ABSTRACT
At some point in his life, Erving Goffman was a kid. Perhaps hard to believe. It is worth reconstituting his personal, social and intellectual environnment from available historical data, from interviews and biographies of peers and fellow Canadians of his time. The ultimate objective is to delineate the main characteristics of the habitus which shaped Goffman the kid-and Goffman the adult (Boltanski 1973; Wacquant 1988; Winkin 1988, 1999).
