Editing Labeling theory (section)

===Erving Goffman===
Perhaps the most important contributor to labeling theory was [[Erving Goffman]], President of the [[American Sociological Association]] (ASA), and one of America's most cited sociologists. His most popular books include ''[[The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life]]'',<ref>[[Erving Goffman|Goffman, Erving]]. 1959. ''The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life''. New York: [[Anchor Books]].</ref> ''Interaction Ritual'',<ref>{{harvp|Goffman|1982}}</ref> and ''Frame Analysis''.<ref>[[Erving Goffman|Goffman, Erving]]. 1974. ''Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience''. Cambridge: [[Harvard University Press]].</ref>

His most important contribution to labeling theory, however, was ''Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity'' published in 1963.''<ref name=":0" />''

==== Goffman's key insights ====
The modern nation state's heightened demand for normalcy. Today's stigmas are the result not so much of ancient or religious prohibitions, but of a new demand for normalcy: <blockquote>"The notion of the 'normal human being' may have its source in the medical approach to humanity, or in the tendency of large-scale bureaucratic organizations such as the nation state, to treat all members in some respects as equal. Whatever its origins, it seems to provide the basic imagery through which laymen currently conceive themselves."''<ref name=":0">[[Erving Goffman|Goffman, Erving]]. 1963. ''Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity''. Englewood Cliffs, NY: [[Prentice Hall|Prentice-Hall]].</ref>''{{Rp|7}}</blockquote>Living in a divided world, deviants split their worlds into: (1) forbidden places where discovery means exposure and danger; (2) places where people of that kind are painfully tolerated; and (3) places where one's kind is exposed without need to dissimulate or conceal.''<ref name=":0" />''{{Rp|81}}

Dealing with others is fraught with great complexity and ambiguity: <blockquote>"When normals and stigmatized do in fact enter one another's immediate presence, especially when they attempt to maintain a joint conversational encounter, there occurs one of the primal scenes of sociology; for, in many cases, these moments will be the ones when the causes and effects of stigma will be directly confronted by both sides."''<ref name=":0" />''{{Rp|13}}

"What are unthinking routines for normals can become management problems for the discreditable.… The person with a secret failing, then, must be alive to the social situation as a scanner of possibilities, and is therefore likely to be alienated from the simpler world in which those around them apparently dwell."''<ref name=":0" />''{{Rp|88}}</blockquote>Society's demands are filled with contradictions:<blockquote>On the one hand, a stigmatized person may be told that he is no different from others. On the other hand, he must declare his status as "a resident alien who stands for his group."''<ref name=":0" />''{{Rp|108}}

"One has to convey the impression that the burden of the stigma is not too heavy yet keep himself at the required distance. "A ''phantom acceptance'' is allowed to provide the base for a ''phantom normalcy."<ref name=":0" />''{{Rp|7}}</blockquote>Familiarity need not reduce contempt. In spite of the common belief that openness and exposure will decrease stereotypes and repression, the opposite is true: <blockquote>"Thus, whether we interact with strangers or intimates, we will still find that the fingertips of society have reached bluntly into the contact, even here putting us in our place."''<ref name=":0" />''{{Rp|53}}</blockquote>