Appunti relativi alle lezioni riguardanti argomento di sociology, articolo consigliato: “Race as stigma''

Race as Stigma

This paper explores the insights gained from conceptualising race as stigma. The assessment of the embodiment of stigma, the ideological construction of stigma within particular histories, the impact of stigma on identity, and the ways in which we collectively contest and resist stigma.

While acknowledging how stigma, particularly the stigma of race, acts to deny humanity, agency and liberty, I illustrate how stigma is collectively constructed, institutionalised and resisted in social and political relations. A crucial part of the psychology of stigma must be a focus on the possibilities for communities to contest and transform representations and practices that stigmatise; that is, we need to explore the possibilities and conditions for stigmatised communities as agents as not (only) as objects or victims of stigma.

Key words: Stigma, racism, social structures, social representations, embodiment, ideology, identity, resistance, community, agency.

Promotes a critical social psychology

of stigma that highlights the ways in which stigma operates to produce and defend structural inequalities.

-First, it highlights the embodiment of race= race is seen in or on the body; while race may inform social spaces, linguistic styles and fashion, it is primarily linked to the body, or more particularly the skin. In ancient Greece a stigma was a mark - burnt or cut into the skin to symbolise the threat or danger of the so stigmatised person.

-Secondly, conceptualising race as stigma underlines the dehumanising nature of discourses and practices that 'race'. Stigma reduced the person "from a whole and usual person to a tainted, discounted one". those with black and brown skin are seen as less than, different from, unequal to the racialising, normatively white, others. In this way race invades the self as racialised expectations and stereotypes mark one's sense of self, one's own expectations, ambitions and fears.

-Thirdly, the operation of race can only be

understood in relation to its material contexts of unequal relations of power. Like the stigmas of mental illness, HIV/AIDS and disability, race is something that produces and sustains material inequalities and is anchored in histories of prejudice, exclusion and poverty. Race generates its significance and its power from its particular histories of domination, colonisation and global economics. Race is constituted in and through structural relations of power and oppression, and can only be made sense of with reference to these very material histories. Fourthly, race exists as a stigma in the eye of the beholder; it is something that is imposed on others and so it often jars with their claimed identity and sense of self. This creates tension, a potential space of struggle and negotiation where those stigmatized as 'raced' collaborate ways to challenge stigmatizing representations and so reject or at least disrupt the ideology of racism. It is a matter of mobilizing collective.

Anti-racist projects and building social and political resistance.

Social Representations: a theory of practice, participation and change

Social representations are "ways of world making": how different knowledge systems are produced, defended, contested and transformed in everyday encounters, social spaces, relationships and positionings. Hence it shows up the fundamentally collective and ongoing (re)production of meaning and social relations. It insists on a dialectical understanding to the connections between the psychological and the political. Because representation is seen as a product of thought, dialogue and practice and as a process that enables communication, debate, innovation and resistance – conflict and social change are at the centre of the theory, they have the potential to be continuously re-worked, re-made and resisted. What is crucial, is that both the operation as well as the resistance of representations are fundamentally collective and so political.

projects.Embodied stigma“The Greeks originated the term stigma to refer to bodily signs designed to expose something unusual and bad about the moral status of the signifier”. For example, Monica, a black woman, describes her experiences of prejudice at primary school. Skin marks her as different, as dirty, as possibly polluting or contagious was still very evident. Fear of bodily contact is a common theme. What is painful about these accounts is the realisation that the stigma of race is marked on the body and embodied in ways of being seen, being treated, being feared as different. The stigma of race implies that is “a blemished person, ritually polluted, is to be avoided, especially in public places”. The stigmatising representation of black youth as untrustworthy and criminal pervades these boys’ everyday encounters – as they see that they - or more precisely their skin is seen and treated in a particular way. This happens in the context of the street,

shops, schools and employment – and leads to elaborate systems of social exclusion and marginalisation.

Histories of stigma

The stigma of race, therefore, has to be placed into a historical and political context to be understood fully. The representation of black youth as criminal, for example, is anchored in histories of the racialisation of poverty, exclusion and policing. Contemporary racist images remain tied to bloody histories of colonial relations, slavery, the denigration and economic exploitation of particular cultures.

For example, we read an interview of two children that described how black communities are objectified and exoticised. They feel "looked on", as they say, positioned as other and as different. But these children probably do not know that there was a time when black people were exhibited in museums, zoos and places of entertainment. White people's fascination with black people, our fear of difference and the horrifying extent of our racism, have been

passed down through the ages, preserved in cultural artefacts and continue to stigmatise the identities of black youth today. The consequences of this were very evident in the exclusions study where representations of race incorporated racist beliefs about human development that associate whiteness with superior intellectual capabilities and blackness with physical strength and sex. For many, the stigma of race can have devastating consequences for black and other ethnic minority students in Britain - namely in leading to considerably lower levels of attainment in terms of qualifications and higher levels of school exclusion. This leads to higher levels of unemployment, increased vulnerability to health problems, higher numbers involved with the police and criminal justice system and so reproduces racial exclusion and class stratification. Stigma therefore often works as a system of legitimisation and justification for social inequalities and relations of domination and subordination. CollaboratingresistanceSocial groups threatened by the stigma of difference may collaborate similarstrategies to transform stigma; this includes acutely dissimilar marginalisedgroups (such as the deaf, the gay community and white supremacists. Thismeans that there is room to unsettle, challenge and potentially transform therepresentations and practices that stigmatise. Our psychological capabilities,our collective potential for dialogue, debate and critique, gives us the