10 17 2013 Peter Brown Stigma Elements of Stigma o Barriers against health care o Social marginalization leading to poverty and neglect o Distrust of health authorities o Distorted perceptions of risk Becker Reading Notes Coping with Stigma Lifelong Adaptation of Deaf Stigmatized individuals must struggle with these negative attitudes and with the devalued status that accompanies them and develop strategies for handling the stigma o An individual who cannot find strategies fails to function adequately and in the U S they are institutionalized or exist in fringes of society you need a group of these stigmatized individuals to build a community to lean on each other for support o Deafness is an invisible disability b c it is only noteable when a person attempts to communicate Once disability is known hearing people get the shock withdrawal paralysis and change their behavior inappropriately withdraw from situation Inability of parents to teach their children language and to socialize them created an emotional crisis that was exacerbated by controversy over educational methods for deal children o Some parents think it s shameful to have deaf children o Children brought up in deaf families are more self esteemed than deaf children brought up in hearing families b c deaf families carry on a culture that they are proud of o Sign language is ambivalent among deaf some are embarrassed by the facial expressions and actions in public but within groups expressions and actions are more passionate and bolder richness of the language is exploited to the fullest The term deafy is a derogatory term can mean the feelings of frustration in deaf community lack of intelligence o People are afraid to be seen as a deafy stupid dumb by the hearing world o Deaf people feel inferior among hearing people have a richer vocab about dumbness and refer to people who can hear as smart thus perception underlies the stigmatized way that individuals see themselves o Deaf communities are very important to normalizing how people accept one another by joining deaf groups individuals within deaf groups channel past frustrations into more fulfilling and interacting friendships within groups Conformity is important for those who have been nonconformed with the world important for those who must deal continuously with nonconformity decreases feelings of deviance and increase feelings of belongingness Nancy Waxler Reading Learning to be a Leper Leprosy is the same as Hansen s disease progressive degeneration of nerves and is not infectious deformities are due to untreated secondary infections b c victim has no sensation of pain in extremities disease plays only a small part of drama that is actually involved with social stigma People diagnosed with a disease learn how to have the disease by negotiating with friends and relations as well as with people in the treatment system process is affected by society s beliefs and expectations for the disease o Society s definition of and expectations for a particular disease are sustained by social and organizational forces that may have little to do with the disease itself as a biological process Leprosy mode of transmission is unknown but the incubation period is known sulfone is the drug most used to stop the spread of the bacterium Not a life threatening disease but society shuns b c it wants to protect itself from the lepers make I into something serious that it is actually not Stigma is linked to the particular historical and cultural conditions specific to each society b c leprosy is treated benignly in Nigeria not as bad in Sri Lanka than India b c India has a caste system and thus it is easy to classify people into a caste and reject them whereas Sri Lanka is a Buddhist society where it is accepting of all people regardless of differences Lepers are socialized to take the role that the society expects you act the way society expects the diseased are supposed to act o Example Americans are fighters therefore lepers will fight back but in Ethiopia they are fatalists and hide from society and stigmatize themselves Leprosy organizations ironically do not help the leprosy by building permanent inpatient hospitals stressing treatment of stigmatized patients rather than change in the public s view of the disease have acted for the normal community by removing the leprosy from the world and putting them into care o These organizations need the funds and money so they must perpetuate in public that they are indeed removing the lepers from society so they continue this chain of thought The Damaged Self Robert Murphy Reading Murphy believes in the cultural construction of the individual as a social corporeal and psychological entity criticizes biomedicine for its inability to deal with the entire self Goffman s idea of one of the primal scenes of sociology means that in any social confrontation when there is some great flaw robs the encounter of firm cultural guidelines traumatizing it and leaving the people involved wholly uncertain about what to expect from each other Goffman s idea of the spoiled identity you are forever going to be tainted and labeled with that name Damage to body causes diminution of the self and is further magnified by debasement by others Usual formula is wrongful act guilty conscience if guilt publicly known then becomes shame punishment but disease is the opposite and reverses this order o One gets the punishment impairment and finally to the crime and people then ask why me Fuels feelings of why me and undercurrent of anger o The language we use to address disabled also fuels the interaction and perception of damaged individuals o Damages their own ego as gender and sexuality men cannot be tall anymore and cannot assume dominance in sexual positions humiliating to their manhood and their identity o 4 new things to adapt to Lowered self esteem Invasion and occupation of thought by physical deficits Strong undercurrent of anger Acquisition of the new total and undesirable identity 10 22 2013 Illness Experience Kleinman Reading The meaning of symptoms and diseases Aviella Notes Illness experience needs to do o Historically deep o Geographically broad Historically deep Stigma Farmer article four axes of inequality and two things medical anthropology In evolutionary section went all the way back and how relates to diet and sociability etc o Talked about Paleolithic 10 000 years ago the Neolithic revolution Western biomedical tradition Galen o Humoral theory of