Goffman, Chicago sociology, and the classical canon

Abstract

The present study starts with the premise that corpus classicus is a font of ideas irreducible to a neat formula and marked by the ambivalence toward reigning theories. The founder’s disciples and adherents often lose this perspective, fighting to suppress alternative readings and undermining the theoretical synthesis attempted by a classic thinker. To flesh out this thesis, the paper examines the place of Erving Goffman in Chicago sociology and the ingenious way he blended various strands comprising this tradition. The discussion starts with the debate on what constitutes the Chicago school, after which it moves to the knotty relationship between Goffman and symbolic interactionism and his determined effort to accommodate structuralist premises within process-oriented sociology. An argument is made that Goffman followed the lead of his mentor, Everett Hughes, in casting social institutions as “going concerns” that run the gamut from large scale formal organizations to taken-for-granted collective enterprises which are honored in the breach. Several empirical studies developing Goffman’s theory of total institutions are reviewed to flesh out his brand of structural interactionism. The paper concludes with reflections on the retroactive nature of reconstructing a school’s origins, problematic practice of assigning sociologists to a specific paradigm, and the affinity of Goffman’s sociology with the classical inquiry into a dialectical relationship between agency and structure. The case is made that Goffman’s research on the institutional moorings of human subjectivity places him firmly in the classic sociological canon and forms the core of his intellectual legacy.