The presentation of self in everyday life
A notable contribution to our understanding of ourselves. This book explores the realm of human behavior in social situations and the way that we appear to others. Dr. Goffman uses the metaphor of theatrical performance as a framework. Each person in everyday social intercourse presents himself and his activity to others, attempts to guide and control the impressions they form of him, and employs certain techniques in order to sustain his performance, just as an actor presents a character to an audience. The discussions of these social techniques offered here are based upon detailed research and observation of social customs in many regions.
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- Good question. It's been over twenty years at this point, and we skimmed a lot of texts in the classes I took. The one that actually stuck with me was Erving Goffman's "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life", but I don't know how much that would still resonate.
Emile Durkeim's "Suicide" is famous in sociology because it helped kick off the entire field of study. It was, I think, one of the first works to consider how a profound individual action (suicide in this case) might be largely determined by the surrounding social structures.
I don't know what a good introductory book would be.
- I think that generalizes to all human interactions. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life [1] is the canonical work on this topic.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Presentation_of_Self_in_Ev...
- If you're interested in the effects social media has on political and civic life, these are two great books to read. One is recent, the other is a foundational classic of social psychology:
- Zeynep Tufekci, Twitter and Tear Gas, The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest (2017).
- Erwin Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1956)
Goffman uses a theatrical metaphor to talk about how our behavior and social life is affected by our perceptions of who the audience is for our actions. Zeynep writes about how the magnifying and flattening effects of social media have been both a help and hindrance to large-scale organizing. Both are wonderful books.
- > I read parts of it and found it slow and boring but then haven't stopped thinking about it since.
I can't tell you how much I love this sentence -- captures a similar experience of mine so succinctly. I keep running into books that I tried to read at a "normal" pace and hated, thought were stupid, that nobody really likes it for real, etc. But then, for different reasons, I started reading books incredibly slowly, and it's like I've entered a secret world.
Some examples, for the curious:
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn
The Varieties of Religious Experience, James
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman
Human Action, Mises
- Voltaire's Bastards by JR Saul is about all those things and many more. Absolutely amazing book, as are most of his others. Kind of a history of rationality since the 18th C, and how it went so wrong. Also a lot about technocrats, politics, etc etc. (About time I read it again!)
Oakeshott's Rationalism in Politics blew my mind. (He sees almost all modern political parties as dominated by this rationalism.) I was embarrassed how much I learnt from this long essay. Even a lot about piano teaching. Worth it for the ancient Chinese anecdote in the footnotes alone.
Richard Sennett The Fall of Public Man is a history of public spaces, living in cities, public politics, political charisma etc, since Paris in the 19th C.
Erving Goffman Presentation of Self in Everyday Life looks at (All these books are very hard to summarise!!) the stages, backstages, performances of life, actual stages, shops, hotels, ranks in organisations, these little worlds with rules and customs, how the rules are subverted, created, evolve.. full of fascinating stories.
EF Schumacher Small is Beautiful - definitely about government, money, society. Economics as if people mattered. When I first read this, I thought the survival of the planet depended on people reading it.
I found Mandeville's Fable of the Bees (1729) extremely funny and just as true. How everything depends on the sins of humanity. If we were all virtuous, economies would fall apart etc. Goes in detail into this argument and he's hard to argue with.
Susan Faludi's STIFFED. I learnt so much about modern work, life, society, and being a man from this. A must read.
p.s. and everything by JK Galbraith and C Wright Mills. Good luck!
- "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life" — Erving Goffman (1959). Timeless. https://www.amazon.com/Presentation-Self-Everyday-Life/dp/03...
