Goffman Unbound!

by Thomas J. Scheff, Bernard S Phillips, Harold Kincaid

"Thomas Scheff demonstrates why Goffman remains such a key figure for social scientists. Goffman may have been cautious about recognizing the role of emotions in social life, but Scheff boldly and creatively shows why the sociological and the psychological are necessarily intertwined. This is certainly a book for all serious analysts of social behaviour." Michael Billig, Nottingham University "Scheff's critical eye is equal to his subject, shrewdly appreciating Goffman's many virtues while also showing where and how Goffman's thinking needs revision and development. This original and provocative book offers a fresh interpretation of Goffman and will become a benchmark for all subsequent commentary." Greg Smith, University of Salford One of the seminal sociologists of the twentieth century, Erving Goffman revolutionized our understanding of the microworld of emotions and relationships. We all live in this world every day of our lives, yet it is virtually invisible to us. Goffman's genius was to recognize and describe this world as no one had before. The book synthesizes prior scholarly commentary on Goffman's work, and includes biographical material from his life, untangling some of the many puzzles in Goffman's work and life. Scheff also proposes ways of filling gaps and false starts. One chapter explores the meaning of the emotion of love, another of hatred. These and other new directions could facilitate the creation of a microsocial science that unveils the emotional/relational world.

Genres: Sociology

248 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2006

Reviews

[Matt Dunn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Scheff has some good insights into Goffman (his chapters on the looking glass self and on Frame Analysis are very interesting) but overall this book was a rather maddening work of sociological theory. Scheff has a psychoanalytic orientation that seems to entail an almost complete lack of any evidential standard, relying on personal anecdote and clinical lore to evidence the behavioral implications of unacknowledged shame. Scheff also spends a significant portion of the book trying to convince readers that when Goffman wrote about embarrassment, he was actually writing about shame, but he wrote embarrassment rather than shame because shame is a taboo subject in Western culture. These sections read more like conspiracy theory than sociological theory. Unfortunately, the conspiratorial tone set by these sections of the book is only reinforced by sections arguing that mental illness is a myth and that the cause of rampant nationalism resides in unacknowledged shame/anger cycles

[James Vela-McConnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

What I enjoyed most about this book is that it stimulated much thinking on my part and I ended up writing many comments, reactions, objections, and ideas in the margins. I was able to draw connections with my own past work and with the work of other researchers. However, I found this book to be poorly written. For example, while I am rather tolerant of repetition when it is needed, this book included entire passages that were virtually identical in multiple chapters. At a more fundamental level, I wanted to see more systematic evidence for the claims being made. While this is largely a theoretical piece, little evidence was offered beyond anecdotes and minor case studies.

[Umar]

I liked some of the analysis in this book- the concept of pendulation was especially helpful in grasping Cooley's Looking glass self.