Erving Goffman

New to Penguin Modern Classics, one of the most influential social scientists of the twentieth century examines the meaning of the asylum, the 'total institution'. Asylums presents four interlinked essays that explore life in the 'total institutions'—the closed systems of prisons, boarding schools, nursing homes and, most importantly, mental institutions. Focusing on the relationship between an inmate and the institution...

New to Penguin Modern Classics, one of the most important works ever written on the problem of social stigma. In this groundbreaking work, acclaimed sociologist Erving Goffman examines how society treats those who it considers abnormal. Forced to adjust their social identities from situation to situation, Goffman analyses the variety of strategies that stigmatised individuals deploy to deal with the...

One of the great works of twentieth-century sociology, new to Penguin Modern Classics. Acclaimed on first publication and today considered one of the defining works of sociology, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life is Erving Goffman's extraordinary analysis of the structure of our social interactions. Blurring the line between workaday life and theatrical performance, Goffman argues that our behaviour...