A guide to training your own horses: The flaneur appproach and Erving Goffman's uninhibited research practices in sociology

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

While Erving Goffman's sociology has enjoyed great popularity and is cited often, the career of his work has been largely confined to other scholars reaping, adapting, and utilizing his concepts. Goffman was opposed to science that just reproduces and orders concepts, and opposed to his students using his concepts as easy tools. Instead, he recommended they train their own horses: While there is much to use in Goffman's work, there is little scholarship that continues the genius of his practical approach. As valuable as Goffman's categories are, his collection practice and his analytical scheme may be even more valuable. On the one hand, they offer an intricate framework for research that is as open as it is directed; on the other hand, they allow researchers to argue freedom from the ever more imposing bad imitations of natural scientific method that threaten to overgrow the social sciences. Together, they allow Goffmanesque work without merely parroting his concepts. This article attempts to outline Goffman's eclectic way of collecting material and his technique for fashioning this material into analyses, reordering this material around different metaphors that make Goffman's contribution distinct. I call Goffman's practical research a flaneur approach, and outline it. The paper then makes an argument for its continuation.

Original languageEnglish
JournalSymbolic Interaction
Volume39
Issue number1
Pages (from-to)126-142
Number of pages17
ISSN0195-6086
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.02.2016
Externally publishedYes

    Research areas

  • dramaturgy, Erving Goffman, ethnography, everyday life, metaphor
  • Sociology

DOI

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Karl May zum Vergnügen
  2. Sozialisation und Jugend
  3. Education for Sustainable Consumption through Mindfulness
  4. The motivational benefits of specific versus general optimism.
  5. Analysis and evaluation of adaptive remanufacturing strategies for mechanical products
  6. Die Verwendung von Dokumentations-Apps in Kindertagesstätten
  7. § 175
  8. Which attributes of audit committees are most beneficial for European companies?
  9. The color red reduces snack food and soft drink intake
  10. Platon als Theoretiker des Pädagogischen
  11. Mailen
  12. Technökologien
  13. Exploring teachers' mental health literacy: An exploratory study on teachers' experiences, cooperation partners, self-efficacy, and knowledge related to students' mental health problems
  14. Can Becoming a Leader Change Your Personality?
  15. Affect and stock returns
  16. Lehren und Lernen - aber wie?
  17. Political parties in the new Europe
  18. Die Bestimmung des CSB
  19. Emissions of polychlorinated biphenyls, polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins, and polychlorinated dibenzofurans during 2010 and 2011 in Zurich, Switzerland
  20. LogIcons
  21. Nine Degrees of Uncertainty in Negotiations
  22. Automatisiertes Verhalten?
  23. Expatriate Management
  24. Substanz, Körper und Affekte
  25. Camouflagen des Computers
  26. The Importance of Business Continuity for Making Business: The Case of Design Kitchen
  27. Beyond the Trail—Understanding Non-Native Plant Invasions in Mountain Ecosystems
  28. Entgrenzung des künstlerischen Feldes durch Globalisierung ?
  29. E-Mail versus Face-to-face
  30. Party, Coalition, Premiership
  31. Geschlecht in Raumwissenschaften und -planung
  32. Swissness Communication and its Impact on Consumer-Brand Relationships
  33. Evaluating the success of public participation in water resources management: five key constituents
  34. Praedicatio Identica
  35. Ethik
  36. Plant resource-use characteristics as predictors for species contribution to community biomass in experimental grasslands