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Call Submissions Special BASP Issue on Stigma |
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| Posted by: | John B. Pryor |
| Title/Position: | Distinguished Professor |
| School/Organization: | Illinois State University |
| Sent to listserv of: | SPSP, SESP, SPSSI |
| Date posted: | September 21st, 2010 |
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Call for Submissions to a Special Issue of Basic and Applied Social Psychology on Stigma
Special Issue Editors:
John B. Pryor
Illinois State University
Arjan E. R. Bos
Maastricht University
The year 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication Erving Goffman’s landmark work, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. To mark the continuing contribution of Goffman’s work on stigma to social psychology, Basic and Applied Social Psychology announces the upcoming publication of a special issue to be entitled Fifty Years of Stigma Research: Lessons learned and lingering issues. Goffman’s pioneering treatise has been highly influential in many areas of psychology and many other fields as well (e.g., sociology, medicine, health sciences, criminology, etc.). A 2010 PsychInfo search of the articles published since 1963 using the key word “stigma” produced 7585 hits.
As Goffman originally used the term, stigma implies some sort of negative deviance or in his words, “an undesired differentness from what we had anticipated (p. 5).” Contemporary uses of the term “stigma” suggest four major manifestations of stigma: 1) public stigma – communities’ negative reactions to someone with a perceived stigma, 2) self-stigma – how one reacts to being stigmatized or the anticipation of being stigmatized, 3) stigma-by-association – communities’ reactions to people who are somehow associated with a stigmatized person or how people react to being associated with a stigmatized person, and 4) institutional stigma – the process of legitimatizing and perpetuating a stigmatized status by our social institutions and ideological systems. These four manifestations of stigma are inter-related with each feeding off the other. However, the root of the other three manifestations of stigma seems to be public stigma, the consensual understanding that a mark or attribute is regarded as highly negative. We are soliciting articles exploring all of these manifestations of stigma.
While BASP is primarily an outlet for empirical studies, we are soliciting both empirical and theoretical contributions for the special issue on stigma. Some topics that deserve theoretical attention include a comparison and contrast of the concept of stigma and the concept of prejudice. Are studies of stigma and studies of prejudice functionally the same? Should the study of stigma be subsumed into the study of prejudice or visa versa? Is it just a matter of linguistic preference or are there some conceptual differences between the concepts of stigma and prejudice? Another topic might be the theoretical origins of stigma. Are social reactions to stigmatized persons rooted in human evolution, learned from social experience, or some combination of the two? If a combination, how does it play out? A related set of questions concerns the theoretical explanation of people’s reactions to having a stigmatizing mark. How is the process of coping with a stigma is influenced by qualities of the stigma (e.g., whether it is concealable or not), the immediate social context, and social structure factors (e.g., anti-discrimination laws)? These are just some of the possible examples of theoretical contributions.
The study of stigma is found in many disciplines. For example, stigma represents an important concept in clinical as well as social psychology. Also, one of the most prolific concentrations of stigma research is found in health sciences (i.e., public health, medicine, epidemiology, etc.). Therefore, we extend our solicitation to researchers from outside the sphere of traditional social psychology. We believe that broad coverage from diverse disciplines would help to provide a more complete understanding of the impact of the stigma concept in the last 50 years. In addition, it would also help to stimulate social psychologists’ work on stigma. One limitation that we will place upon empirical contributions to the special issue is that they not be based purely upon qualitative methodologies.
We invite those interested in making a contribution to the proposed special issue to send a 300 word abstract describing their proposed article to the special issue editors (see address below). The special issue editors will review the abstracts and invite the authors of those abstracts that seem promising to submit manuscripts. Each manuscript will be subjected to full peer review following the same procedures used with any other manuscripts submitted to BASP.
A timeline for these steps is the following:
Deadline for Abstracts: April 15, 2011
Decision for Abstracts: June 15, 2011
Deadline for Manuscript Submission: November 1, 2011
Return of Reviews to Authors: February 1, 2012
Final Decisions: August 1, 2012
Publication: Spring 2013
Abstracts may be submitted electronically to John B. Pryor, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Illinois State University, Normal, IL 61790-4620, email: pryor@ilstu.edu. Please note “BASP Abstract for Special Stigma Issue” in the subject line.
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