ABSTRACT
Many years ago when I had fi rst moved to Oslo from my native Colorado, I was walking across the campus of the University of Oslo en route to my Norwegian class. In what was likely one of my fi rst experiences of mastering the language I noticed some graffi ti spray painted on one of the buildings that said “Goffman er gud” (Goffman is god). The experience has become one of those bits of cultural fl otsam that has stuck with me. Not only was I learning to decode some of the language, but barring the possibility of Karl Marx, it is the only time I have ever seen graffi ti dedicated to a sociologist. Somehow, someone was possessed with the motivation to take this form of expression into hand to tell the world their opinion of Erving Goffman. This was not an ode to some rock musician, a call to arms or the use of a random wall to show off the graffi ti artist’s latest signature. It was graffi ti inspired by a sociologist. How can you top that?
