Social stigma
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Social stigma is severe social disapproval of personal characteristics or beliefs that are against cultural norms. Social stigma often leads to marginalization.
Examples of existing or historic social stigmas can be physical or mental disabilities and disorders, as well as illegitimacy, homosexuality or affiliation with a specific nationality, religion or ethnicity, such as being a Pole, a Jew, or a Gypsy. Likewise, criminality carries a strong social stigma.
Stigma comes in three forms: Overt or external deformations. Examples of this are physical manifestations of anorexia nervosa, leprosy, disabilities. Second, the known deviations in personal traits. For example, drug addicts, alcoholics, and criminals are stigmatized in this way. Third, "tribal stigmas" are traits of a race, nation, or religion that constitute a deviation from the normative race, nationality or religion. For example Jewish people in Nazi Germany, being an Arab Muslim in the United States since 9/11, and African Americans in the United States before the Civil Rights Movement.
[edit] See also
[edit] Further reading
- Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, Prentice-Hall, 1963, ISBN 0-671-62244-7.
This article incorporates text translated from the corresponding German Wikipedia article.
