ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses that the intellectual influences on Erving Goffman are manifold and thoroughly heterogeneous. It is difficult to fully reconstruct them or outline them exhaustively. The chapter presents only those strands and figures most significant to the understanding of Goffman’s theoretical orientation, research interests, methodological approach, and research style. The overview of the traditions shaped and influenced Goffman’s thought reveals an unusual tension between tradition and originality. The influences come clearly to the fore when Goffman investigates the organization of everyday experience in Frame Analysis in 1974. It also reveals that Goffman did not engage in hero worship and primarily understood his predecessors and contemporaries as intellectual sources of raw material. He contributed a great deal to covering up the traces of what shaped and influenced him. It is then no wonder that any attempt to read Goffman through the lens of a specific theoretical direction or methodological tradition distorts and reduces his sociological perspective and makes it one-sided.
