THE GOFFMAN COURSE

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.