Communication Conduct in an Island Community

Canadian-born Erving Goffman (1922–1982) was the twentieth century’s most important sociologist writing in English. His 1953 dissertation is published here for the first time, on the hundredth anniversary of his birth. The remarkable study, based on fieldwork on a remote Scottish island, presents in embryonic form the full spread of Goffman’s thought. Framed as a “report on a study of conversational interaction,” the dissertation lingers on the modest talk of island “crofters.” It is trademark Goffman: ambitious, unconventional in form, and brimmed with big-picture insight. The thesis is that social order is made and re-made in communication—the “interaction order” he re-visited in a famous and final talk before his 1982 death. The dissertation is, as Yves Winkin writes in a new introduction, the “Rosetta stone for his entire work.” It was here, in 360 dense pages, that Goffman revealed, quietly, his peerless sensitivity to the invisible wireframes of everyday life

Interdependence as a Frame for Assistive Technology Research and Design

In this paper, we describe interdependence for assistive technology design, a frame developed to complement the traditional focus on independence in the Assistive Technology field. Interdependence emphasizes collaborative access and people with disabilities' important and often understated contribution in these efforts. We lay the foundation of this frame with literature from the academic discipline of Disability Studies and popular media contributed by contemporary disability justice activists. Then, drawing on cases from our own work, we show how the interdependence frame (1) synthesizes findings from a growing body of research in the Assistive Technology field and (2) helps us orient to additional technology design opportunities. We position interdependence as one possible orientation to, not a prescription for, research and design practice--one that opens new design possibilities and affirms our commitment to equal access for people with disabilities

Communication Conduct in an Island Community

Canadian-born Erving Goffman (1922–1982) was the twentieth century’s most important sociologist writing in English. His 1953 dissertation is published here for the first time, on the hundredth anniversary of his birth. The remarkable study, based on fieldwork on a remote Scottish island, presents in embryonic form the full spread of Goffman’s thought. Framed as a “report on a study of conversational interaction,” the dissertation lingers on the modest talk of island “crofters.” It is trademark Goffman: ambitious, unconventional in form, and brimmed with big-picture insight. The thesis is that social order is made and re-made in communication—the “interaction order” he re-visited in a famous and final talk before his 1982 death. The dissertation is, as Yves Winkin writes in a new introduction, the “Rosetta stone for his entire work.” It was here, in 360 dense pages, that Goffman revealed, quietly, his peerless sensitivity to the invisible wireframes of everyday life

Spiritual Rituals of Chinese Ink Painting: The Suggestions of Shitao

Ritual has an essential connection with art. This article suggests that the study on Shitao has significance in proposing a ritual theory of art for two reasons. First, textual analysis on his treatise on ink painting, Hua-pu, demonstrates that an artist is/should be involved in the interconnectedness of what he or she depicts. This involvement requires penetration into the primordial intuition towards what he or she perceives and has an ethical imperative to use the artist’s talent conferred by heaven. Second, Shitao’s artistic practice is interpreted as a form of rites that are a reaction to the sociopolitical changes during the Ming-Qing dynastic transition. The elaboration on Shitao’s identity and Hua-pu‘s relevance to Daoism will further support the argument. And it is in this sense that Shitao’s case reveals the claim that “art is ritual,” which is metaphorical as it appeals to an ideal form of art

"Nur ein Schmock studiert sein eigenes Leben": Ein Gespräch zwischen Erving Goffman und Thomas Hoebel, das niemals stattgefunden hat

Hoebel T, Goffman E. "Nur ein Schmock studiert sein eigenes Leben": Ein Gespräch zwischen Erving Goffman und Thomas Hoebel, das niemals stattgefunden hat. Soziopolis: Gesellschaft beobachten. 2022

Urban football narratives and the colonial process in Lourenço Marques

Support for Portuguese football teams, in Mozambique as well as in other former Portuguese colonies, could be interpreted either as a sign of the importance of a cultural colonial heritage in Africa or as a symbol of a perverse and neo-colonial acculturation. This article, focused on Maputo, the capital of Mozambique – formerly called Lourenc¸o Marques – argues that in order to understand contemporary social bonds, it is crucial to research the connection between the colonial process of urbanisation and the rise of urban popular cultures. Despite the existence of social discrimination in colonial Lourenc¸o Marques, deeply present in the spatial organisation of a city divided between a ‘concrete’ centre and the immense periphery, the consumption of football, as part of an emergent popular culture, crossed segregation lines. I argue that football narratives, locally appropriated, became the basis of daily social rituals and encounters, an element of urban sociability and the content of increasingly larger social networks. Therefore, the fact that a Portuguese narrative emerged as the dominant form of popular culture is deeply connected to the growth of an urban community

Seeing the way: visual sociology and the distance runner's perspective

Employing visual and autoethnographic data from a two‐year research project on distance runners, this article seeks to examine the activity of seeing in relation to the activity of distance running. One of its methodological aims is to develop the linkage between visual and autoethnographic data in combining an observation‐based narrative and sociological analysis with photographs. This combination aims to convey to the reader not only some of the specific subcultural knowledge and particular ways of seeing, but also something of the runner's embodied feelings and experience of momentum en route. Via the combination of narrative and photographs we seek a more effective way of communicating just how distance runners see and experience their training terrain. The importance of subjecting mundane everyday practices to detailed sociological analysis has been highlighted by many sociologists, including those of an ethnomethodological perspective. Indeed, without the competence of social actors in accomplishing these mundane, routine understandings and practices, it is argued, there would in fact be no social order