Historically, when people were physically branded and maimed, it was clear who was creating stigma and why. While such practices are rare today, Tyler (Lancaster Univ., UK) argues that powerful, hidden processes in developed modern societies still create stigma . Chapters include an analysis of race and Black power in the US, the European refugee crisis, poverty within austerity Britain (based partly on her work with a local Poverty Truth Commission), and autobiographical insights from her working-class upbringing . [The] analysis of oppression in other places can provide a more acceptable way to explore dynamics that also apply to the US. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. CHOICE
Introduction: Stigma, the Machinery of Inequality
1. The Penal Tattoo
2. From Stigma Power to Black Power
3. The Stigma Machine of the Border
4. The Stigma Machine of Austerity
5. Shame Lives on the Eyelids
6. Conclusion: Rage Against the Stigma Machines
Imogen Tyler is a senior lecturer in sociology and co-director of the Centre for Gender and Women's Studies at Lancaster University. She specializes in the area of marginal social identities, a topic which brings together research on asylum and migration, borders, sexual politics, motherhood, race and ethnicity, disability, social class and poverty. Her work focuses on representation and mediation and the relationship between social theory and activism. Other recent publications include a special issue of Feminist Review (with C. Gatrell) on the theme of 'Birth', a special issue of Studies in the Maternal (with T. Jensen) on the theme of 'Austerity Parenting', a special issue of Citizenship Studies on the theme of `Immigrant Protest` (2013) and a book (with K. Marciniak), Immigrant Protest: Politics, Aesthetics, and Everyday Dissent (SUNY, forthcoming).