ABSTRACT
The placement of a thinker in one school of thought is not always an easy task. While many thinkers are clearly located in a particular "current", others are not. This chapter addresses the placement of Goffman in social theory; the ensuing sections that are dedicated to the presentation of the themes and topics that the author had extracted from his critics as being central to the interpretation of Goffman. The sections are organized under the epistemological distinction between what the author calls a modern epistemology, which is in close relationship with dominant sociology, on the one side and non-modern approaches, which run counter to the canon of sociology by being appreciative of pluralism as the philosophical base of Goffman's work, on the other. With respect to structuralism, Joas correctly states that it is erroneous to label every theorist who has worked with the concept of structure a structuralist.
