search close
picture

Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity

22 December 2024
From the author of The Presentation of Self in Everyday LifeStigma is analyzes a person’s feelings about himself and his relationship to people whom society calls “normal.”

Stigma is an illuminating excursion into the situation of persons who are unable to conform to standards that society calls normal. Disqualified from full social acceptance, they are stigmatized individuals. Physically deformed people, ex-mental patients, drug addicts, prostitutes, or those ostracized for other reasons must constantly strive to adjust to their precarious social identities. Their image of themselves must daily confront and be affronted by the image which others reflect back to them.

Drawing extensively on autobiographies and case studies, sociologist Erving Goffman analyzes the stigmatized person’s feelings about himself and his relationship to “normals” He explores the variety of strategies stigmatized individuals employ to deal with the rejection of others, and the complex sorts of information about themselves they project. In Stigma the interplay of alternatives the stigmatized individual must face every day is brilliantly examined by one of America’s leading social analysts.
Other Books

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou

"Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" is a 1969 autobiography describing the early years of American...

Gatvla

Tamta Melashvili

Unfortunately this article is not available in English, please refer to Georgian version of th...

Go Set a Watchman

Harper Lee

Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch—“Scout”—returns home to Maycomb, Alabama from New York Ci...

Terminology