Embodying and Producing Stigma: Violence, Morality, and the Consequences for Healthcare

CHAIR: PODRABSKY, Dylan (U Oregon)

ISLAM, Afsana (TX State U) Vitiligo and the Gender-Based Socio-Cultural Stigma: Contemporary Health Seeking Behaviour and Treatment Practices in Bangladesh

NEHUSHTAN, Hilla (U Pitt) Body Size Perceptions Among American Jewish Women

PODRABSKY, Dylan, HERBERT, Claire, SNODGRASS, Josh, and WEAVER, Lesley Jo (U Oregon) Symbolic Violence, Embodied Consequences: Stigma, Houselessness, and Health

GANLEY, Karla (UF Coll of Med) “Unreliable Historians”: How Physicians Use Patient Clinical Notes as Discursive Tools for Moral Education and Denial of Care

 

ISLAM, Afsana (TX State U) Vitiligo and the Gender-Based Socio-Cultural Stigma: Contemporary Health Seeking Behaviour and Treatment Practices in Bangladesh. Vitiligo is an autoimmune disorder that results in skin depigmentation, affecting 1-2% of the global population. In Bangladesh, vitiligo patients frequently endure stigma, stress, depression, shame, isolation, and low self-esteem, with notable gender disparities. This research employs a mixed-method design from a medical anthropological perspective to explore the lived experiences of vitiligo patients and the associated stigma in Bangladesh. It investigates pluralistic treatment practices and health-seeking behaviors while elucidating the patient-doctor relationship and therapy management dynamics. Study findings indicate that vitiligo patients face significant stigma in contexts such as marriage, employment, and public life, exacerbated by misconceptions about the disease’s contagiousness.

 

NEHUSHTAN, Hilla (U Pitt) Body Size Perceptions Among American Jewish Women. Historical studies reveal socio-medical views that associated Jews with immorality, fatness, and lust, connecting them to stereotypes of blackness and immigrants and positioning them as outsiders to the white bodily ideals in the U.S. The current study explores perceptions of bodywork among Jewish women in North America today. Based on 20 semi-structured interviews, this study ties the scholarly worlds of medical anthropology, religious studies, fat studies, and gendered bodywork and asks how religious Jewish women in the US perceive body size and negotiate the intersection of gendered expectations, religious prescriptions, food restrictions, and community ideals? Preliminary results focus on the pressure for thinness before wedlock, challenges with parenthood amid obesity scares and diet culture defiance, and complex relations with parents and family members about body and self-image.

 

PODRABSKY, Dylan, HERBERT, Claire, SNODGRASS, Josh, and WEAVER, Jo (U Oregon) Symbolic Violence, Embodied Consequences: Stigma, Houselessness, and Health. Stigma constantly exposes people experiencing houselessness (PEH) to symbolic violence – individual or collective actions which reinforce and reproduce internalized understandings of social values and hierarchies. This presentation draws on interviews conducted with government officials and PEH in a US city with a high rate of unsheltered houselessness. Thematic analysis revealed that symbolic violence enacted through stigmatization becomes embodied in PEH, leading to disproportionate health risks and further marginalization. This presentation seeks to illuminate how stigma functions as a form of symbolic violence, how this becomes embodied by the stigmatized, and how this social devaluation is translated into unequal material conditions.

 

GANLEY, Karla (UF Coll of Med) “Unreliable Historians”: How Physicians Use Patient Clinical Notes as Discursive Tools for Moral Education and Denial of Care. Clinical notes written by physicians are often regarded as objective records of patient health status. But what happens when the patient gives the physician an account of illness that doesn’t adhere to expected chronotopes of linear time and divisible space? By analyzing the case of a homeless patient who sought treatment for substance misuse, I show how this can led to testimonial injustice and denial of care. I will also show how clinical notes are discursive tools that reinforce culturally defined notions of what types of illness stories “count,” which patients are “morally responsible,” and who is “worthy” of care.

Speakers

• Dylan Podrabsky, University of Oregon
• Jo Weaver, University of Oregon, Associate Professor
• Afsana Islam, Texas State University
• Hilla Nehushtan, Religions Studies Department, University of Pittsburgh
• Karla Ganley, University of Florida, Doctoral Fellow, Department of Anthropology