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36 - Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Library and Information Management
University of Salford
Lloyd Warner, premier mentor d'Erving Goffman
Drawing on hitherto unpublished interviews, personal documents and archival sources, this chapter tracks Goffman’s relationship with his first influential teacher at the University of Chicago, William Lloyd Warner (1898-1970). It shows how graduate student Goffman quickly absorbed Warner’s ideas while seeking to forge his own distinctive sociological perspective. Goffman continued to enjoy Warner’s support through to the completion of his 1953 PhD, in which his concept of the ‘interaction order’ was introduced. From 1949 onwards, however, Goffman’s engagement with Warner waned as his own sociological vision crystallized. Nevertheless, traces of that important intellectual apprenticeship are detectable in Goffman’s mature work.