Recalibrating Stigma
Sociologies of Health and Illness
Edited by Gareth Thomas, Oli Williams, Tanisha Spratt and Amy Chandler
Published
Jun 16, 2025Page count
240 pagesISBN
978-1529235821Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressPublished
Jun 16, 2025Page count
240 pagesISBN
978-1529235845Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressPublished
Jun 16, 2025Page count
240 pagesISBN
978-1529235838Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University Press
Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
Stigma has long been a central concern for social scientists studying health and illness. Yet, in existing work, stigma often escapes definition and clarification, is treated as universal and constant, and becomes a vague catch-all term for a range of conditions and situations.
This book initiates a process of recalibrating the conceptualisation of stigma. The book features original analyses from early- and mid-career scholars focusing on diverse issues, including mental health, racism, sex, HIV, reproduction, obesity, eating disorders, self-harm, exercise, drug use, COVID-19 and disability.
This ambitious book offers new perspectives to stimulate and intensify conversations around stigma, and highlights the valuable contributions of sociological approaches to the study of health and illness.
“This collection is a state-of-the-art contribution to the sociology of stigma and to the ways in which it is now be theorised and retheorised. It will become a much-cited text within the sociology of health and illness, and further afield too.” Graham Scambler, Emeritus Professor, University College London
Gareth Thomas is Reader in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University.
Oli Williams is Lecturer in Co-designing Healthcare Interventions at King’s College London.
Tanisha Spratt is Senior Lecturer in Racism and Health at King’s College London.
Amy Chandler is Professor of the Sociology of Health and Illness at the University of Edinburgh.
Introduction: Recalibrating Stigma - Gareth M. Thomas, Oli Williams, Tanisha Spratt, and Amy Chandler
1. Stigma, Racism, and Mental Healthcare - Dharmi Kapadia and Maria Haarmans
2. Stigma and Sexual Arousal: Rethinking HIV-Related Stigma in the Age of PrEP and the Internet - Jaime García-Iglesias
3. The Contested Nature of Abortion Stigma: From the Individual to the Structural - Gillian Love
4. Shooting Blanks?: Exploring the Assumed Relationship Between Masculinity and Stigma in Male Fertility - Esmée Hanna, Caroline Law, and Nicky Hudson
5. On the Process of Becoming a Body Fascist: Stigma and Shame in the Moral Economy of Exercise - Kass Gibson
6. Recalibrating Anti-stigma: Avoiding Binary Thinking and ‘Destigmatisation Drift’ in Public Health - Oli Williams, Amy Chandler, Gareth M. Thomas, and Tanisha Spratt
7. Readdressing Addiction Stigma: Making Space for Being in the World Differently - Fay Dennis
8. How Stigma Emerges and Mutates: The Case of Long COVID Stigma - Hannah Farrimond and Mike Michael
9. Notes on a Spoiled Working Identity: Stigma, Illness, and Disability in the Contemporary (Western) Workplace - Jennifer Remnant
10. Spoiled Identity and the Curated Self: Narrativising Stigma in Parents’ Memoirs of Raising Disabled Children - Harriet Cooper
11. Studying Up: Understanding Power in Stigmatisation, Discrimination, and Health - Andy Guise, Simone Helleren, and River Újhadbor
Recalibrating stigma: Concluding Thoughts - Tanisha Spratt, Amy Chandler, Oli Williams, and Gareth M. Thomas
