Chapter Ten - Goffman’s Politics: Rebel With(Out) A Cause?

Summary

Introduction

Erving Goffman has been characterized as simultaneously a rebel and reactionary (Collins 1986). He publicly presented himself as a scholar who was unconcerned with politics, ideological arguments, and pragmatist sociology. He was deeply committed to a form of micro-sociology that privileged the realm of everyday interactions and his field of inquiry, on the margins of mainstream sociology, and unconventional methodologies positioned him as an outsider in the discipline. He found amusement and pleasure in the possibilities of individual interactions to subvert social expectations and order (Marx 1984). Goffman’s choice of subjects and study—the everyday lives of the stigmatized, institutionalized, marginalized—was ripe for a pragmatist analysis. Nevertheless, he eschewed wading into the politics of the day and avoided any overtly prescriptive or moralizing stance in his writing; at first glance he presents a face of agnosticism to his subjects. Goffman’s silence on matters of social importance and structural change, in his work and in his interactions with students and colleagues, exists in tension with his empathetic descriptions of the plight of marginalized individuals. Nevertheless, a holistic reading of Goffman’s work unearths implicit values and political commitments, bearing in mind that his intellectual project was an unfinished one.

This chapter draws on themes and analyses throughout Goffman’s work to pull together the threads of political commitment therein. Colleagues and students have characterized him as largely apolitical in his everyday life, and Goffman once described his own politics as “anarchist”—a debatable claim (Gamson 1985) that perhaps spoke to the value that Goffman placed on the individual. However, despite the criticisms that have been levied, Goffman’s work and understanding of the interaction order has much to offer to contemporary sociologists concerned with a politics of identity and of the margins.

The role of politics and partisanship in sociological inquiry has long been debated in the discipline. A vocal polemicist, Alvin W. Gouldner (1962) was deeply critical of sociologists’ attempts to promote the “myth” of value-free sociology. He distinguished between “value free” sociology and sociological “objectivity,” arguing that the analyst’s political and moral commitments must be made explicit to promote reflexivity and to ensure that the terms of the analysis and the basis of judgment are transparent (Gouldner 1968).