ABSTRACT
The sociological conceptualization of stigma was developed by Erving Goffman in his seminal book on the subject in 1963. He defines stigma in the following way:
While the stranger is present before us, evidence can arise of his possessing an attribute that makes him different from others in the category of persons available for him to be, and of a less desirable kind - in the extreme, a person who is quite thoroughly bad, or dangerous, or weak. He is thus reduced in our minds from a whole and usual person to a tainted, discounted one. Such an attribute is a stigma, especially when it its discrediting effect is very extensive; sometimes it is also called a failing, a shortcoming, a handicap. It constitutes a special discrepancy between virtual and actual identity (Goffman, 1963, pp. 12–13).
