Sociology & Criminology for a Changing World
Goffman’s Perspective: From Visible Deviance to Social Exclusion In Stigma, Erving Goffman explores the mechanisms by which societies mark individuals whose appearance, behavior, or background is considered deviant from social norms. A stigma is not an inherent attribute, but rather a social judgment that is ascribed to a person. Physical stigmas (e.g., visible disabilities) Character-related
Gender Trouble (1990) by Judith Butler is one of the most influential works in gender studies and queer theory. Butler breaks with traditional assumptions about sex and identity, deconstructs binary gender orders, and shows that gender is not “natural” but socially produced—performative and repeatable. The book has fundamentally shaped feminist theory and the social sciences.
With The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1956), the Canadian-American sociologist Erving Goffman published one of the most influential works of modern microsociology. The book established Goffman’s reputation as a pioneer of interaction analysis and remains a foundational text of Symbolic Interactionism. In his central thesis, Goffman describes social life as a kind of