The Presentation Of Self In Everyday Life

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life is a sociological study of the ways individuals encounter each other. Published in 1956 by Erving Goffman, it focuses on the relationship between an individual carrying out a particular role in society (what Goffman calls a “performance”) and those who are present but not participant (whom he calls “observers”) in the activity. While the text begins with a general introduction to Goffman’s methodology, with Chapter 1 solely an analysis of the individual performer, Goffman’s larger aim is to outline the various ways groups of performers (what he calls “performance teams” or “teams”) interact with themselves and with observers, with the aim of fostering a specific and clear impression on the viewers.

By focusing on the larger group dynamics within a given social setting, Goffman successfully accounts for various phenomena that are largely taken for granted or seen as unworthy of rigorous academic study: the economic, racial, and gendered relations between workers and their boss; the role played by architecture and space in the staging of a performance; the various techniques and habits cultivated by performers to avoid any disruption to the situation; and so forth. Moreover, Goffman classifies the more marginal actors and observers that one may come across in everyday social settings (or what he calls “discrepant roles”).