Dmitri Shalin Interview with Eviatar Zerubavel about Erving Goffman entitled Studying with Erving Goffman

This interview with Eviatar Zerubavel, Board of Governors Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University, was recorded on August 2, 2008, during the ASA meeting in Boston. After Dmitri Shalin transcribed the interview, Dr. Zerubavel corrected the transcript and gave his approval for posting the present version in the Erving Goffman Archives. Breaks in the conversation flow are indicated by ellipses. Supplementary information appears in square brackets. Undecipherable words and unclear passages are identified in the text as “[?]”. The interviewer’s questions are shortened in several places

Metáforas espaciales y estructuras mentales : una perspectiva sociológica

When we think about thinking, we usually envision an individual thinker –a chess player analyzing her opponent’s last move, a scientist designing an experiment, an old man reminiscing about his childhood. This vision of an individual thinker, so powerfully captured by Auguste Rodin in his statue The Thinker, is a typical product of Western civilization, which practically invented individualism. Since the seventeenth century, it has also been bolstered by the empiricist theories of knowledge developed by John Locke and George Berkeley, which posit a blank mind (tabula rasa) upon which the world impresses itself experientially through our senses.Cuando pensamos sobre el pensar, normalmente imaginamos un pensador individual –un jugador de ajedrez observando las jugadas de su contrincante, un científico diseñando su próximo experimento o una persona anciana recordando su niñez. Esta visión de un pensador individual captada magistralmente por A. Rodin en su estatua: el pensador, es un producto típico de la civilización occidental. A partir del siglo XVII, además, esta visión fue impulsada por las teorías empiristas de John Locke y George Berkeley, que supusieron una mente vacía (tabula rasa) sobre la cual el mundo se inscribe a través de los sentidos.Peer Reviewe

The politics and aesthetics of commemoration: national days in southern Africa

The contributions to the special section in this issue study recent independence celebrations and other national days in South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of Congo. They explore the role of national days in state-making and nation-building, and examine the performativity of nationalism and the role of performances in national festivities. Placing the case studies in a broader, comparative perspective, the introduction first discusses the role of the state in national celebrations, highlighting three themes: firstly, the political power-play and contested politics of memory involved in the creation of a country’s festive calendar; secondly, the relationship between state control of national days and civic or popular participation or contestation; and thirdly, the complex relationship between regional and ethnic loyalties and national identifications. It then turns to the role of performance and aesthetics in the making of nations in general, and in national celebrations in particular. Finally, we look at the different formats and meanings of national days in the region and address the question whether there is anything specific about national days in southern Africa as compared to other parts of the continent or national celebrations world-wide.Web of Scienc

Metáforas espaciales y estructuras mentales : una perspectiva sociológica

When we think about thinking, we usually envision an individual thinker –a chess player analyzing her opponent’s last move, a scientist designing an experiment, an old man reminiscing about his childhood. This vision of an individual thinker, so powerfully captured by Auguste Rodin in his statue The Thinker, is a typical product of Western civilization, which practically invented individualism. Since the seventeenth century, it has also been bolstered by the empiricist theories of knowledge developed by John Locke and George Berkeley, which posit a blank mind (tabula rasa) upon which the world impresses itself experientially through our senses.Cuando pensamos sobre el pensar, normalmente imaginamos un pensador individual –un jugador de ajedrez observando las jugadas de su contrincante, un científico diseñando su próximo experimento o una persona anciana recordando su niñez. Esta visión de un pensador individual captada magistralmente por A. Rodin en su estatua: el pensador, es un producto típico de la civilización occidental. A partir del siglo XVII, además, esta visión fue impulsada por las teorías empiristas de John Locke y George Berkeley, que supusieron una mente vacía (tabula rasa) sobre la cual el mundo se inscribe a través de los sentidos.Peer Reviewe

La standardisation du temps. Une perspective socio-historique

Zerubavel Eviatar. La standardisation du temps. Une perspective socio-historique. In: Politix, vol. 3, n°10-11, Deuxième et troisième trimestre 1990. Codification(s) sous la direction de Bastien François et Jean-Philippe Heurtin. pp. 21-32