Will I Have to Be Reborn? Collective Sensemaking of Stigma among White-Collar Inmates
研究白领囚犯如何集体理解即将面临的污名，以及这种集体意义建构如何影响他们应对污名的个人策略，对理解高地位专业人士的污名化过程有贡献。
We have a limited understanding of how individuals anticipate the experience of stigma, make sense of it as a group, and how such sensemaking trickles down to the individual level, especially for white-collar inmates who have experienced a drastic fall from grace. To address these issues, we draw on three waves of semi-structured interviews and focus group data with 70 inmates in a federal prison in the United States over a period of 16 months. Our findings reveal that following collective sensemaking, inmates use varying tactics to either select, borrow, contribute, reinforce, disguise or maintain the status quo, which variably impact on their perceptions of their ability to both reassure others of their soundness of character and adapt their professional identity. Our work contributes to the sociology of stigma and white-collar crime by showing how high-status professionals collectively prepare for stigmatization and implications for their individual responses to stigma.