Erving Goffman’s presidential address on ‘The interaction order’: Rhetorical combat and the display of vocational commitment

Abstract

Erving Goffman’s posthumously published essay, ‘The interaction order’, which was to have been presented as a presidential address at an annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, is usually taken to be an attempt at a systematic summary by Goffman of his key ideas. This article suggests the address can also be understood as a profoundly personal and deeply scornful critique by Goffman of the varieties of mainstream sociology and the pretensions of its practitioners. Incorporated into that critique is a simulacrum in which Goffman demonstrated what a systematic treatment of his work might look like had he actually been inclined to generate one. In that respect, ‘The interaction order’ transcends the boundaries of what we ordinarily expect to find in an academic address: it is simultaneously an artful display of Goffman’s real vocational commitment to sociology, a contribution to the rhetorical debate in which he engaged with the practitioners of orthodox versions of sociology and a brief but significant demonstration of some aspects he considered distinctive about his own form of sociology.