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3.92 AVERAGE
3.92 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
slow-paced
An interesting dive into the analogy of ‘all the world’s a stage..’, but ultimately limited by its publishing era and author’s over assertiveness of his white male american perspective. There are some interesting points about the dramaturgical analysis of social interactions, especially about the roles of performer/s, teams, audiences, and those ‘disruptions’ which constantly seek to tear down these socially constructed roles and arenas of performance.
I just couldn't get past all the jargon and intentionally confusing way of explaining things. Talk about a front...just be more clear, there was no need to be annoyingly confusing. I was hoping it would provide a helpful analysis of how people operate in social situations in an interesting and unique way but was bored and frustrated instead.
Oh my god this was such a slog.
First off; it is the neurodivergent's dream to have a book which outlines why social interactions are the way that they are and helps you understand them in the context of routine theater. This dialectic has worth beyond its significance as a historical document or a way of understanding why older people in business still see socialization this way, which is why I can't bring myself to give it only one star.
However, the author's claim that Anglo-American society's modes of socialization resemble theater because it meets a psychobiological impulse is part and parcel with all of the other flaws that a flimsy philosophy book masquerading as "social psychology" from the 1940s naturally takes on when it's read 80 years into the future.
There's so many things that made this book hard to read. It's incredibly padded with too-long explanations that only confound the point before the author has to give a "for example" to save the reader. The writing style is so thick with fluff that it reads like how a person would swim in molasses. The analysis is tinged with misogyny and racism, which is in the fashion of the times but in the hindsight of work done within other dialectics, does undermine the thesis in terms of who exactly is staging which performance for what motivation and how on earth that could be biological in any way.
Glad to have this finally out of the way.
First off; it is the neurodivergent's dream to have a book which outlines why social interactions are the way that they are and helps you understand them in the context of routine theater. This dialectic has worth beyond its significance as a historical document or a way of understanding why older people in business still see socialization this way, which is why I can't bring myself to give it only one star.
However, the author's claim that Anglo-American society's modes of socialization resemble theater because it meets a psychobiological impulse is part and parcel with all of the other flaws that a flimsy philosophy book masquerading as "social psychology" from the 1940s naturally takes on when it's read 80 years into the future.
There's so many things that made this book hard to read. It's incredibly padded with too-long explanations that only confound the point before the author has to give a "for example" to save the reader. The writing style is so thick with fluff that it reads like how a person would swim in molasses. The analysis is tinged with misogyny and racism, which is in the fashion of the times but in the hindsight of work done within other dialectics, does undermine the thesis in terms of who exactly is staging which performance for what motivation and how on earth that could be biological in any way.
Glad to have this finally out of the way.
informative
reflective
slow-paced
informative
medium-paced
When Goffman said:
"that every scene that you find yourself in is the most important scene in your life and it is what keeps society alive."
"that every scene that you find yourself in is the most important scene in your life and it is what keeps society alive."
Erving Goffman wrote a lot about the sociology of self, and he was a master of the topic. This book approaches the question of how we present our selves in social interaction. Is the self you present the self you are? How many selves are you, anyway? Not many of us have just one way of presenting ourselves. Kind of a mental slog to get through this one, but well worth it.
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
informative
reflective
slow-paced
I don't know how much this book is "right" or even how much i agree with it, but i read this for the first time a while back and it has given me tools and language that profoundly changed how i think and talk about sociality.