ABSTRACT
The legacy of the sociologist Erving Goffman is complex and multifaceted. Dmitri Shalin perceives some themes in this upbringing as central to Goffman’s scientific production. Goffman completed three years of study at the University of Manitoba in chemistry, philosophy, and English. In 1945, he began to work at the Canadian Film Board. In 1957, Goffman was offered a professorship at Berkeley and moved from Chicago to California. Around 1960, he had shorter stays in Las Vegas, partly to study gamblers, but according to many sources also because of his own fascination with gambling. Goffman appears infrequently in overview books under the so-called symbolic interactionists, a direction concerned with creating and interpreting meaning in human interaction. On the other hand, Goffman has a keen eye for how behavior develops in the actual encounter among those physically present. Mead’s notion that an individual takes over others’ attitudes towards oneself is a simplification, says Goffman.
