Stacey Hannem - Stigma Revisited

ST I GMA
REVISITED

IMPLICATIONS OF THE MARK

edited by

Stacey Hannem and Chris Bruckert

University of Ottawa Press
542 King Edward Avenue
Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5
www.press.uottawa.ca

The University of Ottawa Press acknowledges with gratitude the support extended to its publishing list by Heritage Canada through the Canada Book Fund, by the Canada Council for the Arts, by the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and by the University of Ottawa.

We also gratefuly acknowledge the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Ottawa and the Research Services at Wilfrid Laurier University, whose financial support has contributed to the publication of this book.

eBook development by WildElement.ca

University of Ottawa Press 2012

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Stigma revisited [electronic resource] : implications of the mark / edited by Stacey Hannem and Chris Bruckert.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Electronic monograph.
Issued also in print format.
ISBN 978-0-7766-2002-2 (PDF).--ISBN 978-0-7766-2026-8 (HTML)

1. Stigma (Social psychology) 2. Stereotypes (Social psychology) 3. Marginality, Social. I. Hannem, Stacey, 1979- II. Bruckert, Chris, 1960-

HM1096.S75 2012------303.385------C2012-904327-3

Nicholas Little

Stacey Hannem

Vajmeh Tabibi (with Stacey Hannem)

Chris Bruckert

Kevin Walby

Stacey Hannem

Jennifer M. Kilty

Charles Huckelbury, Jr.

Melissa Munn

Crazzy Dave Dessler (with Jean E. Boulay)

Stacey Hannem and Chris Bruckert

We would like to thank the people who have contributed to the creation of this volume:

Stacey would like to thank:

Chris would like to thank:

Introduction

Chris Bruckert and Stacey Hannem

Ervin Goffmans seminal book Stigma (1963), published almost half a century ago, has inspired generations of students, researchers, and scholars (including the editors and contributors to this volume) who draw on the conceptual tools as they seek to make sense of the social world. In the last decade, we have seen an exciting body of work emerge. Authors build on the insights of those who came before them but strive to overcome the astructural bias of Goffmans work through nuanced integrated theory, drawing on, for example gender theory (Whiteford and Gonzalez 1995; Gray 2002), Marxism (Bruckert 2002), and Foucault (Hacking 2004). Of course, the significance of Goffmans slim volume extends well beyond the realm of the academy precisely because stigma is not merely conceptual, theoretical, and analytic in nature. It is deeply personal , and the language of stigma provides an expressive vehicle to speak of dynamic everyday experiences that resonate in and through our lives as we (often simultaneously) live and negotiate, challenge and embrace, perpetuate and resist, stigma. In this collection, we aspire to a holistic approach that builds on academic representations and everyday experiences.

The organization and content of Stigma Revisited: Implications of the Mark speaks to the tensions in our commitment: our obligation as academics and activists to honour everyday lived experiences; our recognition that all social actors (including stigma researchers) are personally implicated as the recipients and perpetuators of stigma; our appreciation that stigma is not only interpersonally realized but also structurally embedded; and our commitment to the academic enterprise characterized by solid research and rigorous analysis. It also speaks to another tension, our desire to pay homage to the traditions of the Chicago school and the early sociologists of deviance who first questioned the nature and definitions of deviance, problematized dominant social constructions, and validated experiential authority (see Becker 1963; Polsky 1967). At the same time, while grounded in ethnographic and constructionist roots, we also engage with more contemporary debates around epistemology to recognize that academic knowledges are themselves the product of the interaction between the researcher and the researched, each of whom brings a unique life history and perspective to the encounter.