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.