Labelling Goffman: The presentation and appropriation of erving Goffman in academic life

Recent years have witnessed an extraordinary revival of sociological interest in the work of Erving Goffman unprecedented in the foregoing decades and unmatched at any other time since Goffman’s death almost three decades ago (see e.g. Jacobsen and Kristiansen 2002; Kim 2003; Treviño 2003; Scheff 2006; Smith 2006). Torrents of literature dealing with, presenting, interpreting, applying, using, discussing, dissecting, analysing, assessing and debating Goffman’s contribution have flooded the discipline of sociology as well as related fields of study. Quite a substantial amount of this literature has also concerned itself with categorising, classifying or inscribing Goffman’s sociology within already known and time-honoured paradigms, schools of thought and research traditions. The result is that Goffman at various times and by a variety of interpreters has been seen as a proponent, exponent or representative of a multitude-and quite often widely contradictory-perspectives and positions thereby obscuring who he was and what he in fact stood for.