“The Goffman-Garfinkel Correspondence: Planning «On Passing»”

Although Erving Goffman and Harold Garfinkel both became famous social interactionists, they are generally considered to have originated competing lines of research with little in common. This depiction never meshed well either with the similarities between their positions, or the many relationships between their students and followers (including Garfinkel's collaborations with Goffman's student Harvey Sacks). It comes as something of a welcome surprise, then, to find in reading through their correspondence in The Garfinkel Archive, that during the years 1961-1963 Goffman and Garfinkel collaborated to publish a book «On Passing» that would have combined Garfinkel's research on «Agnes» and sexual identity (which eventually appeared in Studies in Ethnomethodology, 1967) with Goffman's research on the management of spoiled identity (which appeared in Stigma, 1963). This important but previously unknown collaboration changes what is known about their relationship, making it clear that they were closer socially and intellectually than was previously known.