Looking back on Goffman: The excavation continues

Chriss, James J.

doi:10.1007/bf01323029

Cited by 13 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Others have interpreted his work as being a precursor to postmodernist theory (Battershill 1990;Langman 1991;MacCannell 1990;Vester 1989) and have seen him as a deconstructionist (Clough 1990), dramaturgist (Brown 2003), and theorist of power (Rogers 1977(Rogers , 1979Jenkins 2008a, b, c). Alongside the work of Ditton (1980) and Drew and Wooton (1988), the detailed monographs of Burns (1992) and Manning (1993) in the early 1990s, Chriss (1993Chriss ( , 1995 offered a generous overview of the scholarship and interpretive trajectories that Goffman's work drew to itself until the mid 1990s. Thereafter several volumes appeared that take Goffman's work in still new directions.…”

Section: The Many Faces Of Erving Goffmanmentioning

confidence: 97%

Towards a Philosophy of Containment: Reading Goffman in the 21st Century

Hancock

Garner

2011

Am Soc

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On the occasion of the re-publication of Erving Goffman's Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order, including the remarkable appendix, "Insanity of Place," the authors propose new ways of reading Goffman's work in order to highlight his attention to havoc and containment. Goffman's "Insanity of Place," explores the phenomenon of mental illness by asserting that it is an instance of havoc, a symbolic and practical condition that disrupts the social order of life, and one that must be contained. By situating this essay at the center of Goffman's oeuvre they examine Goffman's "philosophy of containment," and trace its trajectory from Asylums, Stigma and "The Insanity of Place" to its full crystallization in Frame Analysis. The authors offer a generative reading of havoc and containment in order to understand the incoherence, irrationality, unreason, incomprehensibility and unbearableness of social life and the imperative to preserve social order from collapsing, dissolving or imploding. This reading enables us to see the cracks in the social order and understand containment as the constant effort exerted to recuperate transgressions and deviations back into that order. Goffman's analysis becomes an opening into engagements with the work of Judith Butler and Michel Foucault around the notion of the normative order and the issues of containment and transgression. Thinking through Goffman's philosophy of containment as the framework for an analysis of socialization, normalization, and social ordering affords an approach to thinking macro-micro linkages of order and instability that confront both our contemporary society and the discipline of sociology.

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Section: The Many Faces Of Erving Goffmanmentioning

confidence: 97%

Towards a Philosophy of Containment: Reading Goffman in the 21st Century

Hancock

Garner

2011

Am Soc

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“…As data from the Social Science Citation Index and elsewhere indicate, interest in Goffman remains high both across the social sciences and the humanities (e.g., see Bock 1988;Chriss 1995a;MacCan-ne111983;Oromaner 1980). Secondary analyses and extensions of Goffman's work continue to proliferate unabated (e.g, see Burns 1992;Chriss 1993aChriss , 1993bChriss , 1995bChriss , 1995cDrew and Wootton 1988;Hartland 1994;Manning 1992;Riggins 1990;Smith, in press;Travers 1991Travers , 1992Travers , 1994, and this is all the more noteworthy in the face of the ongoing sectarianism and fragmentation-what Turner (1989) has referred to as the "disintegration"-of contemporary sociology.…”

Section: Toward An Interparadigmatic Dialogue On Goffman James J Chrmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward an Interparadigmatic Dialogue on Goffman

Chriss

1996

Sociological Perspectives

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Many observers have lamented the fact that sociology continues to fragment into a number of allegedly incompatible theoretical camps. To countervail such sectarian tendencies, I suggest that we return to the writings of key thinkers in our field—here specifically Erving Goffman—and search for those findings, observations, concepts, or analyses which have found purchase across the discipline and which seemingly defy the forces of theoretical balkanization. This interparadigmatic dialogue on Goffman can be realized only if a concerted effort is made to bring together representatives of sociology's major theory groups to discuss their possibly varying interpretations of Goffman. Problems associated with launching such a unification project are discussed.

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“…1818James Chriss (1993, 476–77) remarks on ethology: “Just as ethologists have observed a range of ‘territorial claims’ among animals, so too Goffman observed a range of ‘territorial claims; among humans.”…”

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confidence: 99%

Knowing Animals: Multispecies Ethnography and the Scope of Anthropology

Hartigan

2021

American Anthropologist

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Multispecies ethnographic projects are venturing “beyond the human” (Kohn 2013), but how far can they go and remain anthropological? The answer depends on whether such projects align with the surge of ethological research on animal cultures. Based on my fieldwork on wild horses in Galicia, Spain, I make a case for an ethologically informed ethnography that extends cultural analysis to other social species. In this project, I used ethological techniques of direct observation but analyzed the results using Erving Goffman's concepts of face, footing, and civil inattention. My analysis inverts Clifford Geertz's classic study of the Balinese cockfight by making horse sociality the center of analysis, rather than regarding these animals as representations of human status concerns. I argue that this approach can be usefully applied across the range of taxa that evince culture, particularly those caught up in conservation efforts. In developing this claim, I draw on ethnoprimatologists’ efforts to synthesize multispecies ethnography with ethological methods and perspectives. [multispecies ethnography, animal cultures, ethology]

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Looking back on Goffman: The excavation continues

Cited by 13 publications

References 33 publications

Towards a Philosophy of Containment: Reading Goffman in the 21st Century

Towards a Philosophy of Containment: Reading Goffman in the 21st Century

Toward an Interparadigmatic Dialogue on Goffman

Knowing Animals: Multispecies Ethnography and the Scope of Anthropology

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