The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

"The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life was the first book to treat face-to-face interaction as a subject of sociological study. Goffman treated it as a kind of report in which he frames out the theatrical performance that applies to face-to-face interactions. He believed that when an individual comes in contact with other people, that individual will attempt to control or guide the impression that others might make of him by changing or fixing his or her setting, appearance and manner. At the same time, the person the individual is interacting with is trying to form and obtain information about the individual.[5] Presented here is the results of a collaborative study of interaction between the Department of Social Anthropology and the Social Sciences Research Committee of the University of Edinburgh and a study of social stratification at the University of Chicago"--wikipedia.