Between Michel Foucault and Erving Goffman: between discourse in the abstract and face-to-face interaction

2004/08/01 by Ian Hacking · 3 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Data Analysis and Archiving #Foucault, Power, and Ethics #Hermeneutics and Narrative Identity

paper · doi:10.1080/0308514042000225671

openalex publication_date 2004/08/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/02

Abstract

Michel Foucault's ‘archaeology’ and Erving Goffman's interpersonal sociology are complementary. Both are essential for understanding how classifications of people interact with the people classified, and hence for the author's studies of ‘making up people’. The paper begins by explaining how that project is rooted in an ‘existentialist’ conception of the person. It then uses Goffman's Asylums and Foucault's Folie et déraison - both published in 1961 - to illustrate how these methodologies reinforce each other.

Citations

• Being and nothingness an essay in phenomenological ontology
• The contingencies of social construction

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