Experiencing Stigma and Exclusion: The Influence of Neoliberal Perspectives, Practices, and Policies on Living with Chronic Illness and Disability

Abstract

Neoliberal perspectives, policies, and practices increasingly affect chronically ill and disabled people's embodied experiences of stigma and exclusion. Neoliberalism emphasizes individual responsibility and self‐sufficiency, a limited social safety net, and narrow governmental accountability. Examining pivotal experiences of chronically ill people shows how neoliberalism can frame their alternatives, interactions, and actions. This examination prompts reconsidering Goffman's concept of stigma to include how larger social policies and practices affect experiencing stigma and exclusion and, also, illuminates temporal features of receiving a diagnosis, disclosing illness, and dealing with disabilities and unpredictable bodies. The analysis derives from an ethnographic story and published and unpublished personal accounts from first‐hand and library research over the course of my career.

Dis-mantling stigma: Parenting disabled children in an age of ‘neoliberal-ableism’

“…by looking both above and below ). In a rare exploration of the relationship between disability, stigma and neoliberalism, Charmaz (2020, p. 21) recommends revising the concept of stigma, and particularly Goffmanian interpretations of it, by analysing how ‘stigma and exclusion are played out through interaction and structural arrangements’ for chronically ill and disabled people. Drawing upon the claims of disability theorists, Charmaz suggests that this involves ‘placing stigmatising experiences within larger structural perspectives, policies, and practices dominated by neoliberalism’ (2020, p. 22).…”

Missing Pieces: Engaging Sociology of Disability in Medical Sociology

“…We need more work showing how ableist ideologies underpinning neoliberal thinking and policies (i.e., only "productive" bodies are valuable) result in growing movements born out of political affinities between chronically ill, aging, and disabled folks. Charmaz (2020) who writes that we must situate stigmatizing processes within larger structural arrangements, particularly within neoliberalism. On this Charmaz (2020) is correct, but there is already much work in disability studies that has put forward these theoretical analyses (e.g., Chaudhry 2015;Erevelles 2011;Goodley and Lawthom 2019;McRuer 2018;Mitchell and Snyder 2015).…”

“…Charmaz then engages the work of sociologist of disability Barnartt (2016), who critiques how stigma is seen as "stable" and casts disabled people as embodying a form of deviance and leaves it at that. Charmaz (2020) concedes that the symbolic interactionist tradition has generally ignored structural causes of disability oppression, but maintains that it is entirely possible-and desirable-for symbolic interactionists to contextualize interactions and experiences within Thomas (2007) referred to as a social oppression frame, or what we have highlighted as a disability analytic, to be better integrated into the sociology of health/illness. One way that disability scholarship could be better incorporated into the social construction of illness literature is to focus on the generative or transformative aspects, rather than it being about solely "tragic" notions of impairment effects or managing stigma.…”

The Role of Sport in the Process of Negotiating Identity: Dealing with the Stigma of Disability by People with Acquired Bodily Dysfunctions

“…British sociologists of disability, such as Paul Abberley (1987) and Colin Barnes (1998), challenge Goffman's emphasis on deviance. Instead, they argue that being cast in a deviant role not only places the person with a disability in a devalued position but also the symbolic interactionist treatment of disability ignores oppression and the material structures supporting it (Charmaz 2019).…”