Erving Goffman: Relations in Public. Microstudies of the Public Order

Erving Goffman's books, and the extended study that has grown up around them, have already shown how the minute reflex actions of people in public places can be used to throw new light on such conceptions as public order, social relations, and sanity and madness. Relations in Public is his most far-reaching analysis yet of face-to-face behaviour. Here Professor Goffman attempts to apply the methods of linguistics and ethology to the study of routine public order. The scope of these essays gradually widens as basic units of public life are defined, personal forms of territoriality discriminated, supportive and remedial technigues of contact behaviour examined, and the structure of 'normal appearances' scrutinized. With a novelist's eye for detail Erving Goffman interprets the significance of our least conscious actions.