Abstract
The use by Goffman of interviews, organized and informal ethnographies, and documentary sources is examined in this chapter. Goffman’s empirical materials were a distinctive feature of his overall sociological approach, which might be regarded as a fieldwork-informed, conceptually more precise version of Georg Simmel’s formal sociology. The peculiarities of Goffman’s empirical work – his scepticism about interview data, the value placed on ethnographic work, and his extensive use of popular documentary sources, often as a kind of proxy ethnography – are set in the context of his wider ambition to sociologically chart the key features of the interaction order.
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© 2022 Springer-Verlag GmbH Deutschland, ein Teil von Springer Nature
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Smith, G.W.H. (2022). Goffman’s Empirical Work. In: Lenz, K., Hettlage, R. (eds) Goffman-Handbuch. J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05871-3_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05871-3_3
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