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Erving Goffman 1922-1982  Nationality: Canadian Place of Birth: Canada Place of Death: Philadelphia, PA Table of Contents: Personal Information Personal Information: Family: Born June 11, 1922, in Canada; died November 19, 1982, in Philadelphia, Pa.; son of Max and Anne Goffman; widower; children: one son. Education: University of Toronto, B.A., 1945; University of Chicago, M.A., 1949, Ph.D., 1953. Memberships: American Sociological Association (president, 1981-82). Addresses: Office: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa. 19104. Career: University of Chicago, Division of Social Sciences, Chicago, Ill., assistant, 1952-53, resident associate, 1953-54; National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Md., visiting scientist, 1954-57; University of California, Berkeley, assistant professor, 1958-59, associate professor, 1959-62, professor of sociology, 1962-68; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and Sociology, 1968-82.
WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR:
Contributor to such periodicals as Psychiatry and theAmerican
Journal of Sociology . "Sidelights"A sociologist well-known for his analyses of human interaction, Erving Goffman relied less on formal scientific method than on observation to explain contemporary life. He wrote on subjects ranging from the way people behave in public to the different "forms" of talk, and always from the point of view that every facet of human behavior is "significant in the strategy and tactics of social struggle, " aTimes Literary Supplement critic says. Roy Harris, in anotherTimes Literary Supplement review, calls Goffman "a public private-eye. . . forever on the lookout for candid-camera evidence which might lead to divorce proceedings between ourselves and our social images." And, because Goffman communicated so vividly the "horror and anguish--as well as some of the absurd comedy--of everyday life, " New York Times Book Review critic Marshall Berman dubs him "the Kafka of our time."In Gender Advertisements, his 1979 publication, Goffman investigated the way that commercial advertising both reflects and helps shape our concept of "masculine" and "feminine" behavior. After examining a selection of advertising pictures from magazines, Goffman concluded that women are consistently subordinated to men in a variety of situations, relating to them not as equals but as children to parents. Writing in the New York Times, Anatole Broyard explains: "Like children, . . . women are allowed to cop out of reality because the men beside them take responsibility for it. Like children, they `are saved from seriousness, ' allowed to look and behave childishly, assuming physically inefficient and clowning postures." Furthermore, notes Anne Hollander in the New York Times Book Review, "it is women who are permitted to burst into tears, to stare absently into space while men speak earnestly to them, or to hide their mouths with their hands when startled. . . . And because of the general understanding that gender displays are natural to human behavior, portrayals along such lines in the social interplay of the sexes must be taken as `both shadow and substance': They show not only what we wish or pretend to be, but what we are." While critics herald the truth of Goffman's interpretations, they do
question some of the assumptions from which his conclusions were drawn.
Hollander, for one, suggests that the way male-female relationships are
depicted in photographs may be more a reflection of pictorial conventions
than a reflection of the status of women today. Some thematic images of
female subordination are ironic, she argues, "invoking a detached
understanding of established pictorial rituals as well as an engagement
with current social ones." And Anatole Broyard articulates a similar view:
"Increasingly today, it seems that advertising is not only read as parody,
but intended as parody as well. Much of the humor of advertising depends
on this double meaning, which is a play on the oversimplification being
depicted." Broyard's stated intention is not to discredit what he
considers a valuable study, but rather, as he puts it, "to show that men
and women are more complicated than they are advertised to be." FURTHER READINGS ABOUT THE AUTHOR:BOOKS
PERIODICALS
Obituary Notice: Born June 11, 1922, in Manville, Alberta, Canada; died of cancer, November 19, 1982, in Philadelphia, Pa. Social scientist, educator, and author. An ethnographer, Goffman is best known for his theories suggesting that routine social actions, such as gossip, gestures, and grunts, indicate that people naturally strive to formulate identities. According to Geoffrey Nunberg'sNew York Times Book Review critique of one of Goffman's books, the author gave "a mordant irony to the pretensions and theatricality of everyday interaction." Goffman, a Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Anthropological Association, and the American Sociological Association, serving as that organization's president since 1981. He received the McIver Prize and was a fellow of the American Academy. His books include Forms of Talk, Gender Advertisements, Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, and Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. Obituaries and other sources: New York Times, November 22, 1982; Source: Contemporary Authors Online. The Gale Group, 1999. Source Database: Contemporary Authors |
