Papers by Gary D. Jaworski
PRZEGLĄD SOCJOLOGICZNY, 2024
Studies of intellectuals are a pillar in the history and sociology of science. Biographers never ... more Studies of intellectuals are a pillar in the history and sociology of science. Biographers never stop. But the analytical weight they may afford to class, intellectual history, or other types of influence, which is to say how they approach understanding the relationship between knowledge and society in the lives of their heroes, varies. This book is a study of Erving Goffman's sociology of face-to-face interaction and the political climate during which his work and career unfolded. Jaworski seeks to draw attention to the extent that Goffman's work was immersed in the Cold War ethos of suspicion and accusation of the 1950s and early 1960s. Copious footnotes demonstrate the prodigious research behind the narrative which sheds new light on Goffman's fascinating accounts of social life at a micro-level and does so in an honest, straightforward framework. While Jaworski succeeded in persuading me that Goffman's work was indeed part of the postwar era political and cultural era, it still left me with a sense that something was missing from the picture. Questions remain. Why did Goffman become so interested in the phenomenological study of social relationships, and what else might have contributed to his exceptional capacity for insight into them? One should not fault gaps in a book that arise from how an author defines his goals, it is true, but Goffman's interests were so uncommon, his approach so innovative and his observations so shrewd that I could hardly avoid wondering about these issues while reading it. A hint or two lie about the book like a jumble of jigsaw pieces on a table. Jaworski does not discount or minimize the support and influence of such luminaries as Gregory Bateson, Ray Birdwhistle, Everett Hughes, and Edward Shils, to name a few forebears, but another dimension of the puzzle also emerges, a psychological one, or perhaps one might just call it dispositional. In any case, an uncomfortable personality begins to appear every now and then that perhaps might also have contributed to Goffman's work. Born and raised by Jewish immigrants in the orderly nation of Canada, Goffman spent most of his academic career in Hyde Park, Berkeley, and Philadelphia, where he saw himself as a foreigner, "a guest in America" (p. 35) who did not view himself as "a citizen of anywhere" (p. 35). He neither identified as a liberal nor a conservative politically, appreciating the small-scale anarchy in the famous stateroom scene in the Marx Brothers movie, "A Night at the Opera," as well as British comedy of the 50s and 60s. He himself was given to be cautious and secretive, Goffman refused to allow photos Book Review
EMILE DURKHEIM: CRITICAL ASSESSMENTS, edited by Peter Hamilton, 1990
The Anthem Companion to Erving Goffman , 2023
This chapter charts the emergence and development of the concept “situation” in sociology and rel... more This chapter charts the emergence and development of the concept “situation” in sociology and related fields, with special focus on the ways that the writings of Erving Goffman intersect with these developments.1 It begins with an examination of the borrowing of situation from the vernacular and its elevation into a key term of thinkers like John Dewey and George Herbert Mead, but also a wide range of others who developed it in varied directions. Each section charts the conceptual linkages of various thinkers, focusing primarily on three traditions: pragmatism, existentialism and functionalism. The result is a genealogy of the “situation” that reveals Goffman’s situational sociology as a thoughtful response to those traditions.
Routledge International Handbook of Goffman Studies, 2022
This chapter examines the intellectual contributions and reception of Goffman’s book and ideas on... more This chapter examines the intellectual contributions and reception of Goffman’s book and ideas on strategic interaction. It discusses, first, the publication details of Strategic Interaction and its Anglo-American reviewers, whose lukewarm reception foreshadowed the limited legacy to follow. It then explores the intellectual background of the book’s ideas. Goffman credited his University of Chicago forebears, Mead, Park and Burgess; but these thinkers were not alone in stimulating Goffman’s work. He was writing in the context of the American Cold War where the word ‘strategic’ was loaded with government and military connotations. Goffman had been an early adopter of the game theory thinking of von Neumann and Morgenstern and the revision of those ideas that was being developed by economist and strategist Thomas C. Schelling. Goffman’s late- 1950s meeting with Schelling, and subsequent introduction into the orbit of Rand Corporation consultants and conferences, provided added occasion to develop the ideas further. The chapter then examines the key contributions of the book’s two chapters and their value to the ongoing study of communication and interaction. A conclusion underscores both the book’s continuity with Goffman’s earlier works and its current value to sociological inquiry.
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 2022
Robert K. Merton was a titan of 20th century American sociology, a power-broker of careers and id... more Robert K. Merton was a titan of 20th century American sociology, a power-broker of careers and ideas, and a dominant intellectual whose concepts are the coinage of today's textbooks. But are his contributions still germane
Journal of Classical Sociology, 2021
This article examines the writings on loyalty and betrayal of sociologist Erving Goffman and poli... more This article examines the writings on loyalty and betrayal of sociologist Erving Goffman and political scientist Morton Grodzins. Both thinkers made unique contributions to the understanding of those topics while simultaneously offering critical appraisals of early Cold War America. Examining these writings in historical and intellectual context, and reading them against each other, reveals important elements of this work that are worthy of a fresh appreciation. Within this analysis, the article reflects on social criticism during treacherous times, from open resistance to subtle intellectual legerdemain.
Symbolic Interaction, 2020
Erving Goffman's interest in spies and espionage is widely recognized in commentary on his work. ... more Erving Goffman's interest in spies and espionage is widely recognized in commentary on his work. Where did this interest come from? While the context of Cold War America provided the broad cultural horizon of this work, deeper roots may be found. Goffman's contact with two University of Chicago professors, Edward A. Shils and Douglas Waples, both of whom served in U.S. intelligence organizations during World War II, also shaped Goffman's interest in the subject. This paper explores these relationships and their connection to Goffman's writings on spies, secrecy, and information control in postwar America. Goffman's view of spies and espionage as analogues to American postwar lives is explored.
Academia Letters, 2021
The question of the relative importance of Durkheim and Simmel in Goffman's work has divided his ... more The question of the relative importance of Durkheim and Simmel in Goffman's work has divided his commentators. As Vargas Maseda recently noted, the opposing interpretations of Goffman as, say, interactionist or structuralist stem from Goffman's complex relationship to the two classical sociologists. "Almost every thinker who claims that Simmel is the main influence behind Goffman acknowledges the importance of Durkheim, and vice versa," he writes (Vargas Maseda 2017: 10). What divides the commentators is the relative importance assigned to each. Greater clarity on this question comes from Manning (1992: 21) and Davis (1997), who distinguish between Goffman's methodological bearings, which are closer to Simmel and Weber, and his substantive message, which is Durkheimian. Another view on this question can be found by examining "The Nature of Deference and Demeanor," a key foundational text that publicly announces Goffman's Durkheimian bearings (in Goffman 1967; first published in 1956). It is in that text that Goffman claims that "Durkheimian notions about primitive religion can be translated into the concepts of deference and demeanor" (Goffman 1967: 95). In fact, however, no such translation had occurred. Goffman himself writes only that Durkheimian notions can be translated-not that he had actually done so. More importantly, the Durkheimian opening paragraphs and conclusion to the paper were actually late additions to it, sections that finally framed the substantive arguments of the paper but did not inform them. Rather than viewing those opening and closing paragraphs as disclosing Durkheim's deep influence on Goffman's thinking about deference, they are better seen as part of the author's rhetorical strategy. Goffman presents a tale of the classical sociologist providing inspiration for the terminology; but that version of the story is inconsistent with the archival record. There are three extant versions of Goffman's essay: the final, published version and two
The American Sociologist, 2020
Peter Baehr’s The Unmasking Style in Social Theory (2019) is situated within the polemical tradit... more Peter Baehr’s The Unmasking Style in Social Theory (2019) is situated within the polemical tradition of attacks on intellectuals initiated by Julien Benda in The Treason of the Intellectuals (1927) and continued by Raymond Aron and Irving Louis Horowitz. It is argued that the most successful aspects of the book are not in its polemics but in its contributions to Begriffsgeschichte, the study of the changing meaning of concepts over time. Baehr’s nascent critique of a society of full transparency is the book’s great unrealized project.ift
The American Sociologist, 2019
Thomas Schelling and Erving Goffman: who influenced whom, when and to what effect? Was there “inf... more Thomas Schelling and Erving Goffman: who influenced whom, when and to what effect? Was there “influence” at all or, as Tom Burns suggests, independent discovery
and convergence? These are the questions that this paper is meant to answer.
Symbolic Interaction, Jan 1, 2000
The intellectual relationship between Erving Coffman and Everett C. Hughes is explored in the con... more The intellectual relationship between Erving Coffman and Everett C. Hughes is explored in the context of an apprenticeship model derived from correspondence between the two sociologists. Coffman is identified as a "reluctant apprentice" because his work and his letters to Hughes display a tension between a striking originality and a fidelity to his "master." Three phases of their ambivalent relationship are described and an explanation for Coffman's reluctant acknowledgment of Hughes's influence is briefly explored.
The American Sociologist, Jan 1, 1998
International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, Jan 1, 1995
Sociological inquiry, Jan 1, 1996
Erving Goffman's writings on etiquette and front are read in the context of a tradition of Chicag... more Erving Goffman's writings on etiquette and front are read in the context of a tradition of Chicago school studies on such topics. Robert E. Park formed this tradition from two strains of thought: one based on the writings of Herbert Spencer, and the other on that of Georg Simmel. A review of writings by Park, and by his students Bertram W. Doyle and Everett C. Hughes, provides a basis for analyzing Goffman's original contributions to the tradition, a synthesis of the two strains. Goffrnan both advanced the line of study and shared in its biases. These limitations must be overconie if future research in the tradition is to proceed.
Georg Simmel and Contemporary Sociology, 1990
The American Sociologist, Jan 1, 1990
Within the context of a discussion of Robert K. Merton's ideas on leadership in postwar America, ... more Within the context of a discussion of Robert K. Merton's ideas on leadership in postwar America, the article examines the nature and impact of Merton "s "soctological parables. " This term refers to short tales from social life from which sociological lessons with moral implications can be drawn. These parables, such as the bank in.~olvenc~F story told in "'lhe Self Fulfilling Proph-e~y, " illustrate the manner in which Merton merged moral and sociological messages in hL~ writing& Suggestions are made along the lines that these parables, or at least the moral messages they contain, contributed to Merlon ~ postwar fame.
Sociological Theory, Jan 1, 1990
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Papers by Gary D. Jaworski
and convergence? These are the questions that this paper is meant to answer.
and convergence? These are the questions that this paper is meant to answer.