Erving Goffman

About the author

Erving Goffman (1922–1982) is regarded by many as the most influential American sociologist of the twentieth century — a remarkable distinction for a Canadian-born thinker who reshaped how scholars understand everyday social life. His signature contribution, dramaturgical analysis, treated human interaction as performance, first elaborated in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1956). Major works including Asylums (1961), Stigma (1963), and Frame Analysis (1974) cemented his reach across sociology and social psychology.

By 2007, he ranked sixth among the most-cited authors in the humanities and social sciences. He served as president of the American Sociological Association.