Goffman Unbound! (Advancing the Sociological Imagination) - Softcover

"In this book Thomas Scheff argues that Goffman.s vision centres on his discovery of the emotional/relational world. He shows how Goffman brings to life the looking-glass self, which links intersubjectivity and feelings. Scheff develops his thesis through a series of engagements with key elements of Goffman.s oeuvre. Throughout, he makes effective use of his own research to demonstrate how Goffman takes us beyond vernacular understandings of these matters. Scheff’s critical eye is equal to his subject, shrewdly appreciating Goffman’s many virtues while also showing where and how Goffman’s thinking needs revision and development. This original and provocative book offers a fresh interpretation of Goffman and will become a benchmark for all subsequent commentary." —Greg Smith, University of Salford

"Thomas J. Scheff's Goffman Unbound is the key to decoding Goffman's plethora of brilliant but enigmatic concepts, tropes, and taxonomies. It provides a clear picture into the complex world of emotions and social interaction." —A. Javier Treviño, Wheaton College, editor of Goffman's Legacy

"In this astute and appreciative discussion of the work of Erving Goffman, Scheff adds a discussion of emotion. He focuses on how the emotions of grief, anger, fear and shame underlie hyper-masculinity—a topic missing from Goffman and very important to understanding current politics." —Arlie Hochschild, University of California, Berkeley, author of The Managed Heart and The Commercialization of Intimate Life

"No one is better qualified than Tom Scheff to bring out the significance of Goffman's work and to carry further his explorations of what Scheff calls the emotional-relational world. Especially illuminating is Scheff turning his techniques upon Goffman's own This book addresses this and related questions through an impressively rigorous cross-national study of personality in stable societies (the United States and Japan) compared to former socialist societies during and after transition (Poland and Ukraine).

Kohn tests his incisive interpretation of the relationships between position in the larger social structures of class and stratification and job conditions and personality. Initially developed and tested in a longitudinal study of men employed in civilian occupations in the United States, the interpretation is systematically tested and enlarged in studies in Japan (to see whether it applies to a non-Western industrialized society) and in Poland when it was socialist (to see whether it applies to the social and economic system of Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe). Then, with the demise of the Soviet Union, the comparisons are extended to both men and women, whether or not employed, in the urban areas of Poland and Ukraine during their transition to nascent capitalism (to see whether the interpretation applies to the entire urban populations of these countries, even under conditions of radical social change). Despite personality being highly unstable during the process of radic! al social change in Ukraine from 1992 to 1996, the relationships of social structure and personality remain remarkably stable and consistent with those of countries studied during times of much greater social stability.