EP004 The sociology of stigma and rethinking contemporary social inequalities

In this episode, our managing editor Michaela Benson talks with Imogen Tyler (Lancaster University) about her recent work on the sociology of stigma. In keeping with the theme of the conference, Imogen advocates an approach that recognises that sociological knowledge might be produced from outside rigid disciplinary boundaries; as she describes the political urgency of a renewed genealogy of stigma that takes seriously its relationship to racism, she traces how this knowledge and understanding was excluded from the curriculum of US sociology. Retelling the history of stigma from penal tattooing in the Greek and Roman Empire to critical black scholarship about the production of racialised subjects, she presents her critical reconceptualisation of stigma and anti-stigma as sites of active political struggles.

To find out more about these ideas discussed in this episode, read the recent Sociological Review Monograph edited by Imogen Tyler and Tom Slater, including their agenda-setting introduction ‘Rethinking the Sociology of Stigma’ (http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0038026118777425). The full volume is available for purchase at https://store.thesociologicalreview.com/collections/books/products/the-sociology-of-stigma.

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The Undisciplining Sessions were recorded at Undisciplining, a conference organised by The Sociological Review Foundation Limited in June 2018. Find out more about The Sociological Review, Britain’s longest-standing sociology journal at https://thesociologicalreview.com.

They are produced and edited by Emma Houlton at Art of Podcast http://www.artofpodcast.com.