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I want to talk about one of the fundamental concepts from Erving Goffman's Sociology of Everyday Interaction, and that is the idea of stigma.
Most of us have heard the word stigma used before or stigmatized, but we're not exactly sure what it means.
If I had to pin you down, you might not be able to give an exact definition.
Stigma means that there's something wrong, right?
It has something to do with discrimination, or feeling like an outsider.
Goffman gives a more technical definition of it. I think it is useful for understanding not just the idea of stigma, but also for understanding our normal identities.
If you've been watching this channel or following the blog for a while, you'll know that one of the most important ideas in my framework for understanding how communication works is the idea of identity. I've made several videos in the past about the construction of identities in ordinary interaction. These are linked in the above video.
Erving Goffman wrote a very famous book about stigma titled Stigma, and the subtitle of the book is interesting. The subtitle is, Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity.
This book by Goffman is a book about spoiled identity. Well, what does that mean exactly? Stigma, already from Goffman's point of view, is about identity gone wrong – when something has happened, or we have a characteristic that in some sense spoils our identity. That’s foreshadowing, but let's explore the concept in a bit more depth.
Stigma as Bodily Signs
Goffman begins by observing that the word stigma has an ancient root in Greek, where it meant something like a bodily sign. When we think about stigma now, it's more metaphorical – there's a metaphorical stain or mark on someone's identity. But in the past, when this word originated, it meant literally a mark on your body, like a tattoo or a scar. I think that in ancient Greece, people who were cast out in some way or a member of a stigmatized group had an actual mark placed on their body.
In Goffman's worldview, you can't understand what it means to be stigmatized or to carry a stigma unless you also understand the idea of normal. So, stigma and normal are sort of opposite ends of a continuum about the nature of your identity and how well formed it is.
Stigmatized people are always stigmatized in relation to some group of people who are normal, and normal people are always normal in relation to some people who are less than normal or stigmatized. So Goffman talks about how early on, stigma was defined as bodily signs designed to expose something unusual and bad about the moral status of the signifier.
Already we know that stigma can have something to do with the kind of moral character of the person who bears the stigma. At least that's the idea. So one of the first questions we have to ask ourselves about stigma is where does the stigma reside?
Where is Stigma?
We can think about a stigmatized person, a person with a disease or a person of a particular ethnic group or religious background who might be stigmatized in some context, or a person who has committed a crime in the past. All these can make a person be stigmatized. But where is the stigma? Where is it located? I think there are a couple of options.
On the one hand, we can think about the stigma as being located in the person. So if a person has committed a crime in the past and gone to jail, they are an ex-convict and wear this stigma. They're stigmatized because they've done something wrong. The stigma is located in them, in a way. The idea is maybe that everyone who knows this about them will view them as stigmatized and less than normal.
There's a second idea about the location of stigma which is that maybe the stigma is in the audience. In this theory, stigma is in the observer – not in the person who's stigmatized, but in the group of people that views certain individuals as stigmatized. In this sense, the idea would be the stigma of being an ex-convict isn't located in the person, it's located in all the people who have never been to prison who view convicts or ex-convicts as less than normal. We might say that the stigma resides in the eyes of the beholder, that it's a group of people who define themselves as normal in relation to someone who is stigmatized. The definition of the stigma is really in the observer or the audience, not in the person or group that's being stigmatized.
Goffman actually says it's neither one of these things.
Stigma as a Relationship of Attribute and Audience
Goffman argues stigma is neither in the entity being stigmatized or the observer of stigma. He says that stigma exists in the relationship between an attribute and an audience.
For example, Goffman says there's nothing stigmatized about skin color. A person whose skin color is dark, like an African, is not going to be stigmatized walking around in Nigeria where everyone else's skin color is dark. However, a person whose skin color is dark might be stigmatized walking around in Minnesota where most people's skin color is light.
You can also think about religion. A person who is a Christian may not be stigmatized in the United States, which is a majority Christian country, but if they go to Saudi Arabia, they might be stigmatized because it's a majority Muslim country.
So, you begin to see that the stigma is not in the person. There's nothing inherently stigmatizing about being light-skinned or dark-skinned, or being a Christian or being a Muslim. The stigma exists in a relationship between that attribute – skin color or religion – and some audience who views that attribute as representative of abnormality or membership in some stigmatized category that's less than normal.
I think this is one of Goffman's first and important contributions in defining the idea of stigma, that stigma exists as a relationship between the attribute and an audience. It isn't in the person, him or herself. It isn't in the attribute itself because the very same attribute can be stigmatizing in one context.
Someone who's an ex-convict when they're around all their other ex-convict friends is not stigmatized. Their identity as an ex-convict is not stigmatizing. Someone who is an amputee when they're with a bunch of other amputees is not stigmatized, either. But your status as a ex-convict around a bunch of people who aren't ex-convicts can stigmatize you, and your status as an amputee around a bunch of people who are not amputees can stigmatize you.
It’s in the relationship between the attribute and the audience that stigma exists, not in the audience, not in the person being stigmatized and not in the attribute itself.
Goffman identifies three broad categories of stigma. There are probably more than three categories, but these are the three main ones that Goffman describes.
1. Abominations of the Body: These are scars, deformities, loss of hair, amputation, like I mentioned before. Any aspect of our body that marks us out as different from the vast majority of people in a particular location can be an abomination of the body that marks us out as stigmatized.
2. Character Defects: In this category, Goffman says being dishonest, treacherous, disloyal, an addict, an ex-convict, and unfaithful are all character defects, which can mark you out as stigmatized in relation to some particular audience of normals. Goffman also includes homosexuality and unemployment as other examples of character defects. Now, I don't think he was trying to imply that people with these characteristics are in fact defective. This is sort of just a manner of speaking these character defects.
These are character differences that, in relation to some group that doesn't have these differences, will mark you out as less than normal and can be an attribute in relation to some audience that can make you stigmatized. Clearly, all these groups that I've identified have actually been discriminated against and have suffered from some stigma. However, stigma differs from location to location, and historically there are large shifts in the extent to which people in some of these groups suffer actual discrimination and feel stigmatized.
3. Tribal Stigma: Goffman uses the word tribal in a very broad sense. Here, he's referring to race, religion, and national origin. We can see even in modern politics where immigration is such a controversial issue all around the world, where issues like race, religion, and national origin can obviously mark people out as different. This happens especially in relation to a dominant group with most of the power who may represent the majority signs of belonging to a different race, religion, or national origin group than the majority can mark you out as stigmatized.
You can feel the discrimination that comes along with the stigma. Why is stigma important? Well, I think the obvious reason is that people who are stigmatized are often actually discriminated against. But that's not always the case. Sometimes you can simply just feel stigma. You can feel that you are less than normal because you possess some attribute in relation to some audience that doesn't possess this attribute and that you can have this felt stigma.
Enacted Stigma
Goffman defines enacted stigma as what we would now call discrimination, where people of a given religion or race or sexual preference or national origin are overtly discriminated against, where opportunities are withheld from them or they're penalized or discriminated against in some particular way.
This is one of the reasons why stigma is important is because these attributes mark people out for discrimination, or on the other hand, make them feel less than normal. Both of these are dynamics we'd probably like to minimize in a culture.
Discredited vs. Discreditable
There's another important idea that Goffman raises in his book about stigma. This is the idea of people who are discredited and people who are discreditable. As usual, Goffman uses kind of obscure language. Let me try to explain.
So, Goffman says that all of us are potentially discreditable. That is there's something about each of us that if it were known would spoil our identity, at least in relation to some of the audiences in our lives. He says that all of us have something to hide, an attribute which if it were broadly known would contradict some other aspect of the identity we normally present.
For example, say you normally present the attitude of a very staid and sober person, but it turns out that you drank to excess at home alone. If your drinking behavior were to come to light, this would stigmatize you. This makes you discreditable, that is you are vulnerable to being discredited. It's possible to discredit you. Although you are not yet discredited, you are discreditable.
Then Goffman says there are people who are actually discredited, and these are people whose moral failings or defects or shameful pasts have actually been revealed. Their identity has already been spoiled because there is a fact about them that is no longer hidden. It has been revealed, so they are discredited.
Often the tabloid media takes great joy in uncovering these discreditable facts about us and actually discrediting us. They especially tend to knock people off of pedestals who may claim some moral superiority, and we find out about their personal moral failing. These people have moved from being discreditable to being discredited, actually having their identities spoiled.
Given the costs of being discredited, it's perhaps not surprising how much time each of us spends managing our identities and information about ourselves, such that the discreditable information about us does not come to light. Even for those of us who on the surface are normal and don't carry any obvious stigma, a lot of energy in ordinary interaction is devoted towards hiding and keeping hidden any fact about us that might discredit us by contradicting the identity we're currently presenting.
Undesired Differentness
Goffman gives another definition of stigma. He says it's an undesired differentness from what had been anticipated. What he means here is that there is the identity that we present to the world, which is discreditable, and then there are the actual facts about us that could be revealed. So when something about that is revealed, this is an undesired differentness from what had been anticipated.
We present a certain face to the world, and then maybe something about us is revealed and we can be discredited and then become stigmatized temporarily or over the long-term, depending on the nature of the thing that's been revealed about us.
Stigma and Chronic Illness
One more fact about stigma that relates to one of my fundamental interests is the relationship between stigma and chronic illness. Every illness stigmatizes us to a greater or lesser extent.
Now, there's a continuum of illnesses that stigmatize us. Something like the common cold barely stigmatizes us at all. Everyone gets it. There's not really much blame associated with getting it. It goes away quickly. It's temporary, so there's not much stigma associated with it.
Then you take a disease like leprosy or HIV or any other sexually transmitted disease or mental illnesses, and these carry much heavier burden of stigma. If we have one of those diseases, we'll go to great lengths to hide it. People won't really do too much to try to hide the fact that they have the common cold. On the other end of the continuum, people will do a lot to hide the fact that they have a serious mental illness or that they have HIV or some other sexually transmitted disease or other stigmatized condition.
I actually got interested in chronic illness and identity because of the book stigma and Goffman wrote another book called Asylums, which is specifically about mentally ill people. But it occurred to me that all chronically ill people bear the burden of some stigma, even if you just have hypertension or diabetes or arthritis. All of these illnesses make us somewhat less than normal. That's why people hide the fact that they have these illnesses. They may also hide the fact that they have to take medication or go to the doctor or do other kinds of treatment because they're managing their identity. In particular, they're managing the discreditable facts about their identity to maintain an identity of a normal person who is not in fact discredited, who doesn't carry any stigma of illness and so on.
Summary
There's a lot more to say about Stigma. It's just a thin book. I highly recommend that you read it. As usual, the language is a little bit obscure. Some of the examples are dated because the book was written 50 years ago, but it's well worth your time. The book is only about 150 pages long, you'd probably get it on Amazon for less than five bucks used.
There's more than I could have said, but I think I captured the main ideas about stigma, especially in relation to the notion of normal identity and to chronic illness. Thanks again for watching the video and reading this post. If you want to see more, head over to How Communication Works on YouTube.