Faure, Michael; Escresa, Laarni --- "Social Stigma" [2011] ELECD 1070; in Parisi, Francesco (ed), "Production of Legal Rules" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Production of Legal Rules

Editor(s): Parisi, Francesco

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848440326

Section: Chapter 12

Section Title: Social Stigma

Author(s): Faure, Michael; Escresa, Laarni

Number of pages: 23

Extract:

12 Social stigma
Michael Faure* and Laarni Escresa



1. Introduction
The law and economics literature has for many years now pointed out that
incentives guiding the behavior of individuals can not only emerge from formal
rules of law, but also from social norms. An important focus in that respect is on
stigma, namely that a particular behavior which would violate (social) norms
would impose a negative label (stigma) upon the perpetrator of the norm. The
basic idea is that fear of this negative labeling would provide ex ante incentives
to individuals to avoid the stigma.
This idea also has a strong intuitive appeal. Individuals care about their
reputation in social interaction. Moreover, a loss of reputation can also impose
serious costs upon individuals.
It is the role of reputation and the mirror image of this, the loss of reputation
or stigma, which are the focus of this chapter. Attention to stigma has of course
not only been paid in the law and economics literature. Erving Goffman wrote
a seminal work called Stigma where he qualified those who have been shamed
as "discredible", referring to the fact that an alienation of an offender takes
place as a result of the stigma (Goffman, 1963, 41­2).
The law and economics literature has increasingly paid attention inter alia to
the question of how reputation is created and what particular aspects of social
interaction can contribute to a stigmatizing effect in case of the violation of
social norms.
There is one particular domain in ...