Original photo by Heather Mount via Unsplash

Roundtable: The Relationship Between Health and Stigma

Tue 2 June 2020

Online (Zoom)

Dr Tanisha Spratt (University of Oxford)
Understanding ‘Fat Shaming’ in a Neoliberal Era: Exploring Reactions to CRUK’s Anti-Obesity Campaign

This paper will explore this contention by highlighting the need to address the concerns of those who adhere to the political model of obesity within medical narratives that consider obesity a “global epidemic.” Engaging with neoliberal conceptualisations of the “ideal citizen,” this paper will explore the relationship between “personal responsibility” and recent austerity cuts in order to show how low-income families and recipients of state benefits are often stigmatised for being obese despite having limited control over the social, economic and environmental factors that drive obesity. It will further show how this culture of blame is shaped by concerns about the financial stability of national programmes like the NHS that many believe should exclusively cater to the needs of “deserving” citizens.


Dr Brigit McWade (Lancaster University)
Stop ‘Sucking off the Stigma’: Refusing Mental Health Anti-Stigma Campaigns

This paper examines the cultural and political economy of stigma and anti-stigma in mental health. Mental health anti-stigma campaigns present stigma as something produced by myths circulated within media-cultures; myths which can be dissipated through the dissemination of “the facts” of mental illness and personal testimonies of those with lived experience. Rather than focus on the individual stories of “the stigmatized” as Goffman’s work has inspired many to do, I will instead explore how this anti-stigma industry determine the limits of what might be said about mental health and by whom, in effect depoliticizing distress and capitalizing on the further disenfranchisement of Mad-identified people.



Full abstracts can be found here: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/28970

Cost: free