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Erving Goffman wasn’t the first to suggest that the human world is like theatre but in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life the dramatic metaphor is central. We are all actors taking on different roles and in different social situations. Is there an underlying human reality which this play is hiding? How can we be sure we are all playing out the same script? And to what extent do we get to write our own script?

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life is the text for February’s Different Class.

Preliminary Reading

Reading: Erving Goffmann (1959), The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.
Online source: http://www.scribd.com/doc/45519722/Erving-Goffman-The-Presentation-of-Self-in-Everyday-Life
Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Presentation-Self-Everyday-Penguin-Psychology/dp/0140135715/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1315318481&sr=1-1

Read more about Different Class on its microsite, http://bigi.org.uk/differentclass/