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This article is an attempt to evaluate the contribution of the late Erving Goffman to the field of Sociology. In doing so I have attempted to document some of the main commentaries upon Coffman's work — especially those of A. Dawe and A.W. Gouldner — and to evaluate their validity. This paper is presented within the framework of a general overview of Goffman's work and an elaboration of some of the salient themes within it. The intention of the author is to free Goffman from some of the crude overgeneralizations that his colleagues have used in evaluating his writings. In particular, I have attempted to show, in general terms, how Goffman's work is sensitive to ‘structural’ as well as ‘situational’ concerns and also to class, hierarchy and power. It is argued that Goffman's importance has been underestimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the gradual emergence of the theory of the New Class out of sociologist Alvin Gouldner's prior work. The most striking feature of Gouldner's work, taken as a whole is its iconoclasm. Thus, he rejected professionalism in sociology, as well as the party line in Marxism and objectivism in them both. His dichotomous definition of intellectuals in The Future of Intellectuals, as both a speech community and as a cultural bourgeoise is an attempt to express this double identity at a general theoretical level. Gouldner's assessment of the repression of Marxism is implied in his early work on bureaucracy. On the whole, even given his iconoclasm, Gouldner remains loyal to the ideal of a scientific and effective sociology. By the late sixties, however, Gouldner had begun to distinguish two theoretical traditions in Marxism. One source of the reflexive impulse is doubtless the perception of a scientifically inexplicable gap between available data and accepted theory. He first begins to examine the connection between social theory and the profession of sociology in a critical way in his well-known Anti-Minotaur essay. His specific contribution to the New Class theory is his attempt to fuse this rich tradition with the sociology of professions, the sociology of science, the thesis of the managerial revolution, human capital theory and a theory of linguistic segregation.