INTRODUCTION TO PART 2INTRODUCTION TO PART 2
INTRODUCTION TO PART 2
THE NATURE OF STIGMA
THE NATURE OF STIGMATHE NATURE OF STIGMA
THE NATURE OF STIGMA
Stigma has been identified with loss of dignity, ill-treatment, deterrence, degradation, the denial of citizenship, shame, embarrassment, disadvantage, an imputation of failure or inadequacy, the reluctance to claim benefits, labelling, and feelings of inferiority. I have, up to this point, avoided specific definitions of stigma. Although the concept was born out of the social services, it cannot be understood in terms of the services alone. It is only when it is related to people - groups and individuals - that it begins to make sense.
It can be argued that a stigma is essentially an attribute of the stigmatised person. A stigma is a mark of disgrace. The mark may be a physical one, or it may be something which attaches to the person, like a stain or taint. Goffman (1963) at first refers to stigma as
a failing, a shortcoming, a handicap (p.12); an attribute that is deeply discrediting (p.13);
an attribute that makes him different from others ... and of a less desirable kind (p.12); and
a shameful differentness. (p.21)
These definitions present stigma as a personal flaw. There is an implication, when we talk about someone who is stigmatised through homelessness and unemployment, that his condition somehow defines his character. George Orwell wrote about unemployed men in the following terms:
In their circumstances, it was inevitable, at first, that they should be haunted by a sense of personal degradation. That was the attitude to unemployment in those days: it was a disaster which happened to you as an individual and for which you were to blame. (Orwell, 1937, 86-7)
An unemployed teacher writes to the Guardian:
One visit to get benefit is usually sufficient to make you feel stigmatised, a burden, a failure. (Vellender, 1980)
A failure, a shortcoming or a handicap are features which reflect on the person who has them. The idea that stigma is a personal characteristic implies a pathological view of social problems. This use is unsatisfactory. A mark cannot be inherently discrediting; the marked individual is discredited by the interpretation that is put on it. A stigma is socially defined. Reddin (1977) quotes the definition of 'stigma' in the OED: it is an "imputation attaching to a person's reputation; stain on one's good name." (p.64) A reputation exists in the minds of others, not in the character of the person; and the attitudes of other people are clearly
important to the stigmatised person. A stigmatised person loses respectability, and the shame he feels is a natural consequence of that.
People suffer a loss of esteem through the receipt of social services. Clifford found that two-thirds of his sample thought they would lose self-respect if they claimed benefit (1975, 45) - which is equivalent to saying they do not respect the people who do claim, People may become aware of this loss of reputation in various ways. The taunts of children can be extremely wounding: Moss (1970), researching in Liverpool, found it was a major reason for not claiming education benefits (p.9). And Land (1966) records a pathetic request from an eleven year old child to his mother : "Please pay ... 'cos if you're a free school meal child you're marked for life." (p.795)
The stigmatised person may experience discrimination. Mentally ill people, epileptics and coloured people may experience discrimination in the job market; in a survey of ex-mental patients, Miller and Dawson (1965) found that a third of those who felt stigma felt it only because of the discrimination they had experienced in this field (p.285). The link between
stigma and discrimination is a close one; Cumming and Cumming (1965) actually call discrimination, or the expectation of it, "situation stigma" (p.140). Thirdly, there is the debilitating experience of being an object of pity. Scott argues that it is demoralising and humiliating to be pitied, because this implies that the object of pity is inferior to the other person.
The blind person comes to feel that he is not completely accepted as a mature, responsible person. As a second-class citizen, he must deal with the sense of inadequacy that inevitably accompanies that status. (Scott, 1969, 37)
It is clear that these attitudes are not formed without reference to the characteristics of the stigmatised person. Goffman tries to explain the position by saying that
a stigma ... is really a special kind of relationship between attribute and stereotype. (Goffman, 1963, 14)
I think this places a little too much emphasis on the characteristics of the stigmatised person; it would be more accurate to say that the stigma consists of a negative social reaction to a characteristic that a person is supposed to have. However, the main failing of this definition is that it fails to take into account the feelings of the stigmatised person, which are an
important part of the concept of stigma. People feel embarrassed to use the social services; they are ashamed to be in that position. These feelings are commonly described as 'feelings of stigma'.
Some of this can be attributed to a sense of failure; Singer actually identifies a sense of failure as an internalised form of shame (in Piers, Singer, 1953, 52). A welfare recipient, talking to Gould and Kenyon, complained:
There's always a stigma, there's always a comeback, there's always an innuendo that you've been a failure. (Gould, Kenyon, 1972, 35)
Landy and Singer note that mentally ill people feel
the very fact of mental illness marks them apart with the stigma, not only of being different, but of not being up to the demands of a competitive, status- and
achievement conscious society. (Landy, Singer, 1968, 457)
This interpretation is important for an understanding of stigma because, in the way the words are used, failure itself is a stigma. The idea of 'perception of stigma' is, in this case, equivalent to a perception of failure, and an acceptance that failure is discrediting.
However, a sense of shame does not have to be related to anything so specific as failure. Clifford (1975) records that
loss of face before neighbours, the feeling of being gossiped about, and the feeling of being misclassified with low status recipients, seems to be what hurt the recipients most and accounts, it seems, for much of their shame and embarrassment. (p.46) These seem to be the effects of stigma, rather than the stigma itself. In practice, when we say that people feel stigma, we mean that people feel the effects of a stigma which itself remains elusive and undefined. The important element in 'feeling stigma' is not the stigma but the feeling. Something is assumed to exist to account for the feelings and reactions which people experience, and that something is called 'a stigma'. But 'stigma' in this sense is inseparable from those feelings. It is possible to have a stigma, in the sense of a mark of disgrace, or to 'feel stigma'; but it does not make sense to talk of someone as if he 'had stigma' or 'felt a stigma'. The 'perceptions of stigma' which figure so prominently in the debates about takeup refer to something quite different from the pathological view of social problems implied by the view of stigma as a shortcoming or handicap.
In practice, the characteristics of the stigmatised person, his feelings, and the attitudes of other people are bound together in the idea of stigma. This complexity is anticipated by the concept of 'facet analysis' (Guttman, 1959) referred to before. This takes into account a person's behaviour, his beliefs about his behaviour and about group attitudes as composite aspects of his state of mind. Although it is possible, and sometimes necessary, to distinguish these elements, there are some cases in which they are too closely intertwined to be
is a characteristic (a handicap, possibly a failing); that because he is poor, he is socially rejected; and, to some extent, that he feels his poverty to be shameful.
Stigma must, then, be seen as a complex concept, which is formed from certain discrete but interrelated elements. It is not wholly possible to treat attributes, attitudes and feelings in distinct sections, but I propose in the following part to postpone consideration of attitudes and feelings, and focus on the attributes which bring about social rejection, to discuss some explanations for these attributes, and their implications for social policy.
Stigmatising attributes Stigmatising attributesStigmatising attributes Stigmatising attributes
Goffman divides the forms of stigma into three "grossly different" types: physical deformities, defects of individual character (like mental illness and unemployment) and tribal stigmas, including low classes and statuses (1963, 14). The classification is based on his work in the Presentation of Self in Ordinary Life (1959). In that book, he looks at the effect of social roles - 'performances' - for the individual, for teams (small groups that have to cooperate with each other) and for regions (different groups that share space with each other). Physical deformities correspond to the problems of an individual performance; defects of character, to a position in a team; and tribal stigmas, to relations between groups, which is equivalent to the 'regional' aspect. The purpose of this classification is to relate stigma to the context of an individual's roles. It seems to follow from the analysis that lies behind the classification that any discrediting attribute may be taken as a deformity, personal defect or tribal stigma depending on the social context in which it is viewed. The classification is, I think, intended to emphasise the similarities between stigmas rather than to distinguish them, and this limits its usefulness as a guide to policy. It is at times uncertain which group a stigmatising feature belongs to: skin colour, for example, can be treated as both a physical stigma and a tribal stigma. Defects of character are difficult to distinguish from the stigma of status or class: single parents, unemployed people, or welfare recipients in general can be stigmatised as defective individuals or as members of wider sectors of society. People with physical defects may be attributed defects of character. And any kind of 'tribal stigma' implies some kind of personal defect, or it would not be stigmatising.
Pardo (1974) uses only a twofold classification, between 'physical' and 'moral' stigmas (p.1). This distinction, for reasons which are in part implied by Goffman's analysis, is not as clear as Pardo makes it seem. Physical stigmas, like disfigurement or chronic disease, are socially defined: I have already given the example of the Kumba, who regard a certain skin disease as normal (Bloom, 1963, 99). Physical stigmas are governed by social norms - generalised expectations about health and appearance. Moral stigmas are also governed by social norms, but they are of a different kind. Moral norms are distinguished from others in three ways. Firstly, moral conduct is deemed to be responsible. It is possible to breach expectations in ways for which one is not deemed to be responsible - for example, by being crippled - and this is not generally considered immoral. Secondly, moral norms carry a sanction. A generalised expectation that a person will behave in a certain way, coupled with a sanction if he does not, is a rule: it creates an obligation, and conveys rights to others. There are certain types of behaviour which breach expectations, but which do not carry social sanctions - to take again the example of a high court judge who rents a council house, it may be surprising, but there is no obligation on him to live elsewhere, and no right for others to make him. Thirdly, moral norms are valued more than other expectations; there is some rationale for them, either religious, or to do with their effect on other people. Rules for which there is no such reason are demoted to matters of etiquette.
The distinction between physical and moral stigmas is useful, but insufficient. Both terms are too specific to cover all the circumstances. 'Physical' stigmas do not really include cases of mental illness, addiction and learning disability, which are as likely to be seen as aberrations of behaviour as they are to be attributed to organic disorders. Secondly, people who are poor welfare recipients, unemployed people, beggars, homeless people or slum tenants - may
be in breach of social norms, but it would be wrong to suppose that poverty is necessarily seen as immoral. The attribution of responsibility is unnecessary, and this means the norms are of a different order.
It is possible to refine the classification to allow for these points. Physical stigmas need to be distinguished from mental stigmas. Physical stigmas include physical illness, disability, old age, and race. They take in people discredited by loss of function, disfigurement, or infectious disease. Clearly, the implications of these problems are diverse. Illness has little that is evidently held in common with the problems of race; it is perhaps surprising to see old age included in the same category. However, it has been argued that
Advanced age carries its own particular stigma. In a society marked by its concerns for consumption, money, work and youth, old people represent a special branch of deviance ... (Sussman, 1969, 392)
The reasons for this are complex, and they extend beyond the physical features of old age - as the reasons for rejection of racial minorities extend beyond their physical features. I have described them as 'physical stigmas' because the physical features are the immediate cause of rejection, around which other problems are gathered. A physical stigma is simply a physical characteristic which leads to social rejection. Mental stigmas are found in the behaviour and mental capacity of the stigmatised person; they include learning disability and retardation, mental illness and addiction. It is not possible to describe a mental stigma in exactly the same terms as a physical stigma, because mental stigmas are associated with patterns of behaviour, rather than personal characteristics. However, the stigmatised behaviour is usually attributed to a mental state, rather than immoral conduct, and the mental state may be regarded as a discrediting personal characteristic. Physical and mental stigmas are discussed in Chapter 4.
A distinction must also be made between the stigmas of poverty and moral stigmas. The stigmas of poverty run the gamut of deprivation: unemployment, low pay, financial dependency, homelessness, and living in slums. These problems are linked, simply, by a lack of resources which is socially discrediting. At the same time, poverty may cause dependency on others, and in particular dependency on social services. This leads to rejection that is greater than the stigma of poverty alone. A degree of rejection is attributable to dependency in its own right, and it follows from this that the stigma of dependency can be considered as a problem discrete from the stigma of poverty. It is impossible to separate them completely, but it is easier, for the purposes of analysis, to make an artificial distinction between them. The stigma of poverty is considered in Chapter 5; dependency, in Chapter 6. Finally, there are moral stigmas. The problems these present are of a different kind to the problems of poverty or dependency, although there are connections between them, as there are connections between mental and moral stigmas. Generally speaking, a person is
stigmatised morally when he does something that is seriously unacceptable and is believed to be responsible for it. Disability, illness, learning disability or epilepsy are not ordinarily thought of as the result of a conscious decision or act of the stigmatised person. Mental illness, and the stigmas of poverty, may be looked at differently; some people argue that no responsibility attaches to them, while others say that it does. A stigma is the result of a moral principle in so far as responsibility is attached to it. It becomes distinctively a 'moral stigma' when it is primarily the consequence of the breach of a moral rule. This includes sexual stigma, the stigma of criminality, illegitimacy and divorce. Moral stigmas are the subject of Chapter 7.
The classification of stigmas I have outlined - physical stigmas, mental stigmas, the stigmas of poverty and dependency, and moral stigmas - is imperfect. There are substantial overlaps between the different groups. A person with a physical stigma may also be stigmatised mentally - 'Does he take sugar?' (Ford, 1966, 41) - and morally:
'Get out of my housel' she shouted. 'Only bad, dirty people would have a child like that!' (Killelea 1952, cited Romano, 1968, 2)
as well as being poor and dependent. Poor people and mentally ill people may be
stigmatised morally, because they are blamed for their condition. Poor people are 'lazy idle loafers on the dole'; mentally ill people are regarded as relatively worthless, dirty, dangerous, cold, unpredictable, insincere and so on. (Nunally, 1961, 45-6) The classification is, as a result, arbitrary to a degree; but it is necessary to provide a framework for analysis of the problems the stigmas present.