A dense but comprehensive investigation into the concepts of a leading sociologist.
A debut volume of criticism introduces readers to the legacy of Erving Goffman.
Goffman was one of the most influential sociologists of the 20th century, making significant contributions to the study of the individual, society, and the intersection of the two. In these lectures, originally delivered as part of a class offered at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, professors Hood and Van de Vate track Goffman’s ideas over the course of his major works, including The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Stigma, Strategic Interaction, and others. Beginning with the premise that Goffman “is trying to frame general laws about the behavior of human beings in our society,” the authors attempt to define the notions of sociology, society, the human being, and identity, then proceed to Goffmanian explanations of social behavior, self-knowledge, and identity games that create an illusion of reality. The second half of the book supplies an extensive exploration of Frame Analysis, which the authors believe to be “Goffman’s most complete work.” Poorly received at the time of its publication, the volume details how an individual’s perception of society is organized by conceptual “frames,” some of them social and some of them natural. The authors elucidate Goffman’s importance in the hopes of presenting him to a new generation of students seeking to understand the views of one of sociology’s greatest innovators. The book is structured so that each section is authored by either Hood or Van de Vate, though each writes in the same dense academic style that makes heavy use of quotations and specialized language. They have produced an undeniably thorough primer for those getting into Goffman. That said, the work assumes the reader has some background in the study of sociology (enough to know what the dramaturgical perspective is, for example) and the way academic arguments are constructed. General readers should be wary, but anyone looking for a deeper dissection of framing analysis should find much of interest here.
A dense but comprehensive investigation into the concepts of a leading sociologist.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5245-7267-9
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
