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Doubling Down On Goffman: A Commentary On Dmitri Shalin’S ‘Erving Goffman, Fateful Action, And The Las Vegas Gambling Scene’, James Cosgrave
Doubling Down On Goffman: A Commentary On Dmitri Shalin’S ‘Erving Goffman, Fateful Action, And The Las Vegas Gambling Scene’, James Cosgrave
UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal
Erving Goffman “was not a sociologist of any particular area” (Scheff 2006: 20). He was, in fact, a sociologist of many areas: the interaction order, stigma, “total institutions,” gender, “forms of talk,” public behaviour – and gambling certainly belongs to the list. He may be better known for these other topics, but his contributions to the sociological analysis of gambling are canonical. Thus, another sociological hat can be worn. A unique, inventive social scientist, Goffman could pull off the donning of many such hats. Bucking the standard presentation of social scientific research in journal articles, Goffman was the “master of …
The Evolution Of The Concept Of Social Action: Parsons And Goffman, Philip Manning
The Evolution Of The Concept Of Social Action: Parsons And Goffman, Philip Manning
UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal
Goffman’s analysis of gambling is very important for our overall understanding of his work. This is because Goffman’s sociology is driven by both theoretical and ethnographic impulses, and his gambling project is the third of his three major ethnographic investigations. Goffman’s study of gambling is a key component in his sociology because it (a) develops a conceptual approach to the study of the interaction order, (b) extends Parsons’ and Merton’s analysis of social action and social control, and (c) links the microeconomic analysis of the social world that he associated with Thomas Schelling that has become the mainstay of the …
Can We Scale Up Goffman? From Vegas To The World Stage, Jeffrey J. Sallaz
Can We Scale Up Goffman? From Vegas To The World Stage, Jeffrey J. Sallaz
UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal
It is an all-too-common lament among sociologists that Erving Goffman, though his writings remain widely read and respected today, failed to spawn an ongoing and cohesive research tradition. His idiosyncratic methods of data collection, the uniqueness of his biographical trajectory, and even his prickly personality have all been invoked to explain the lack of a distinctly Goffmanian school of research (Gamson 1985; Scheff, Phillips, and Kincaid 2006; Smith 2006; Shalin 2014). It is also the case that micro-oriented sociologies, such as symbolic interactionism and especially ethnomethodology, have been pushed to the margins of sociology as a consequence of the ascendency …
Goffman, Action, And Risk Society: Aesthetic Reflexivity In Late Modernity, Stephen Lyng
Goffman, Action, And Risk Society: Aesthetic Reflexivity In Late Modernity, Stephen Lyng
UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal
When I decided to write about edgework over twenty-five years ago, I had no idea that I had put myself on a pathway of sustained engagement with one of the most important sociologists of the twentieth century. As an academic sociologist in the early stages of my career, I felt that I had a good general understanding of Erving Goffman’s most important ideas and a proper appreciation of his unique contributions to my discipline. Although I had a certain affinity for Goffman’s brand of sociology, I deliberately avoided pressure from close friends and colleagues to become a “Goffmaniac,” the kind …
Las Vegas As A Symbol: Goffman And Competing Narratives Of Sin City, Michael Green
Las Vegas As A Symbol: Goffman And Competing Narratives Of Sin City, Michael Green
UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal
Dmitri Shalin has demonstrated the importance of Erving Goffman to the field of sociology, and in this case to the sociology of Las Vegas as a gambling, resort, and urban center. But Goffman also was part of a trend, or more accurately what became a trend, and he played an important role in it. When Goffman came to Las Vegas in the late 1950s and early 1960s in connection with his field work as a downtown casino dealer, “the city of non-homes,” as he called it, was at a turning point in a variety of ways. When he published his …
Erving Goffman’S Las Vegas: From Jungle To Boardroom, David G. Schwartz
Erving Goffman’S Las Vegas: From Jungle To Boardroom, David G. Schwartz
UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal
Sociologist Erving Goffman’s presence in Las Vegas never yielded a definitive publication. Though it informed his work about action and interaction, his time in Las Vegas—both as a blackjack dealer and a player—remains one of the great what-ifs of gambling academia. This is regrettable, not only because the field would have benefited immeasurably from the analysis of a figure of Goffman’s talent and repute, but because Goffman was in Las Vegas exactly as the city’s casino business was undergoing its most significant shift, from small-scale, syndicate-owned ventures with links to former and current illegal enterprises elsewhere to massive, publicly-traded, mainstream-financed …
Erving Goffman, Fateful Action, And The Las Vegas Gambling Scene, Dmitri N. Shalin
Erving Goffman, Fateful Action, And The Las Vegas Gambling Scene, Dmitri N. Shalin
UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal
This paper explores Erving Goffman’s research on gambling, the historical context within which he articulated his views on risk taking, and the contribution he made to our understanding of gambling as a stigmatized social activity. Drawing on the large database assembled in the Erving Goffman Archives, the article traces Goffman’s footprint in Las Vegas and shows the personal as well as scholarly dimensions of his interest in betting practices in entertainment venues and risk taking in society at large. The argument is made that the theory of fateful action presented in the seminal study “Where the Action Is” remains a …