17+ Erving Goffman Quotes On Stigma, Social Interaction And Fieldwork

Erving Goffman was a Canadian-American sociologist who studied the way people present themselves in everyday life. He is best known for his theories of the presentation of self in everyday life, which he developed in his 1959 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. He is also known for his 1972 book, Interaction Ritual, which focused on the rituals of social interaction. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Erving Goffman on love, stigma, social interaction.

Choose your self-presentations carefully, for what starts out as a mask may become your face. — Erving Goffman

Our sense of being a person can come from being drawn into a wide social unit; our sense of selfhood can arise through the little ways in which we resist the pull. Our status is backed by the solid buildings of the world, while our sense of personal identity often resides in the cracks — Erving Goffman

Stigma is a process by which the reaction of others spoils normal identity. — Erving Goffman

Society is an insane asylum ran by the inmates. — Erving Goffman

Approved attributes and their relation to face make every man his own jailer; this is a fundamental social constraint even though each man may like his cell. — Erving Goffman

Man is not like other animals in the ways that are really significant: Animals have instincts, we have taxes. — Erving Goffman

When persons are present to one another they can function not merely as physical instruments but also as communicative ones. This possibility, no less than the physical one, is fateful for everyone concerned and in every society appears to come under strict normative regulation, giving rise to a kind of communication traffic order. — Erving Goffman

Perhaps the individual is so viable a god because he can actually understand the ceremonial significance of the way he is treated, and quite on his own can respond dramatically to what is proffered him. In contacts between such deities there is no need for middlemen; each of these gods is able to serve as his own priest. — Erving Goffman

There seems to be no agent more effective than another person in bringing a world for oneself alive, or, by a glance, a gesture, or a remark, shriveling up the reality in which one is lodged. — Erving Goffman

So I ask that these papers be taken for what they merely are: exercises, trials, tryouts, a means of displaying possibilities, not establishing fact. — Erving Goffman

All the world is not, of course, a stage, but the crucial ways in which it isn’t are not easy to specify — Erving Goffman

The world, in truth, is a wedding. — Erving Goffman

Society is organized on the principle that any individual who possesses certain social characteristics has a moral right to expect that others will value and treat him in an appropriate way. — Erving Goffman

Any group of persons – prisoners, primitives, pilots, or patients – develop a life of their own that becomes meaningful, reasonable and normal once you get close to it. — Erving Goffman

And to the degree that the individual maintains a show before others that he himself does not believe, he can come to experience a special kind of alienation from self and a special kind of wariness of others. — Erving Goffman

The self... is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented. — Erving Goffman

The normal and the stigmatized are not persons, but perspectives. — Erving Goffman

Life Lessons by Erving Goffman

1. Erving Goffman's work emphasizes the importance of understanding the social context of everyday life, and the ways in which our interactions are shaped by the roles we play and the expectations of others.
2. He argued that individuals use various strategies to present a certain image of themselves in order to gain acceptance and avoid stigma.
3. He also highlighted the power dynamics between groups, and the ways in which individuals can be marginalized or excluded in certain situations.