Stigma

Imogen Tyler is a Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Science. A teacher, writer and social activist, she is a member of the Morecambe Bay Poverty Truth Commission and a trustee of the UK Poverty Truth Network. She has published widely on issues of social inequality and injustice, and her critically acclaimed book Revolting Subjects (2013) was shortlisted for the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing.

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.

• 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 Austerity5. Shame Lives on the Eyelids6. Conclusion: Rage Against the Stigma Machines