Stigma

Summary

Stigma is based in the social construction of difference, where specific characteristics or attributes of individuals become associated with stereotypes or negative beliefs. Across global societies, stigma continues to be operative, although its forms are changing. Modern shifts in economic and educational institutions have promoted greater tolerance of some forms of difference, such as mental or physical illness. However, structural inequities in power and prestige, geospatial segregation, and disparities across legal and economic contexts continue to devalue the contributions of classed, gendered, and racialized minorities, even in high-income countries and especially in less-affluent nations. Leading-edge research into stigma is becoming increasingly concerned with political divides, in terms of how right-wing authoritarianism in particular promotes the construction of marginalized groups as socially deviant, and also in terms of how conservative political attitudes privilege logics of personal responsibility that seem to indirectly reinforce individual moral responsibility for societal problems. Other active areas of stigma research highlight ageism and age-related stigma (including widely internalized ageism), disability-related stigma and structural ableism, obesity stigma, stigmatization of lower socioeconomic status or poverty in a meritocratic context, and agentic or even joyful (i.e., life-affirming) responses to ongoing oppressions among minoritized groups. The COVID-19 pandemic confronted the world with unprecedented spikes in psychological distress, creating a complex set of adaptations in its wake involving a massive proliferation of digital messages about combating stigma—but also about normalization of potentially harmful behaviors or coping styles as well as resistance to medicalization, treatment, or diagnosis. Because no human society has ever managed to be hierarchy-free, and because stigma ultimately is rooted in sanctioning and maintaining difference, researchers of stigma confront a fundamental theoretical and practical question of whether and how stigma will inevitably continue to exist—and whether it can be managed effectively. Looking forward, continued reorientation of ostensibly democratic cultures around multiple criteria of human worth and dignity, instead of effectively hegemonic logics of market value, will be imperative to fighting stigmatization in all of its forms.