Erving Goffman, Thomas Sebeok, and “Interaction Ethology”

Abstract: Social scientists have only recently begun to explore how Erving Goffman’s intellectual trajectory was influenced by his engagement with animal ethology. Even less is known about Goffman’s relationship to the network of scholars working at the intersection of human and animal communication that coalesced in the 1960s and 70s. Relying on over two dozen pieces of correspondence recently made available from the University of Indiana archives, this article examines Goffman’s personal and working relationship with the founder of zoosemiotics, Thomas Sebeok, which lasted more than twenty years and included organizing a major international conference on Interaction Ethology. These materials bolster the case that Goffman was captivated by the postwar growth of animal ethology throughout his career. The documents also reveal Goffman’s broader ambitions to curate a school of human ethology grounded in the naturalistic study of everyday interaction and the inductive discovery of “the rules and practices which organize comingling.” Goffman was at pains to distinguish interaction ethology from sociobiological approaches to human ethology, which ultimately came to dominate the field.