international forums on Russian politics and culture. His research interests and publications are in the areas of biohermeneutics, pragmatism, democratic culture, emotional intelligence, and Russian culture and society.

Review :
“For the balance of its analyses of Goffman's life and work, for its accuracy, for the panorama it offers of American academic life in the 1950s, 60s and 70s and, last but not least, for its clear and elegant writing, the volume represents a fundamental contribution to Goffmanian studies, recommended both to those approaching Goffman for the first time and to his most devoted followers.” Pier Paolo Giglioli, Professor at the University of Bologna and editor of Etnografia e ricerca qualitative “Scholars have long waited for an extended account of the life and career of the important Canadian-American sociologist Erving Goffman. It is truly said of Goffman that he was the most influential North American sociologist of the 20th century. Such a volume will make an invaluable contribution to the history of the social sciences.” Gary Alan Fine, James E. Johnson Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University “This book is ambitious, important, and a landmark work of biography.” Gary D. Jaworski, Professor of Sociology, Fairleigh Dickinson University “This is an important volume on one of the major 20th-century social theorists, Erving Goffman. There continues to be a strong undercurrent in sociology that goes back to the work of Erving Goffman, and although it is now more than 40 years since his premature demise, this undercurrent is as strong and powerful as at any other point in time. This book shows us why!” Michael Hviid Jacobsen, Professor of Sociology, Aalborg University, co-editor of the Routledge International Handbook of Goffman Studies (2024) and editor of The Contemporary Goffman (2012) “A beautifully written, deeply informative, wise, and appreciative, yet critical, study of one of the 20th century’s most significant social thinkers. The study reflects the inimitable Shalin’s decades of research (including founding the invaluable Erving Goffman Archives) and is among the best social science biographies in English ever done. Necessary reading for understanding Goffman’s central ideas and their antecedents and contexts!" Gary T. Marx, author of Windows Into the Soul: Surveillance and Society in an Age of High Technology