A thorough and thoughtful introduction to a philosophically-minded sociologist.
A series of lectures on the groundbreaking work of sociologist Erving Goffman.
Born in Canada and educated at the University of Chicago, Goffman was such an original sociologist that his work often “puzzled his sociological colleagues.” Hood, a professor of sociology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, here furnishes more than two dozen lectures on Goffman’s wide-ranging thought, presenting discussions that both explicate his core ideas with clarity and challenge them. At the heart of Goffman’s approach is the individual self, which he saw as both socially constructed and real, insofar as its existence generates realsocietal and moral consequences. His approach falls within the realm of functionalism—his treatment of the self is consistently as a moral being—but within that tradition he introduces something new and controversial: microsociology, which takes as the basic unit of analysis the “the face-to-face social situation or ‘encounter.’” With impressive accessibility, the author explores the extent to which Goffman’s “methodological underpinnings” are consistent with sociology as an empirical science and the degree to which it “looks suspiciously like philosophy,” especially given his subject’s peculiar prose, which displays the “teasing artfulness of a brilliant writer.” (“What is striking about Goffman’s writing is the mood or tone of wry irony, of sympathetic engagement coupled with detached disdain.”) Goffman’s work is important and profound, and by placing the methodological aspect of his endeavors at the center of these lectures, Hood has provided a concise introduction to his challenging thought. This is not a mere summary of Goffman’s work but a provocative extension of it, an attempt to “move beyond Goffman’s beginnings.” For anyone interested in Goffman or contemporary sociology, or just the problems posed by trying to understand society, this is a valuable resource.
A thorough and thoughtful introduction to a philosophically-minded sociologist.Pub Date: July 18, 2024
ISBN: 9781959930532
Page Count: 262
Publisher: Authors' Tranquility Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
An impressive, nuanced work of scholarship.
The Nobel laureate’s singular aesthetics.
Award-winning novelist, essayist, and literary scholar Serpell offers a compelling elucidation of Toni Morrison’s notably challenging fiction, criticism, plays, and poetry. “There are passages in Morrison’s works,” she has found, “that no reader I’ve ever met understands on the first go.” The source of Morrison’s “famed difficulty,” as Serpell sees it, was not “her intersectional identity, her prickly personality, or her contrarian politics,” but rather her complicated and sophisticated understanding of Black aesthetics. Serpell’s subtle textual analysis of 11 novels, “Recitatif”—Morrison’s only published short story—and several essays, plays, and poems is enriched by her prodigious literary background and insights she has gleaned from archival sources: letters, diary entries, notes, and manuscripts. Morrison, she asserts, “refused for her work to be reduced to her race and her gender, or to be forced to fit the expectations foisted upon her as a result.” Tar Baby (1981), Morrison’s fourth novel, seems to Serpell the first time in the writer’s career that she “directly addressed the white/black dichotomy” with characters who “are avatars for race.” Serpell gives extensive attention to “Recitatif,” a story in which “all racial codes” are vanished, yet one in which “racial identity is crucial” to its characters. The story emerges as “a kind of asymmetrical, contrapuntal, alternative dialogue” between its two female protagonists, “between an individual voice and the instruments of the social world, or between the reader’s experience and the story’s unresolved chords—or codes.” Celebrating Morrison’s “masterful difficulty and superb wit,” “her inscrutable yet perfect metaphors,” and “her unaccountable rushes of imagination,” Serpell affords ample evidence that she was “a writer whose deliberate difficulty—personal, political, and literary—defied classification…and made for brilliance.”
An impressive, nuanced work of scholarship.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2026
ISBN: 9780593732915
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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