The quote is from Erving Goffman’s pathbreaking book Stigma (1963). Goffman, along with Robert Merton and some others, belong to my top shelf of American sociologists. Goffman deserves to be read “with” the text, not too critically “against”. Of course he was not a grand theorist, e g a social class theorist – that was not his mission.
More on Goffman:
See research blog note (in Norwegian) here.
Also, search in my dr. philos. thesis, here.
Other texts where Goffman is discussed (to come)
