Stigma: How We Treat Outsiders [Kindle Edition]

Gerhard Falk (Author)

 

Product Description

Sociologist Gerhard Falk examines the social psychology that motivates this process of exclusion, focusing on the outcasts in contemporary American society and comparing current experience with examples from the past. Referring to the work of Emile Durkheim and Erving Goffman, Falk reviews the whole range of stigmatised people from the mentally ill to ordinary people with unpopular occupations, like undertakers and trash collectors.

Amid the wide diversity of stigmatised persons, he finds two basic types of outsiders: the 'existential' and the 'achieved'. The first group comprises those who are stigmatised because of their very existence, regardless of their specific actions: the mentally handicapped, for example. The second group describes those whose actions or life conditions have resulted in stigma: from high achievers (often subject to resentment) to criminals. Falk also looks at the ways in which writers past and present have dramatised stigmatised characters in literature. This fascinating overview of a long-standing and widespread social problem will be of interest to all those concerned about creating a more fair-minded society.

 

Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity [Paperback]

Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman (Author)

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About the Author

Erving Goffman (1922-1982) was one of the most influential sociologists of the twentieth century. He was Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.
 

By an Amazon Customer

For those not familiar with Goffman's work he is the acceptable face of Sociology. He avoids the bogus science which has given the whole enterprise a bad name but captures the essence of what makes the study of social interraction so fascinating. The Stigmas covered include disabilities, social deviance or sexual orientation. Stigma proposes a basic principle: That the stigmatised individual has a simple choice regarding the attributes that he or she has that makes them different. They can either control the information by not letting so called 'normals' i.e. everyone else, know what their secret is if its not obviously visible; or they can let it be known and manage the resulting tension. They can 'pass' i.e. pretend to be normal while harbouring the knowledge that their stigma makes them distinct and different.

It is Goffman's extraordinary insight and accurate description that makes his brand of Sociology so engaging. You will read this and say 'Aha' when you recognise that things you thought only you had observed in the minutely detailed interplay of human relations have been bagged, tagged and described in the most accurate and well documented manner. Nobody should go through life without at least once dipping in to the sharply observed world of this great 20th century observer.

Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (Penguin Social Sciences) [Paperback]

Erving Goffman

Product Description

Asylums is an analysis of life in "total institutions"--closed worlds like prisons, army camps, boarding schools, nursing homes and mental hospitals. It focuses on the relationship between the inmate and the institution, how the setting affects the person and how the person can deal with life on the inside.


By an Amazon Customer
The fact that this collection of essays has been in print for almost four decades is consistent with its enduring signficance. Although Goffman draws on his research in mental institutions, his writings in this book have much broader relevance. In particular, they have to do with the nature of identity, the processes whereby organizations and groupings seek to change the identities and selves of their members, and the strategies used by group members to resist those changes. At a broader level, this book is about the relationship between person and the groups of which s/he is a part. Extremely well written, and very readable with excellent use of illustrative examples, this set of essays provides unparalleled insights into and understandings of the relation between person and society.