The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology9/5/2018·DOI·Read paper
Abstract
Stigma is the process by which people are discredited socially by being labeled with an undesirable or unacceptable characteristic. No systematic or cohesive bodies of scholarship on stigma exist within anthropology. Most anthropological studies of stigma have focused on stigmas associated with infectious and chronic disease, such as mental illness, addiction, HIV/AIDS, and infertility. Ethnographies describe the misery of stigma but also show how people cope and resist. Social analyses highlight how stigma both reflects and reinforces power differences and the broader social order. Evolutionary analyses explore possible adaptive benefits to stigmatization, such as avoiding contagion. Key challenges include lack of definitional clarity, inadequate tools to allow comparison or enable the study of co‐occurring stigmas that negatively exacerbate each other, and concerns that researchers who have not lived with severe stigmas lack the necessary insight to challenge conventional understandings.
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