Journal
COMMUNICATION STUDIES
Volume 65, Issue 2, Pages 132-138Publisher
ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD
DOI: 10.1080/10510974.2013.851096
Keywords
Evolution; Group Membership; Infectious Disease; Ostracism; Stigma
Categories
Funding
- National Institute on Drug Abuse [P50-DA010075]
- NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON DRUG ABUSE [P50DA010075] Funding Source: NIH RePORTER
Ask authors/readers for more resources
At multiple times in human history people have asked if there are good stigmas. Is there some useful function stigmas serve in the context of our evolutionary history; is stigma adaptive? This article discusses stigmas as a group-selection strategy and the human context in which stigmas likely appeared. The next section explores how human patterns have changed in modern society and the consequences for infectious disease (ID) stigmas in the modern age. The concluding section suggests that while social-living species may be particularly apt to create and communicate ID stigmas and enact ID-related stigmatization, such stigma-related processes no longer function to protect human communities. Stigmas do not increase the ability of modern societies to survive infectious diseases but, in fact, may be important drivers of problematic disease dynamics and act as catalysts for failures in protecting public health.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available