American politics
Gellner and Goffman
What's in a name?
Jul 25th 2010, 14:01 by Lexington
I FOOLISHLY studied sociology in the late 1960s, when it was briefly popular. In the late 1970s I interviewed and profiled one of its luminaries, Erving Goffman, whose books included "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life". So I was puzzled by this post by Matthew Yglesias, one of the trendier bloggers:
Apparently there’s some concern that Ernest Gellner isn’t as prominent as he ought to be. My view is that he ought to be very prominent. If you haven’t read The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life then you ought to.
Gellner, Goffman, aren't all these sociologists the same?
UPDATE: Mr Yglesias's paean to Erving/Ernest/Gellner/Goffman appears to have vanished.
In this blog, our Lexington columnist enters America’s political fray and shares the many opinions that don't make it into his column each week. The column and blog are named after Lexington, Massachusetts, where the first shots were fired in the American war of independence.
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Ernest Gellner's 15 seconds of fame have expired. Long live Goffman and his great, great, GREAT book "The Presentation ...".
As a non-American I 'foolishly' picked up a copy of 'The Conscience of a Liberal' prior to the last US-presidential election. I was hoping for some inspiring insight from revered economist Paul Krugman, but was disappointed.
Notwithstanding that 'liberal' has radically-different meanings in the UK, Australia and the 'neo-liberal' theology, I figured the insight might come from 'the Conscience'.
After reading 273 pages, my summation of the book is that it could be retitled 'The lack of conscience of a neo-liberal'.
What's in a name ?
Arroz by any other name
would still be rice.
I'm missing a piece to this puzzle. Why did (trendy) Mr Yglesias's post vanish?
This post and comment string remind me of a pop-psychology book of the 1970s entitled "I'm Okay, You're Okay".
It was allegedly soon followed by another book which to me sounded much more interesting, "I'm Okay, You're a Mess".
Nah, Jbay. Around these parts, I'm afraid it's a little too late to worry about it. Just call me Erving Bunbury.
For the sake of distant posterity, both Goffman and Gellner were mentioned on the internet in the week before this comment at the sort of heavyweight political (e.g., http://www.crookedtimber.org) and economic (e.g., http://modeledbehaviorcom) blogs that Matt Yglesias could be expected to visit.
I.e., this was MY's little joke, about pre-internet academics whose significance has now been to the modern world.
Alas for the jest, there still are a batch of us old farts around who know the difference between Gellner and Goffman and who still find both men and their writings worthy of respect.
Ah well. A time must surely come when only narrow specialists will remember the significance or even the names of such long gone historical figures as Einstein and Hitler and Churchill and Priestley. No doubt the young folk of the time will view their ignorance as liberating.
Doug,
Should I ask first about how you'd like to be presented? :-D
I took a course in Italian history where the prof said that we ought to think of it as theatre acted out in the piazza of every city.
One of my favorite plays is Wilde's The Importance of Being Erving. It was about Dr. J.
Has anyone written The Presentation of Others yet? I recommend it!
I have to ask... why "foolishly"?