Erving Goffman

Shetlopedia - The Shetland Encyclopaedia

Born in Alberta, Canada, in 1922, one of the great sociologists of the 20th century, Goffman studied at the universities of Manitoba and Chicago. As part of his Chicago Ph.D., Communication conduct in an island community, he spent more than a year as an employee at the Baltasound Hotel, Unst, in 1949-51. He used insights from his fieldwork in Shetland in his important book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959). After a long and influential career Goffman died in 1982. There is a copy of his Ph.D. in the Shetland Archives.