The Goffman Reader aims to bring the most complete collection of Erving Goffman"s (1922-1982) writing and thinking as a sociologist. Among the most inventive, unique and individualistic of thinkers in American sociology, his works first appeared in the early 1950"s at a time when a more formal, traditional sociology dominated the scene. In this collection, Goffman"s work is arranged into four categories: the production of self, the confined self, the nature of social life, and the framing of experience. Through this arrangement, readers will not only be presented with Goffman"s thinking in chronological order, but also with a framework of analysis that clearly introduces the social theoretical ideas by which Goffman shaped the direction of sociological thought through the late twentieth century.