Goffman Unbound!: A New Paradigm for Social Science

Thomas J. Scheff · Bernard S Phillips · Harold Kincaid

nov. 2015 · Routledge

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"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.

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Thomas J. Scheffis professor emeritusin theDepartment of Sociology at theUniversity of California, Santa Barbara. His fields of study are the emotional/relational world, mental illness, restorative justice, and collective violence. Harold Kincaid is Professor in the School of Economics and Director of the Research Unit in Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics at the University of Cape Town. He is the coeditor of "Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context "and "What Is Addiction?" (both published by the MIT Press).