Erving Goffman Archives - Public Seminar

Democracy

The Expressive Antidote to the Trumpist Virus

How Erving Goffman helps us understand the hidden power of Biden, Sanders, and the Democratic governors

April 10, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

We can appreciate this by drawing upon the insights of the pioneering ethnographer of social interaction, Erving Goffman. There is irony in this. Goffman is not usually considered a political thinker, nor did he think of himself as such, but his creative examination of the details of social interaction, in my judgment, illuminates an ...

The Expressive Antidote to the Trumpist Virus

Feature

Overhearing in the Public Sphere

Any conversation in any public sphere is doomed to entail consequences

January 3, 2019 • by Daniel Dayan

1. Overhearing, intruding, my interview & Goffman I was once invited to speak at a conference in Sigtuna, near Uppsala, in Sweden. The conference dealt with religious sociology and a few clerics were present. One of them was a famous Danish Imam, Abu Laban. He had ignited what came to be known ...

Education

Media and Micro-Politics

Media, the New Authoritarianism and its alternatives from the perspective of the sociology of interaction

January 30, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I have been conducting a seminar on “media and micro-politics” in a variety of different forms since publishing The Politics of Small Things, often with my dear friend and colleague, Daniel Dayan. This year the newest member of the The New School ‘s sociology department, Julia Sonnevend, the author of a brilliant ...

Education

The New Authoritarianism and the Structural Transformation of the Mediated Public Sphere I

Reviewing the work of Jurgen Habermas and Hannah Arendt with an assist from Nancy Fraser

August 18, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

It’s been two weeks since my return from Wroclaw. I am getting over the shock of teaching about the rise of the new authoritarianism, as the Polish parliament, The Sejm, seemed to be hammering the final nails into the coffin of Polish democracy. It turned out to be a little ...

The New Authoritarianism and the Structural Transformation of the Mediated Public Sphere I

Reviews

Solidarity, and the Rise and Fall of the Public Sphere

A Review of Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz’s Media Events

April 18, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Twenty-five years after its publication, Dayan and Katz’s classic study of ceremonial television, Media Events, has continued relevance for understanding the politics of media. With the proliferation of cable television and digital media explosion, television is no longer the hegemonic media form it once was, and the media events they ...

Solidarity, and the Rise and Fall of the Public Sphere

Education

Twitter as the Medium and the Message

Or Twitter as The Public

April 6, 2017 • by Alysha Khodaiji

“Describe yourself in a sentence.” Teachers commonly use this phrase as an invitation to their students, presumably to get to know them better. All your thoughts, ideas, motivations, and aspirations, all condensed into one sentence. That is a lot of editing -- your gist can only contain the ‘best’ or ...

Education

Categories Outrun by Identities

Some Notes on Agnes’ Passing

February 15, 2017 • by Santiago Mandirola

The title of Garfinkel’s chapter on gender, “Passing and the managed achievement of sex status in an inter-sexed person,” is a title that already hints at not only how Garfinkel will approach the issue of gender but also the bent of his entire ethnomethodology. The continuous, present-progressive form of the ...

Education

Further Reflections on Truth, Politics and Education

Media and Publics III

February 6, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

This past week was fascinating. We read Arendt’s essay “Truth and Politics,” along with a selection from Erving Goffman’s Presentation of Self in Everyday life. The students, Alysha originally from India, Lina, from Sweden, and the Julian from Los Angeles, wisely decided to draw upon the diversity of their experiences ...

Feature

Performing the Brown Man Post 11/8

The Looks of Strangers and the Gaze of Phantoms

December 15, 2016 • by T. A. S.

This piece is part of the OOPS Series, "Social Interaction." I noticed him straight away. It was not the way he walked, slouched, each step an exercise in ascending and descending; like his legs were made out of the springs that vacillate bobble heads. It was not the casual style in ...

Education

Politics of Small Things

December 13, 2016 • by Patrick Gilger, S.J.

This piece is part of the OOPS Series, "Social Interaction." Jeffrey Goldfarb’s “The Politics of Small Things” is a both an insightful work of social analysis and -- through this analysis itself -- an enactment of this-worldly hope in, as he might phrase it, these dark times. Instead of focusing on ...

Uncategorized

Karski’s Tragedy

Introduction of Nicholas Kristof at the Spirit of Jan Karski Award Ceremony

November 6, 2016 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

On November 1, 2016, in Tishman Auditorium of the New School, I had the honor to introduce Nicholas Kristof, this year's honoree at the Spirit of Jan Karski Award Ceremony. My introduction was informed by the works of Hannah Arendt and Erving Goffman, as they speak to each other and ...