Bilipedia Review on on Ervin Goffmans The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
Posted by Timothy | Filed under Uncategorized
This is the link to my biblipedia review that i did on Ervin Goffmans The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
www.biblipedia.net/notes/id/242
It may actually be more of a synopsis of the book.
Short review on
This book struck me as being indirectly relevant to me on the IMP course. Although Goffman was dealing with a broader take on Identity in society it was strikingly applicable to the use of social networking and the “Cyberspace” that is developing on-line.
Goffman identifies trends in society that bring to light the way we interact with people socially and physically,formally described as a “Front persona”. These can be sometimes shaped by the “censorship” in our cultural society.
He contrasts this with the idea of “Back persona” that demonstrates more of what we are actually like behind closed doors. This is found in games such as Second Life.
Another aspect that is looked at is the Idea of the “stage”. The “stage” being how we are almost in a constant performance all of the time. It looks at how we “act” as such in everyday life.
“Trust, I argue, is a crucial generic phenomenon of personality development as well as having distinctive and specific relevance to a world of disembedding mechanisms and abstract systems.” Quote from “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life”
What Giddens is saying here is how creating trust with the user is crucial as it will develop a sense of trust with say a social network. This will in turn add to them being able to develop as sense of personality or Identity on the social network.
This book has sparked off some interesting thoughts in me and has brought to light some interesting theory’s that explain the way, as the title describes, we present ourselves in everyday life.
Tags: identity media-participation performance society stage
I am a chap that really enjoys photography and things that look nice. I am currently on my PGCE year at Bath University which is training me to be a ICT teacher. I love playing rugby and going Kitesurfing in Kenya which is my home away from home.