Imogen Tyler, Stigma: The Machinery of Inequality

Abstract

Stigma is one of those highly successful, widely applied sociological concepts, a feature of common parlance which also commands an extensive and multidisciplinary academic literature. With her book Stigma: The Machinery of Inequality, Imogen Tyler sets out to reclaim the stigma concept from the academic who receives most credit for it, Erving Goffman, and put it to use for understanding and ultimately resisting contemporary extractive capitalism. The book is a work of genealogy, theory and ultimately polemic; it is written in a clean and accessible style making it highly readable and persuasive, and a valuable contribution/corrective to stigma studies. Tyler’s over-arching purpose is twofold: first, to reclaim the stigma concept as a tool of hierarchical power relations and emphasise the deliberate activation of stigma by those in power; and second, to situate this dynamic specifically in the political economy of late neoliberal capitalism. In doing this she theorises stigma as a device of the world system of capitalism. Readers seeking greater understanding of the nuances of stigma, the ways in which it takes hold in some situations and not in others, or the ways in which it becomes internalised and deployed against others will need to look elsewhere, for this book is a grand narrative. It functions as a corrective to researchers who ask smaller questions without understanding the big thing that is going on: the functions and purposes of stigma. The bulk of the book is dedicated to demonstrating that stigma is not some ineffable localised or interpersonal phenomenon, but is rather deliberately produced and weaponised against socially undesirable groups of people. Different chapters address different groups: racial stigma; stigma against migrants; and the anti-poor stigma that underpins austerity. Patriarchal stigma runs like a thin thread through the whole book, with numerous egregious examples cited in every chapter. Tyler makes it abundantly clear that stigmas coalesce around inequality, Irish Journal of Sociology