The Cradle

Erving Goffman spent a total of 12 months between December 1949 and May 1951 in Unst (Shetland Islands), which he considered as natural laboratory for the study social interactions. His 1953 dissertation, Communication conduct on an island community, is not Chicago-inspired piece ethnography but blueprint his entire work, all way to linguistic elaborations later years. This argument based close reading documentary research interviews conducted 1988 with last few islanders who still remembered Goffman. As opposed often-repeated comment about Goffman’s piecemeal view offered here global coherence oeuvre. One only needs read dissertation realize that it contains nutshell program intellectual trajectory