The Goffman Lectures: Philosophical and Sociological Essays About the Writings of Erving Goffman

by Thomas Hood, Dwight Van de Vate

Overview

This book consists of essays presented as lectures to undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The context was a special class during which students were reading the published work of Erving Goffman and writing about what they were reading. Some students enrolled as philosophy students and others as sociology students. Professor Hood and Professor Van De Vate often handed out printed versions to the students on the day they were presented. Dr. Hood took these printed versions to prepare the manuscript in a continuous form. The lectures themselves were presented some years apart, since the two departments agreed to offer the course only occasionally. The essays were designed to stimulate questions about what Goffman concludes, as well his techniques of observing and analyzing social life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781524572662
Publisher:	Xlibris US
Publication date:	01/10/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	312
File size:	411 KB

About the Author

About the Author Tom Hood, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Sociology joined the faculty at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in 1965. Current research and writing interests include social suffering and collective distress, the social psychology of appearance and the attribution of character, the work of Erving Goffman, environmental movements in America. His published research on the Billy Graham crusade in Knoxville and his works on the social psychology of experiments have been reprinted and widely cited. Professor Dwight Van de Vate Jr., PhD (deceased), a deeply respected member of the Philosophy Department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, taught there for over thirty years. Dwight’s favorite technique was to ask a student to use a concept in a question. One of Dwight writings, which reached book length, is Romantic Love—A Philosophical Inquiry, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981. Tom Hood, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Sociology received his university education at Michigan State and Duke Universities. The Bachelor of Arts degree with high honors was awarded at M.S.U. in June 1960. In August of 1960 “Ginger” Johnson married Tom. She provided family support by teaching during his first years in graduate school in addition to his graduate research assistantship. Duke University awarded the A.M. degree in Sociology in 1964 and in August of that year their son, Christopher Charles was born. Ginger had by this time begun teaching at Meredith College in Raleigh, NC. In September, 1965, Hood began teaching at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Their daughter Heather was born in September , 1969 not long after Duke University granted Hood the Ph.D. degree. During those years Ginger provided great family support and much assistance in completing drafts of the dissertation . Professor Hood is a member of Phi Kappa Phi, Pi Gamma Mu, Phi Eta Sigma, and Alpha Kappa Delta and Alpha Zeta honor societies and FarmHouse Fraternity. Professor Hood joined the faculty at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in 1965 as an instructor He was promoted to Assistant Professor in 1969, Associate Professor in 1973, Professor in 1985. He served as Head of the Department of Sociology from January 1983 until June 1991. Professor Hood has served on many Department, College and University committees. In 1991, he served as President of the University Senate. Active in outside organization, he has served as President of the Southern Sociological Society, as an officer and committee member in several sections of the American Sociological Association, President of the Popular Culture Association in the South, and Executive Officer of the international organization, The Society for the Study of Social Problems from 1991 .to 2009 Currently his research and writing interests include social suffering and collective distress, the social psychology of appearance and the attribution of character, the work of Erving Goffman, environmental movements in America. His published research on the Billy Graham crusade in Knoxville and his work on the social psychology of experiments has been reprinted and widely cited.

Editorial Reviews

2019-02-05

A debut volume of criticism introduces readers to the legacy of Erving Goffman.

Goffman was one of the most influential sociologists of the 20th century, making significant contributions to the study of the individual, society, and the intersection of the two. In these lectures, originally delivered as part of a class offered at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, professors Hood and Van de Vate track Goffman's ideas over the course of his major works, including The Presentation ofSelf in Everyday Life, Stigma, Strategic Interaction, and others. Beginning with the premise that Goffman "is trying to frame general laws about the behavior of human beings in our society," the authors attempt to define the notions of sociology, society, the human being, and identity, then proceed to Goffmanian explanations of social behavior, self-knowledge, and identity games that create an illusion of reality. The second half of the book supplies an extensive exploration of Frame Analysis, which the authors believe to be "Goffman's most complete work." Poorly received at the time of its publication, the volume details how an individual's perception of society is organized by conceptual "frames," some of them social and some of them natural. The authors elucidate Goffman's importance in the hopes of presenting him to a new generation of students seeking to understand the views of one of sociology's greatest innovators. The book is structured so that each section is authored by either Hood or Van de Vate, though each writes in the same dense academic style that makes heavy use of quotations and specialized language. They have produced an undeniably thorough primer for those getting into Goffman. That said, the work assumes the reader has some background in the study of sociology (enough to know what the dramaturgical perspective is, for example) and the way academic arguments are constructed. General readers should be wary, but anyone looking for a deeper dissection of framing analysis should find much of interest here.

A dense but comprehensive investigation into the concepts of a leading sociologist.

Kirkus Reviews