Programme
Day 1 (Thursday 11 January 2018)
08:45-09:15
Registration
09:15-09:30
Welcome and introduction from Kayleigh Garthwaite and Gareth Thomas
09:30-10:15
Keynote 1
Imogen Tyler (Lancaster University)
Stigma power, stigma politics, stigma craft
​
This paper introduces some of the findings of my Leverhulme funded research on stigma and power. It argues for a new understanding of stigma as a political economy and to this end outlines a new conceptual toolkit for future stigma research.
10:15-10:25
Break
10:25-11:30
Session A: Welfare, Work, and the Un/Deserving
Ruth Patrick (University of Liverpool) and Kayleigh Garthwaite (University of Birmingham)
Stigma, poverty and the academy: (re)interrogating research on ‘welfare’
Christopher Devany (Sheffield Hallam University)
Masculinity and NEEThood without welfare: how the ‘hidden’ get by
Abi Woodward (Sheffield Hallam University)
Community self-help as a coping strategy: experiences of Pakistani Muslims in Sheffield
11:30-11:40
Break
11:40-13:05
Session B: Parenthood and Family Life
Dawn Mannay and Aimee Grant (Cardiff University)
“Everyone’s watching”: reflecting on stigma, surveillance and scrutiny with mothers and daughters on the margins
Lisa Morriss (University of Birmingham)
Haunted futures: the stigma of being a mother living apart from her children following state-ordered court removal
Gillian Love (University of Sussex)
The good and the guilty: abortion stigma and neoliberal governance in contemporary England
Will Mason*, Kate Morris (both University of Sheffield), Brigid Featherstone (University of Huddersfield), Geraldine Brady* (Coventry University), Jonathan Scourfield (Cardiff University)
'I think sometimes we are very damning of parents': exploring the co-construction of shame and stigma from the perspective of social workers and service users.
13:05-13:40
Lunch
13:40-14:25
Keynote 2
​
Tom Slater (University of Edinburgh)
The invention of the ‘sink estate’: consequential categorization and the UK housing crisis
​
In this talk I explore the history and trace the realisation of a category that was invented by journalists, amplified by free market think tanks and converted into policy doxa (common sense) by politicians in the United Kingdom: the “sink estate”. This derogatory designator, signifying social housing estates that supposedly create poverty, family breakdown, worklessness, welfare dependency, anti-social behaviour and personal irresponsibility, has become the symbolic frame justifying current policies towards social housing that have resulted in considerable social suffering and intensified dislocation. I deploy a conceptual articulation of agnotology (the intentional production of ignorance) with Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic power to understand the institutional arrangements and cognitive systems structuring deeply unequal social relations. Specifically, the highly influential publications on housing by a free market think tank, Policy Exchange, are dissected in order to demonstrate how the activation of territorial stigma has become an instrument of governance. The ‘sink estate’, it is argued, is the semantic battering ram in the ideological assault on social housing, deflecting attention away from social housing not only as urgent necessity during a serious crisis of affordability, but as incubator of community, solidarity, shelter, and home.
14:25-14:35
Break
14:35-15:40
Session C: Place, Home, Inequality
Aidan McGarry (University of Brighton)
Romaphobia: the last acceptable racism
Kathryn Muir (University of Cambridge)
All snakes and no ladders: the experience of forced moves and evictions at the lower end of the UK housing market
Stephen Hicks and Camilla Lewis (University of Manchester)
Inequality, place and stigmatisation on a modernist housing estate
15:40-15:50
Break
15:50-16:55
Session D: Place, Stigma, Resistance
Alice Butler (University of Leeds)
From press barons to Tweeps: print and social media perspectives on territorial stigmatization
Kate Haddow (Teeside University)
From infant Hercules to Chernobyl: researching the most deprived areas of the UK
Gareth M. Thomas*, Eva Elliott, Eve Exley, Emma Renold (all Cardiff University) and Gabrielle Ivinson (Manchester Metropolitan University)
Turning out the lights? Young people living in a post-industrial town
​
16:55-17:00
Closing remarks from Kayleigh Garthwaite and Gareth Thomas
17:00-18:00
Drinks reception
***************************
Day 2 (Friday 12 January 2018)
09:30-10:40
Session E: Environment and Space
​
Eva Elliott*, Ellie Byrne*, Gareth Williams (Cardiff University)
Stigmatisation, recognition and dignity: performing place in a deindustrialised housing estate in South Wales
Andy Williams (Cardiff University) and Jon May (Queen Mary University of London)
'If you need a foodbank, you shouldn't live here': Food poverty and stigma in different rural communities
Bella Wheeler (University of Sussex)
Narratives of resistance: non-prescribed spaces, stigma and food poverty
10:40-10:50
Break
10:50-11:35
Keynote 3
Graham Scambler (University College London)
'Non-conformity + non-compliance = subjection': weaponising stigma in neoliberal times
In this talk, I distinguish between and define the different dimensions of stigma (infringing against norms of shame) and deviance (infringing against norms of blame). I maintain that the dialectic of shame and blame can take a number of forms. I then try and show how appending blame to shame has become an important component of government ideology, policy and practice in post-1970s financial capitalism. I then consider various avenues of resistance, with particular reference to disability.
​
11:35-11:45
Break
11:45-12:50
Session F: Poverty, Inequality, Health
Ian Cummins (Salford University)
Social work and modern urban inequality
Greig Inglis (University of Edinburgh)
Experiences of poverty stigma in Scotland
Kat Smith*, Rosie Anderson, Becky Hewer, Sarah Hill*, Sarah Weakley (University of Edinburgh)
Taking stigma seriously in public discussions about health inequalities
12:50-13:25
Lunch
13:25-14:30
Session G: Bodily ‘Difference’
Oli Williams (University of Leicester)
Obesity stigma, inequality and reflexive embodiment: feeling the ‘weight’ of expectation
Rebecca Yeo (University of Bath)
Who is worthy of 'our' support? The assumptions and structures underpinning the entitlements of disabled migrants in the UK
Charlotte Bates (Cardiff University)
Ordinary bodies: in/visibility, vulnerability and long-term illness
14:30-14:40
Break
14:40-15:45
Session H: Mental Health
Amy Chandler (University of Edinburgh)
Boys don’t cry? A critical phenomenology of gendered mental health stigma
Joe Greener (University of Liverpool) and Rich Moth* (Liverpool Hope University)
From shame to blame: mental distress, structural stigma and social harm in Austerity England
David Frayne (Independent Scholar)
Fitter. Happier. More productive.
15:45-16:00
Closing remarks from Kayleigh Garthwaite and Gareth Thomas