II "f~" Erving Goffman: The Reluctant Apprentice

is explored in the context of an apprenticeship model derived from corre spondence between the two sociologists. Coffman is identified as a "reluc tant apprentice " because his work and his letters to Hughes display a tension between a striking originality and a fidelity to his "master. " Three phases of their ambivalent relationship are described and an explanation for Coff man's reluctant acknowledgment of Hughes's influence is briefly explored. Among the many differences that divide the sociological profession, one seems most fundamental: some sociologists investigate the social world and others investi gate the investigators. The first sort of sociologist often holds the second sort those who train their sociological eye on sociologists themselves and believe that the personal dimension of ideas demands similar attention as the investigation of the larger world-in a kind of disdain. The critics hold that such a "sociology of so ciology " distracts the discipline from its only proper role: understanding the social world. Nothing good can come from prying into people's private lives, reading their correspondence, and interviewing their friends. Indeed, sociology advances, man