Universitatea București, Facultatea de

Sociologie și Asistență socială

Erving Goffman
Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled
Identity

Frîncu Carmen-Veronica, Seria 1, Grupa 3,

Specializare Sociologie, anul I
 1. Erving Goffman`s analysis on stigma

Erving Goffman was a very important sociologist, well-known for his analysis
of human interaction in a society where every individual is crawling his way out. He
is still considered the father of dramaturgical sociology, due to his laborious
publications on human behaviour.
One of his well-known books is “Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled
identity”, an illustrative publication in which “the author shows stigma through the
normal lens of everyday living and extends to the extreme”. Goffman defines stigma
as “the situation of the individual who is disqualified from full social acceptance.”
(Goffman, 1963, p.4)
The book opens with a letter which illustrates a story life confession from a
sixteen years old girl "born without a nose" which struggles everyday with her stigma.
She concludes with a dramatical question: "Ought I commit suicide?" which shows
that a stigmatized person must cope with shame and social vulnerability.
“Stigma” is divided into five chapters from which we learn, step by step, the
implications of possessing a stigma, the relation between stigma and “social identity”,
the differences between “the discredited” and “the discreditable”, the issue of “the
visibility” of a particular stigma, the way an individual manage to cover his stigma.
The first chapter is called “Stigma and Social Identity”. The author uses the
term social identity to refer to an individual`s category and attributes. According to
his analysis, each person possesses two different social identities: a virtual social
identity, “the assumed demands and the character we impute to the individual”, and
his actual social identity, “the category and attributes the individual in fact be
proved to possess”. (Goffman, 1963, pp.4-5) When we first interact with a person,
we anticipate his/her attributes, “transforming them into normative expectations, into
righteously presented demands.”(Goffman, 1963, p.5) If the individual is possessing
an attribute that makes him look different from others, we tent to reduce him from a
normal person to a discounted one. This is how stigma arises, a characteristic that
“constitutes a discrepancy between virtual and actual social identity”(…)” The term
stigma, then, will be used to refer to an attribute that is deeply discrediting, but it
should be seen that a language of relationships, not attributes, is really needed. An

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attribute that stigmatizes one type of possessor can confirm the usualness of another,
and therefore is neither creditable nor discreditable as a thing in itself.” (Goffman,
1963, p.6)
In this chapter, Goffman makes the difference between the discredited and the
discreditable, two situations the stigmatized person is likely to experience. In the
former case, his stigma has been revealed and it affects not only his behaviour but
the behaviour of others. The latter one signifies that his stigma has yet to be
revealed, either intentionally by him or by other factors he cannot control. The
author also reveals three different types of stigma: abominations of the body (pysical
deformities), blemishes of individual character perceived as weak will, rigid beliefs,
unnatural passions (inferred from mental disorder, imprisonment, addiction,
alcoholism, homosexuality, unemployment, suicidal attempts, radical political
behaviour) and the tribal stigma of religion, race and nation (transmited through
lineages).
According to Goffman, the normals are “those who do not depart negatively
from the particular expectations at issue” (Goffman, 1963, p 12). This definition
illustrates that stigma might be in the eye of the beholder and that those who
consider themselves being normals are likely to avoid any contact with a
stigmatized. A phrase may be cited: “This book however, is specifically concerned
with the issue of `mixed contacts' — the moments when stigmatized and normal are
in the same `social situation', that is, in one another's immediate physical presence,
whether in a conversation-like encounter or in the mere copresence of an unfocused
gathering.” (Goffman, 1963, p.12)
In the second chapter, “Information Control and Personal Identity”, the
author reveals the importance of social information on the individual`s personal
identity, the way a stigmatized person can conceal his stigma, in order to protect
himself. We find that the social information is conveyed by a symbol, called by the
Goffman a prestige symbol, which can be contrasted to stigma symbols. The concept
of visibility is introduced to reffer to “how well or how badly the stigma is adapted

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to provide means of communicating that the individual possesses it.” (Goffman,

1963, p.65)
The biography plays an important role in the individual`s personal and social
identity because it reveals every aspect of his life. Especially if he has a shady past,
he will try to handle information, to conceal his stigma symbols, so he will avoid
intimacy with others: “By declining or avoiding overtures of intimacy the individual
can avoid the consequent obligation to divulge information.” (Goffman, 1963, p.79)
The third chapter is about “Group alingment and Ego identity”. After
distinguishing between social and personal identity, the author establishes what the
individual may feel about stigma and its management and the way he acts when he
belongs to a group. When the individual is allied with normals, he tends to see
himself in a non-stigmatic terms, but he is not capable to aling to his group nor let it
go, due to his stigma awareness. An interesting attitude of the stigmatized
individual is the following, according to Goffman: he is likely to treat those with a
more visible stigma in the same way the normals treat him, so “he will feel some
ambivalence about his own self”(1963, p.87)
In the last two chapters, “The Self and Its Other” and “Deviations and
Deviance”, Goffman argues that “ a stigmatized person is first of all like anyone else,
trained first of all in other's views of persons like himself, and differing from them
first of all in having a special reason to resist stigma derogation when in their
presence and the special license to give voice to it when in their absence.”(Goffman,
1963, p.152) The important conclusion of the stigma analysis is that every human
being have to deal with some sort of stigma at some time in life, taking into account

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that all of us have our norms, expectations, stereotypes through which we construct a
stigma theory.

2. The other`s analysis on stigma

Robert Page is another sociologist who has written a book, “Stigma”, in which
he analyses the concept of stigma too. First of all, he gives a number of definitions in
order to acquaint the readers with this concept. Therefore, “stigma can be used to refer
to any attribute that is deeply discrediting and incongruous with our stereotype of
what a given type of individual should be.”, “stigma might best be considered to be
the negative perceptions and behaviours of so-called normal people to all individuals
who are different from themselves.” (Page, 1984, p.1) In his attempt to illustrate “the
anatomy of stigma”, Page reveals some information from Goffman`s publication: the
three types of stigma, what discreditable and discredited means, how the stigmatized
individual cope with his “handicap”.
We find about the Pardo research on how a group of undergraduates would
respond to various stigmatized individuals. According to Page, “Pardo has provided
valuable evidence to support the contention that the blameless-blameworthy
dimension is of importance for the study of the concept of stigma.” (Page, 1984, p.7)
Furthermore, Page gives us an account of Kleck`s study, who found that “his
subjects were more inhibated when they were in the presence of an assistant who had
assumed the role of an left leg amputee than they were during interaction with
physically normal assistant.” (Page, 1984, p.11) This conclusion support the idea that
‘normals tend to be over-sympathetic or inhibited during contact with physically
stigmatized” (Page, 1984, p.11)
Another interesting analysis is made by the sociologist Gerhard Falk. In his
book, called “Stigma. How we treat outsiders” he is trying to understand the process
of exclusion in a social psychological way. He reviews a wide range of stigmatized
persons and he finds two types of outsiders: 1- “the existential”, 2-“the achieved”.
The former group comprises the persons who are stigmatized because of their
existence, not being taken into account their personal actions (e.g.mentally ill). The

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latter group comprises those individuals whose life circumstances or actions have
resulted in stigma (e.g.the criminals).
An interesting sociological research has been made, concerning tourism crisis
management, which includes the concept of stigma. According to some specialists,
stigma management can be a very useful remedial strategy “to heal” the tourism
crisis. An illustrative phrase from an article may be cited: “The sociological literature
on stigma…in identity-threatening predicaments provides a useful framework for
examining the remedial tactics used by presenters following a tourism crisis. These
writings examine how identity-threatening events damage the socially desirable
images actors claim or wish to claim, with an eye towards understanding how these
events are managed.(see Goffman 1963)” (http://www.besteducationnetwork.org) The
premise of the research is the following: the damages generated by tourism crisis on
destination image is equivalent to a stigma, so the presenters (“the actors charged with
protecting the image of a destination”) have to find different strategies in order to
conceal it and, finally, to eradicate it, just like a stigmatized individual.

3. My own opinion about “Stigma”

Before actually reading the book I found the title very interesting, taking into
account that the issue of stigma is a widespread and controversial subject. I strongly
believe that every book you read takes you into a fascinating journey which has no
boundaries, but “Stigma” was beyond all my expectations.
The book written by Erving Goffman is, irrefutable, a priceless study which
invites you to visualize a fascinating field, from the beginning to the end. This field is
populated by individuals who are suspended between two words: “the normal`s” one
and the social misfit`s one. The relationship between “the normals” and the
stigmatized ones is not based on mutual kindness, because the stereotypes hinders the
potential willingly proximity.Therefore, the person who possess such an attribute is
likely to suffer from depresion, anxiety and to misjudge himself according to other`s

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opinion about him. On the other hand, according to the author`s research, some
stigmatized persons “may actually use his stigma for secondary gains, as an excuse
for ill success that has come his way for other reasons.”(1963, p 10)
The author has the ability to acquaint the reader, step by step, with this
interesting subject and to bring to fruition a deep analysis on a multidimensional
concept, which is not an easy job. I have never been aware about the neverending
struggle of a stigmatized person against “the normals” world, not to mention that I
have never realize truly that an individual can be stigmatized not only when he has a
mental or physical illness, but even when he belongs to a “deviant” group or when he
has a shady past. Those aspects are very important because it helped me to achieve a
better understanding of people around me, to be more softhearted with those who
possess a stigma and, last but not least, to realize that all human beings are equal.

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 Bibliography

Falk, Gerhard (2001) Stigma. How we treat outsiders.New

York:Prometheus Books

Goffman, Erving (1963) Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled
Identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:Pretince Hall

Page, Robert M. (1984) Stigma. London:Routledge and Kegan Paul

http://www.besteducationnetwork.org/documents/Bonalyn%20J.%20N
elsen.pdf (the last view: 11th January, 2011)

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