Stigma : Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity

by Goffman, Erving

• ISBN13: 9781439188330
• ISBN10: 1439188335
• Copyright: 2009-11-24
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Summary

Stigmais 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. InStigmathe interplay of alternatives the stigmatized individual must face every day is brilliantly examined by one of America's leading social analysts.

Table of Contents

Stigma and Social Identity

Preliminary Conceptions

The Own and the Wise

Moral Career

Information Control and Personal Identity

The Discredited and the Discreditable

Social Information

Visibility

Personal Identity

Biography

Biographical Others

Passing

Techniques of Information Control

Covering

Group Alignment and Ego Identity

Ambivalence

Professional Presentations

In-Group Alignments

Out-Group Alignments

The Politics of Identity

The Self and Its Other

Deviations and Norms

The Normal Deviant

Stigma and Reality

Deviations and Deviance

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