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.
CONTENTS
1. Stigma and Social Identity
Preliminary Conceptions
The Own and the Wise
Moral Career
2. Information Control and Personal Identity
The Discredited and the Discreditable
Social Information
Visibility
Personal Identity
Biography
Biographical Others
Passing
Techniques of Information Control
Covering
3. Group Alignment and Ego Identity
Ambivalence
Professional Presentations
In-Group Alignments
Out-Group Alignments
The Politics of Identity
4. The Self and Its Other
Deviations and Norms
The Normal Deviant
Stigma and Reality
5. Deviations and Deviance
Erring Goffman was born in Manville, Alberta (Canada) in 1922. He came to the United States in 1945, and in 1953 received his PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago. He was professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley until 1968, and thereafter was Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Dr. Goffman received the MacIver Award in 1961 and the In Medias Res Award in 1978. He was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He died in 1983. Dr. Goffman's books include The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Encounters, Asylums, Behavior in Public Places, Stigma, Interaction Ritual, Strategic Interaction, Relations in Public, Frame Analysis, and Gender Advertisements.