P_I

Reviews
Beyond Goffman: Studies on Communication, Institution and Social Interaction (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1990). 456 pp.

“Most contributors, as Riggins notes in his introduction, take a critical stance toward Goffman’s work. In several papers, the task taken on is to situate Goffman’s work within biographical, disciplinary, and broader socio-political contexts.

This text, then, is no festschrift in the strict sense. Instead, because contributors ‘read’ Goffman’s work within the context of its production and also within the context of their current theoretical (and ideological) concerns, it is as much about the present state of social science as it is about Goffman’s work itself. As such, it reveals not only the nature of current intellectual debates, but also the extent to which our methods, our theories, and our representational practices are now being reassessed. For example, as accusations are made that the social sciences have failed to address questions about domination and exploitation, our texts inevitably reveal our own attempts to negotiate new ways of producing knowledge and articulating with the wider world.”

“Everyone, it seems, wants to appropriate some of Goffman for themselves. In the main, though, these theoretical assessments are cogently argued and, although many of the themes are familiar, their treatment here is unusually fresh – often quite novel – and clearly handled. These articles represent a very real contribution to our understanding of the generativeness of Goffman’s work for social theory.

But this volume accomplishes more than that. Respected though his work was, during his lifetime Goffman’s naturalistic scientific methods were perhaps not influential, in the sense that very few sociologists or anthropologists followed his ‘royal road’ of empirical investigation. Whilst some researchers may have responded to the ‘mentality’ of Goffman’s approach, they have not (with a few noted exceptions…) adopted an explicitly Goffmanian ethnographic methodology. However, some of the articles in this collection represent a perceptible shift in this respect.”

“Mysore, India, might seem an unlikely location for a conference about a sociologist who was always uncertain about generalising his ideas beyond the familiar milieu of Anglo-American society. Nevertheless, as this volume attests, the meeting held at the Central Institute of Indian Languages in December 1987 and attended by a number of Indian and North American scholars gave rise to much valuable discussion about the nature and limits of Goffman’s. The book aims to ‘expand the scope of the theoretical views and empirical research Erving Goffman contributed to the social sciences’ in a critical but constructive way. Goffman was always clear that his ideas were to be regarded as provisional and exploratory in character, as tools which might prove useful in the construction of more rigorous sociological descriptions and explanations. The spirit of Goffman’s work is thus aptly reflected in this book’s aims and title.”

“Who’s Goffman? About halfway through Beyond Goffman I began to imagine an experiment. What if we blanked out Goffman’s name and asked a non-sociologist reader how many different theorists the articles describe. Several writers in Beyond Goffman stress that Goffman the self is a team. There is a team resemblance to the various instigation of all these articles, but a single sociologist – impossible.

While Goffman was alive I took his singularity for granted. As I read Beyond Goffman the person I thought I knew returned even as he faded. I mean this as praise for the book. The collected articles underscore that behind every appearance is disappearance, and the sociology of self-presentation must ultimately rest on a sustained act of concealment.”

Arthur W. Frank, University of Calgary, Canadian Journal of Sociology, December 1997.