Stigma & Its Role in Community Action-Lessons from Goffman
Anth/Socy 2410
Spring 2017
After reading Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, by Irving Goffman, choose a “spoiled identity” and reflect on the FORCES & PROCESSES which Goffman claims are responsible for creating and managing stigma in the United States, through the lens of the discredited. How are “covering” and “passing” overlapping and distinct phenomena used to manage discrediting/ed information? How does our media and pop-culture contribute to the definition and changing attitudes toward the stigmatized (you)? What kinds of interventions may be effective from an institutional level in reducing stigmatization in your example?
- Your essay should include a detailed description of the identity you choose (use Goffman for ideas about what needs description) including signs, symbols, psychological and physical experience of stigmatization, moral career, and acts of management.
- Make sure you focus some attention in your analysis of the media/popular culture, since this is the focus of the course this term
- Your interventions can be both hypothetical and real, as long as they are presented according to Goffman’s analysis.
- Essays are graded for WRITING and your grasp of the material. Spelling, rhetorical style, and the quality of your analysis (including supportive examples) will all figure in your essay grade.
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