Zitate von Erving Goffman

p 252; Cited in: Javier Trevino, Goffman's Legacy. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003, p. 55.
1950s-1960s, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959

„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.“

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— Erving Goffman, buch The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Quelle: 1950s-1960s, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959, p. 229

„When there is a discrepancy between an individual's actual social identity and his virtual one, it is possible for this fact to be known to us before we normals contact him, or to be quite evident when he presents himself before us.“

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— Erving Goffman, buch Stigma

Quelle: 1950s-1960s, Stigma, 1963, p. 56

„In our society, defecation involves an individual in activity which is defined as inconsistent with the cleanliness and purity standards expressed in many of our performances. Such activity also causes the individual to disarrange his clothing and to 'go out of play," that is, to drop from his face the expressive mask that he employs in face-to-face interaction. At the same time it becomes difficult for him to reassemble his personal front should the need to enter into interaction suddenly occur. Perhaps that is a reason why toilet doors in our society have locks on them.“

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— Erving Goffman, buch The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Quelle: 1950s-1960s, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959, p. 121 (1973 edition)

„Three grossly different types of stigma may be mentioned. First there are abominations of the body - the various physical deformities. Next there are blemishes of individual character perceived as weak will, domineering or unnatural passions, treacherous and rigid beliefs, and dishonesty, these being inferred from a known record of, for example, mental disorder, imprisonment, addiction, alcoholism, homosexuality, unemployment, suicidal attempts, and radical political behaviour. Finally there are the tribal stigma of race, nation, and religion, these being stigma that can be transmitted through lineages and equally contaminate all members of a family.“

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— Erving Goffman, buch Stigma

Quelle: 1950s-1960s, Stigma, 1963, p. 13

„I mean this report to serve as a sort of handbook detailing one sociological perspective from which social life can be studied, especially the kind of social life that is organised within the physical confines of a building or plant. A set of features will be described which together form a framework that can be applied to any concrete social establishment, be it domestic, industrial, or commercial.“

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— Erving Goffman, buch The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Preface, lead paragraph
1950s-1960s, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959

„A total institution may be defined as a place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated individuals, cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life. Prisons serve as a clear example, providing we appreciate that what is prison-like about prisons is found in institutions whose members have broken no laws. This volume deals with total institutions in general and one example, mental hospitals, in particular.“

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— Erving Goffman, buch Asylums

Quelle: 1950s-1960s, Asylums, 1961, p. xxi; lead paragraph

„The total institutions of our society can be linked in five rough groupings. First, there are institutions established to care for persons felt to be both incapable and harmless; these are the homes for the blind, the aged, the orphaned, and the indigent. Second, there are places established to care for persons felt to be incapable of looking after themselves and a threat to the community, albeit an unintended one: TB sanitaria, mental hospitals, and leprosaria. A third type of total institution is organised to protect the community against what are felt to be intentional dangers to it, with the welfare of the persons thus sequestered not the immediate issue: jails, penitentiaries, P. O. W. camps, and concentration camps. Fourth, there are institutions purportedly established the better to pursue some work-like tasks and justifying themselves only on these instrumental grounds: army barracks, ships, boarding schools, work camps, colonial compounds, and large mansions from the point of view of those who live in the servants' quarters. Finally, there are those establishments designed as retreats from the world even while often serving also as training stations for the religious; examples are abbeys, monasteries, convents, and other cloisters.“

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— Erving Goffman, buch Asylums

Quelle: 1950s-1960s, Asylums, 1961, p. 4-5

„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.“

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— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman (1971), Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction, p. 38; As quoted by R. D. Laing in The Politics of Experience
1970s-1980s

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

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— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman (1981, p. 1); As cited in: Trevino (2003,, p. 34).
1970s-1980s

„A basic social arrangement in modern society is that the individual tends to sleep, play and work in different places with different co-participants, under different authorities, and without an over-all rational plan. The central feature of total institutions can be described as a breakdown of the barriers ordinarily separating these three spheres of life. First, all aspects of life are conducted in the same place and under the same central authority. Second, each phase of the member's daily activity is carried on in the immediate company of a large batch of others, all of whom are treated alike and required to do the same thing together. Third, all phases of the day's activities are tightly scheduled, with one activity leading at prearranged time into the next, the whole sequence of activities being imposed from above by a system of explicit formal rulings and a body of officials. Finally, the various enforced activities are brought together into a single rational plan purportedly designed to fulfil the official aims of the institution.“

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— Erving Goffman, buch Asylums

Quelle: 1950s-1960s, Asylums, 1961, p. 5-6

„In recent years there have been elaborate attempts to bring into one framework the concepts and findings derived from three different areas of inquiry: the individual personality, social interaction, and society. I would like to suggest here a simple addition to these inter-disciplinary attempts.“

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— Erving Goffman, buch The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Quelle: 1950s-1960s, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959, p. 155