The con man as model organism: the methodological roots of Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical self

Abstract

This article offers a historical analysis of the relationship between the practice of participant-observation among American sociologists and Erving Goffman's dramaturgical model of the self. He was a social scientist who privileged ethnography in the field over the laboratory experiment, the survey questionnaire, or the mental test. His goal was a natural history of communication among humans. Rather than rely upon standardizing technologies for measurement, Goffman tried to obtain accurate recordings of human behavior through secretive observations. During the 1950s, he conducted three major studies as a participant-observer, disguised from those studied through insincere performances. As originally presented, his dramaturgical theory did not draw upon the theater as the governing metaphor, but rather the confidence game. It is suggested that Goffman's writings exemplify what Gerd Gigerenzer calls the tools-to-theories heuristic. Goffman's depiction of the confidence man's behavior closely mirrored how he and his fellow sociologists described the practice of participant-observation. Both were represented as embedded and attentive yet coolly detached observers skilled at playing different roles as the situation necessitated. The similarities between his own professional behavior and the activities of the confidence man may have suggested to Goffman the latter as a model for human nature.

Fake News and the Web of Plausibility

“…Erving Goffman’s (1959) metaphor of the dramaturgical “performance” is sometimes invoked to explain how different social formations, including fake news (Robertson & Mourão, 2020), give and give off different meanings and impressions. Often left under-appreciated, though, is that Goffman’s framework originated in his analysis of the “plays” that con men make on their marks (Goffman, 1952; see Pettit, 2011). Indeed, one important aspect of Goffman’s dramaturgical metaphor is that performance need not be sincerely felt by the performer, as with a con game; what matters is simply putting in sufficient effort to ensure that the performance is plausible enough to continue.…”

Erving Goffman’s presidential address on ‘The interaction order’: Rhetorical combat and the display of vocational commitment

“…Goffman’s conceptual distancing and epistemological cynicism have generated accusations that he was a con man (Pettit, 2011). That is a serious misinterpretation.…”

Theoretical Reductionism: Forcing a Covering Law Doctrine of Behavioral Psychology on the Sociology of Everyday Communication and Interaction

“…It is a little social system with its own boundary-maintaining tendencies. (Goffman, 1967, p. 113) Erving Goffman (1922Goffman ( -1982 was one of the most cited (Tyler, 2018;Pettit, 2011) and "influential American sociologists of the twentieth century" (Fine & Manning, 2003, p. 34). Born in Canadian and influenced by George Herbert Mead and Herbert Blumer, he is best known for his social action rituals, "dramaturgical" approach, and "interaction orders" of face-to-face encounters in our heterogeneous world where different settings call for different forms of communication and activity, rather like a theater performance (Leeds-Hurwitz, 2017).…”