Volume 20, Number 17 · November 1, 1973
Two on the Aisle
By Richard Sennett
Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates
by Erving Goffman
Doubleday, $1.95 (paper)
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
by Erving Goffman
Doubleday, 259 pp., $1.95 (paper)
Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction
by Erving Goffman
Bobbs-Merrill, 152 pp., $2.95 (paper)
Relations in Public: Micro Studies of the Public Order
by Erving Goffman
Harper & Row, 416 pp., $2.45 (paper)
Towards a Poor Theatre
by Jerzy Grotowski
Simon & Schuster, $2.45 (paper)
For a long time I have been reading with a mixture of dismay and admiration the work of Erving Goffman. He is an American sociologist who has created a method for analyzing face-to-face encounters and 'role-playing.' His method called 'dramaturgical interaction' analysis, is a radical departure in American sociology. Goffman is not concerned with broad economic or population pressures a statement like 'the assembly line makes workers feel alienated' would also be foreign to his thinking. Goffman believes that people act out social relationships and that these relationships are like theatrical roles. What Goffman means by 'acting' and 'role' I find most clearly defined in his book on mental hospitals, Asylums.
Review, 4315 words
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