Stigma is nothing new. In Ancient Greece the word meant ‘tattoo’ and referred to writing on people’s skin as a means of punishment and control. Recognising that, says sociologist Imogen Tyler, is a game changer; it means we can start thinking about how stigma literally marks and divides us - and start thinking about how to resist.
Here, Imogen hears from sociologist Alice Bloch about her research with descendants of Holocaust survivors who have chosen to tattoo themselves with the numbers inked on their ancestors at Auschwitz. Such an act, she says, is about love - and resistance to stigmatisation. Alice also reflects on her work with adult children of refugees - and how stigma makes silences that weave through generations. Plus: how stigmatising undocumented migrants serves capitalism, but makes for a poorer society.
A powerful conversation about stigma and subversion, solidarity and resistance.
Read more about Alice here. Her research on descendants of Holocaust survivors and the concentration camp tattoo is funded by a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Research grant in partnership with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
Credits
Host: Imogen Tyler
Guest: Prof. Alice Bloch
Executive & Development Producer: Alice Bloch
Project Lead: Imogen Tyler
Project Officer: Danielle Galway
Sound Engineer: David Crackles
Music & Artwork: Bruce Bennett
Episode Resources:
By Alice Bloch and co-authors:
Further reading :
Find extended reading lists and learn more about The Stigma Conversations at The Sociological Review
Stigma is nothing new. In Ancient Greece the word meant ‘tattoo’ and referred to writing on people’s skin as a means of punishment and control. Recognising that, says sociologist Imogen Tyler, is a game changer; it means we can start thinking about how stigma literally marks and divides us - and start thinking about how to resist.
Here, Imogen hears from sociologist Alice Bloch about her research with descendants of Holocaust survivors who have chosen to tattoo themselves with the numbers inked on their ancestors at Auschwitz. Such an act, she says, is about love - and resistance to stigmatisation. Alice also reflects on her work with adult children of refugees - and how stigma makes silences that weave through generations. Plus: how stigmatising undocumented migrants serves capitalism, but makes for a poorer society.
A powerful conversation about stigma and subversion, solidarity and resistance.
Read more about Alice here. Her research on descendants of Holocaust survivors and the concentration camp tattoo is funded by a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Research grant in partnership with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
Credits
Host: Imogen Tyler
Guest: Prof. Alice Bloch
Executive & Development Producer: Alice Bloch
Project Lead: Imogen Tyler
Project Officer: Danielle Galway
Sound Engineer: David Crackles
Music & Artwork: Bruce Bennett
Episode Resources:
By Alice Bloch and co-authors:
Further reading :
Find extended reading lists and learn more about The Stigma Conversations at The Sociological Review
Imogen Tyler: 0:06
Welcome back to the stigma conversations with me, Imogen Tyler. In the last episode, I introduced my thinking on stigma. I tried to answer the question, what's new to say about that? After all, there are loads of taboo busting, barrier breaking conversations going on today. And it seems – at least in some areas – that some kind of progress is being made. Now, I think that's essential. It can be life saving. But I also think at the same time as talking more about how stigma makes us feel, what it does to our psyches, to how we devalue ourselves and others. We also need to ask how stigma is produced and why. Once we do that, and look up at power and back at history – we see how stigma is totally wrapped up in politics, economics, capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy. That means we can start to see stigma as power, a practice, a machine, something orchestrated to serve the powerful. And that means we stopped thinking that's just how it is, and ask for better. In this series, I'm meeting inspirational academics, activists and frontline workers to help me reflect on how stigma works and where it comes from, but also how we might resist it and change the conversation.
Geraldine Onek: 1:33
It's that proactivity, isn't it? Like actively having those discussions even though they make you feel uncomfortable?
Andy Knox: 1:39
Why the hell would you want to not be woke? Why wouldn't you want to be awake to the issues of injustice in the world, to the realities of stigmatisation and it's affect in society, it's disgraceful that we should mock it.
Helen Greatorex: 1:52
If you're outraged about something, the chances are, it's linked to some sort of policy that could be changed, that could then improve people's lives.
Imogen Tyler: 2:12
Today, we're talking about how stigma makes a mark. In the last century, stigma came to be seen as a kind of psychological or relational thing to be overcome with empowerment, empathy, and conversation. But to grasp what stigma really means, we actually need to go way back as far as ancient Greece – where the word actually meant tattoo – and refer to things like the writing of words on people's skin as a means of punishment and control of enslaved people, those caught stealing or running away. We've seen this sort of penal stigma throughout history, in the Greco Roman Empires, the Atlantic slave trade, and mediaeval Europe too. I think having this awareness of stigma has been literally written on the body is game changing, because it makes us start to look up at those who have the power to create that stigma – it makes us start to think of stigma as something that's literally marks us – a machine about social control. And that's crucial today, whether we're calling out the more symbolic forms of stigma – found in tabloids, or poverty porn TV. Or thinking about the bodily marking that carries on to this day – the writing of numbers of migrants arms in Czechia in 2015, being just one example. And all of that is why I wanted to have a conversation with the sociologist Alice Bloch. Among other things – including her work on migration – she has recently done research with the descendants of Holocaust survivors who have chosen to tattoo themselves with the numbers inscribed on their ancestors at Auschwitz. It is, she told me, a project about memory, storytelling and silences all through the lens of the tattoo.
Alice Bloch: 4:06
It's in effect, I suppose, looking at family relations, but it's also looking at wider public memorial practices. Because if you have a tattoo on your body, people do ask you questions about it. And so it's not just a private act – even though you might think you're doing it for a private reason – actually, it expands to an outward facing thing, that, that becomes part of a narrative and dialogue.
Imogen Tyler: 4:28
It's an extraordinary thing to do – to have your parent or grandparents tattoo, tattooed on yourself. What was it like to talk to those descendants and how did they talk about their reasons for choosing, in a way, to take what was a violent stigma, and to rework that as a kind of form of memorialization?
Alice Bloch: 4:56
That's an interesting question. I've interviewed both the children and the grandchildren. of survivors, I think there's more grandchildren than children of survivors doing this. And I think that's partly about the renaissance of the tattoo and contemporary life – it being more acceptable to have tattoos now than it was. And so, what I found – in terms of asking people their reasons for doing it – it was complex. But if I had to narrow it down to something that came through in all the interviews, I'd have to say, it was about love. It was about wanting the survivor to know that they were loved, that their trauma was understood, that the memory lived on and it shouldn't be a stigma – that actually it should be a source of continuity. It should be a sense of pride in survival. It should be a sense of pride in, in families being... I should just say actually, sorry, that this research at the moment is taking place in Israel – which has a political, a very particular social, political and cultural context. I do hope to expand it to other geographical locations. But of course – it is in Israel itself – the tattoo has changed from being very stigmatised to almost being a badge of honour. And having ancestors who were, who had the Auschwitz concentration camp complex tattoo is something that now is no longer stigmatised as it was for the survivors or for many of them. So when the the descendants get the tattoo – I think that in addition to love – I think there's also something about keeping the memory alive – not only of the survivor, but of the Holocaust – more generally. Most people I spoke to said that if somebody asks them a question about it – not only did they want to tell their family story – but if they got to talk about the Holocaust, and remind people that the Holocaust had happened, and that genocides aren't just about the Nazis, but genocides have taken place lots of times in places. That reminding people about genocide is an important thing to do. And I think that replicating the number is also in a sense, an act of defiance. I've been thinking about this a lot. And I think in a way, it's an act of defiance, because what it says is that people survived. The objective wasn't achieved, people arrived in Israel, they had no families, they had nothing. They arrived on their own in the post war period. And actually, they've... many formed families quickly had children. And the very fact that they were able to survive this is is, I think, important to their descendants, because it is about saying – well, we had nothing but there's a sense of continuity. And the tattoo shows that in a way. It shows that, that there is life afterwards – in spite of the trauma that's unimaginable to you and I and most other people who haven't lived through this trauma – and even the descendants acknowledge that the trauma for them was completely unimaginable.
Imogen Tyler: 7:52
There's something actually incredibly moving hearing you speak about getting the tattoo as a descendent as a form of love – and a kind of memorialization and a kind of honouring. In later episodes, we're going to be talking about subversion and solidarity a bit more. But I think what's powerful about what you're saying, Alice, is that you're showing through your research how actually what I call stigma politics, fails very often to fully dehumanise people, in that there is survival. And there is this kind of reworking and resistance that's going on in very small ways, sometimes. And of course, these tattoos serve – as you say, getting a tattoo is a kind of social thing to do. It's, it's a sort of way to remind ourselves about genocides, as you said, both in Europe – less than a century ago – but also ongoing violence and war. It forces, connections and conversations. It's also important to remember, I think, how these sort of fascist practices of branding often has some kind of historical precedent or warning. As you know, I've written about some of the German colonial practices in Libya – prior to the Nazi Holocaust – and how the roots of fascism and its modes of operation originated in these sort of colonial experiments in Africa – including in concentration camps – and genocides again, against the Herero and Nama people in the first decade of the 20th century. So there's something about connection... there about generations of connection to and the origins of these kinds of moments of genocide, violence, war and oppression, that seems important here.
Alice Bloch: 9:54
It is very important I was, I was reading and thinking about stigmatisation – like you were talking about in your work – and this longer history of it: branding. And, of course, you know, from the sort of mediaeval Middle Ages, Jews in Europe were required to wear a badge – you know, as Goffman and you talk about – the idea of a sort of stigma symbol. And I think that this, the very fact that that communicated Jews as being somehow different and identifiable. And the stigma badge was, as people as recognisable – is a practice then as you talk about in your book – about, about branding slaves in different contexts and colonial contexts. And also thinking about this, of course – English nomadic groups, of course – were enslaved and branded with a V. So it's got a long history in different contexts. And, and one of the things that struck me in my own research, when we're thinking about branding and is, is the pain, of course – when you have a tattoo, and the act of the tattoo is painful. And branding can take different forms. Obviously, it can be the branding on the body, but it can be the badge wearing – which, which marks you out and identifies you. And one of the things that struck me in talking to my interviewees was that... I talked to one man and he had his grandmother's number tattooed across his chest on on the rib – at the top of sort of one of the higher up ribs – and, and I asked him why he decided to have the tattoo there. And he told me it was because he was told it was the most painful place to have it. And he wants to be consumed by the pain when he had the tattoo. Now, what was also interesting about him, is his brother also had his grandmother's tattoo on his body, and his brother had it on the back of his leg sort of going down vertically on his calf at the back of his leg. And when I asked him about this, he said that he wanted to have it there because he wasn't a victim, like his grandmother. You know, he hadn't been in the Holocaust himself. But he wanted to have the number on his body, because his grandmother and use this word – like many other people in the Holocaust – was just a scratch from being murdered. And I thought the term "scratch" again – when you think about the process of tattooing – was absolutely fascinating. I don't know if you've come across the work of somebody called Marianne Hirsch on Postmemory? – she talks about the descendants of Holocaust survivors who've experienced trauma is almost bleeding. And so this analogy of scratch and blood and pain, I think, says something quite powerful about trauma – whether or not you've lived the experience – there's something going through those generations, I was so stricken by the number of grandchildren who talked about having nightmares – about being chased by Nazis, about what they would do, where they would stand in a line if they were in the selection process, about not wanting to have their children lining up outside school. And all the sorts of things that triggered them seem to be so linked to the experience of a grandparent that it was it was so powerful. Can I just tell you one other little anecdote which is about the, the badge? So I spoke to a woman who grew up in a kibbutz. A kibbutz is like a, originally it was it was based on socialism. So everybody worked, the children grew up in children's homes, but over time, they've become more capitalist enterprises. And, and there were a kibbutz's that were just.... Kibbut's really have survivors that had come from Europe, and they're sort of agricultural, mainly, communities at that time. And she was growing up in the kibbutz, and her grandfather was a Holocaust survivor. And after school, her friends would go over to her grandfather's house and open the drawer in his living room – he had a small room. And in the drawer, he had his yellow star of David, which he had brought with him from Europe and the Holocaust. And he obviously was forced to wear this yellow star of David. And her friends and her were absolutely fascinated by it. And they'd ask him to tell them stories about it. And significantly – of course, as a survivor, he didn't talk to his children – it kind of skips a generation and survivors begin to talk a little bit more to grandchildren. When she decided to get his number tattooed on her own body, she also got a Star of David tattooed next to the number...
Imogen Tyler: 9:54
Wow.
Alice Bloch: 10:05
And I said, Well, why did you decide to not replicate it precisely? And she said – well, I wanted to have the Star of David there because my Grandfather's father, his great grandfather said – rather than wearing the star and being ashamed, wear it with pride. And she said, I'm wearing this with pride. I'm doing what he said, I'm not ashamed.
Imogen Tyler: 14:38
That's such a powerful story about the reworking of stigma power through generations and the reclaiming it in ways that both remember and memorialise and honour some of those stories and histories. As you were talking, I was thinking – which histories are accessible and which are silenced? And in a way, you're talking about a refusal to silence. But then stigma can also create silences. And then I, you know, I got that from your work, Alice, in that first generation of survivors, you know, where it's a shame and it's still hidden and the kind of unwillingness to talk. And I was thinking also about your other work – on interviewing adult children of people who came to the UK as refugees from places like Sri Lanka and Turkey – and the kind of, the sort of more damaging silences sometimes that are in those sort of intergen... again, intergenerational traumas or memories that aren't told or that are more hidden or unspoken, I just wondered if you could tell us a bit about that earlier work and reflect on silence and speaking in that work?
Alice Bloch: 16:03
In some ways, I found similarities between the project – which is on descendants of Holocaust survivors, and the second generation – that was people who had come from Sri Lanka, Tamils from Sri Lanka, Kurds from Turkey and refugees from Vietnam – and one of the things that I think was very powerful in that was that there was almost like a wall of silence that children knew not to ask. And they knew that if they asked, it could result in pain, migraine, it could result in sort of comedic responses – which they knew weren't really the kind of responses they wanted to have. And a sort of avoidance of asking because of not wanting to, I suppose colloquially, pour salt on a wound. So for the children in my second generation project – which was a collaborative project with colleagues in France and in Switzerland – and in the UK, I work with somebody called Shirin Hirsch – she's a historian now, and Manchester Metropolitan University. It was clear to us that in those situations, it could lead to not just a source of frustration, but a sense of alienation, about not understanding histories past and identity. So although the children of refugees were – these were adult children, I have to say, so they were well thought out and processing their thinking – they were aware that they wanted to protect their parents. It also left them with a void in their own lives, about where they came from _ and their parents lives, which was difficult for them. And some used other strategies to get information. So for example, they would go to the library, do research, talk to other people from the community. One person did their dissertation on Vietnamese refugees to try and sort of make better sense of their family histories. But there was definitely a sense of, of alienation, and and a sense of frustration at not being able to communicate, but knowing that it wasn't okay. And this came up very strongly also in the Holocaust project. I think that – particularly for the children and survivors that I interviewed – where they knew that their mother or their father simply couldn't – wasn't physically able – to talk and communicate the enormity of the trauma. And you've probably read work by Eva Hoffman, but she talks about the non-verbal signs and signifiers of trauma – the nightmares, the screaming in the night, the whispering obviously, the silences. And I think in both of these projects, that was very evident, and the things people told us. You know, there would be whispering when elders and communities got together – and the children and the grandchildren would know what they were, kind of know what they were talking about – but knew they couldn't enter the conversation. Which was difficult – and is – difficult, intergenerationally I think. So silences are almost as powerful as stories, in a way, in terms of what they do. And the other thing, I think, that was very significant in the second generation project was that people select what stories to tell. And often you had stories of heroism, or more comedic stories – and the the children of refugees were... sort of felt like it was their parents trying to protect them. You give it a nice gloss so that it doesn't seem so traumatic – so that the child can get on with their lives and not also be traumatised by the trauma of the parent. But in spite of that you can see and hearing people talk how the trauma will seep through because it can be very powerful.
Imogen Tyler: 19:31
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things I was thinking about as you're talking – one of the things strikes me about your work, is the sort of theme of movement and marking. So whether that's voluntary migrations or forced migrations, and the ways in which there's this link between migration and marking out – I mean, I, I've been thinking a lot about how normalised it's become to, to have people arriving across the channel in boats and dying and drowning and how – I suppose linking back to where we began – that kind of, the powerful top down stigmatisation by the state and by media – that symbolic stigmatisation of refugees and migrants. And then what your work reminds me of, is, you know, how that trauma of stigma is kind of reworked by people in their everyday lives. And what, what stories might those people arriving in Britain by boat, you know, tell to their children or, you know, will a... How will that trauma be remembered? So I suppose there's this struggle or traffic between like, top down stigma power and the politics of stigma production – that attempts to dehumanise people. And then there's this actual lived experiences of working with stigma where it's reworked and sometimes becomes a source of both exposing the power, but also kind of, sort of honouring the fact that you've survived that – despite this incredibly hostile environment. I mean, I suppose thinking about the contemporary moment. I mean, you know, we saw this, didn't we – around Brexit with a kind of explosion of that kind of "go home" van campaigns – the infamous "Breaking Point" poster that you UKIP use with doctored images of refugees – that all have this idea of being invaded, and this sort of resurgence of nationalism. You know, this is the sort of context in which we're now doing our different research on different histories of stigma, violence, memory, trauma. Yeah, I suppose how do we draw on the work we've done on histories of stigma, violence, resistance to, to kind of think about what's happening now? And what you what you beautifully called that kind of work of love, or compassion or empathy.
Alice Bloch: 22:19
I mean, in reading your work on stigma, I, one of the things that really struck me about it is how you talk about stigma power as a way of managing populations. And I think the way you talk about how government practices – I think you use the term cascade – down into sort of everyday interactions. Linking that to the idea of capitalism. And I think I want to try to link that to the apparatus of capitalism – which I think is something that you talk about in your book – because you're, you're much more kind of macro in your focus than I am. And in a way we complement each other, because I think your, sort of, macro focus and my more everyday experience work quite well together, in terms of theoretically, but also practically thinking about the impact. And I think the work with undocumented migrants is a good way of thinking about this because, in a way, undocumented migrants – in spite of go home vans, and in spite of all the rhetoric and narrative and the political expediency – actually, undocumented migrants are very useful, and we know that they're useful for the state and half hearted attempts to do raids are terrifying for everybody – and very public attempts to deport and deportation and the Rwanda strategy. We know all of this stuff is signalling, it's politics. It's oppression, it's labelling, it stigmatising. It's putting fear into people's lives. But when push comes to shove, of course, having people working in exploitative labour conditions – who are unable to even seek minimum wage, get paid half or a third of what documented workers get paid – is very, very useful for exploitive, exploitative – to use your terms – apparatus of capitalism. It keeps businesses going. And governments, I think, are quite half hearted in their attempts – because it suits them. I mean, let's not beat around the bush here that it does work for capitalism. But what it leads us to is, is societies that are based on fear, on inequality, as you talk about – on people without basic rights, people who can't seek health services, can't take their children to the library or for vaccinations. It creates a society where you've got groups of people always looking over their shoulder, who can't seek any forms of justice, who are vulnerable permanently. And that works for capitalism, but it doesn't work for coherent society, or one that we might want to live in.
Imogen Tyler: 24:48
You know, as you're speaking... both... I'm thinking about two things. One is about the relationship between capitalism and stigma. So you know what – what I call in the book The Political Economy of stigma – and this is actually about enriching the few, at the expense of the rest. And and there's something around that that's very important that I think I'm going to return to in other episodes later on in the series. But the main thing that I just want to say is that I think what your work really does is makes us, it makes us... really makes us wake up. And I always am thinking about that a lot at the moment – in terms of the anti - so called "woke" politics, actually being awake to history, and these repetitions of historical violence, trauma and stigma – seems to me to be absolutely crucial in terms of navigating a way out of where we are now. So have you got anything final to share around that idea that part of our work, in a way, as educators is about helping people be awake and aware.
Alice Bloch: 26:02
I think as a sociologist – I don't know if you feel the same – but I think that we always have to understand history and the past to understand the present. And I think that we have seen things repeat themselves. And we have – both in our own ways, either theoretically or in terms of individual narratives – understood the impact of the repeating of history – and the way in which stigma and labelling people and stigmatising people reproduces itself. Be it a new way of doing it, or the impact of an old way which carries on through generations. As sociologists, I think it's really important for us always to place our work within historical context and to try to learn and understand from that. And I'm not convinced that the policymakers and the people that are making the decisions, listen to us, or take that much notice of us – because I do actually think that – as sociologists – we do have a contribution we could make. But it's not always the contribution that the policymakers and the politicians want to hear.
Imogen Tyler: 27:04
The sociologist Alice Bloch talking to me about memory, silence aversion and speaking truth to power. I think Alice is so right – we have to be awake to history. Too many of the things we talked about are atrocities we tend to turn away from or think are safely in the past – whether that's 20th century genocide and related histories of slavery and colonialism, or the treatment of undocumented migrant workers today. Looking closely at the history of stigma reminds us of the extent to which the ways in which we classify, name and value others is embedded within much longer practices of discipline and control. And one point that emerged in our conversation is about the relationship between stigma and capitalism. That is – how stigma and the social divisions and fears it stirs up – work to oil the wheels of exploitive systems that are grounded in and then also reproduce inequalities of health and wealth. In fact, there's a growing body of research that shows how stigma affects particular groups and populations cumulatively, over time, through for example, discriminatory social policy and laws. But I think one important takeaway from my discussion with Alice is that stigma power never totally works. It never manages to fully dehumanise those people it targets. People have always resisted and reworked stigma, and continue to do so – including through acts of subversion, compassion, and love.
Imogen Tyler: 29:03
Next, I'm talking to Helen Greatorex. From Citizens Advice North Lancashire about stigma, welfare and poverty in the context of austerity and the cost of living crisis here in the UK. Before you skip through to that, please do take a moment to review us and tap follow in the app you're using to hear this right now. And remember, you can catch our reading list on the podcast page over at the sociologicalreview.org. My producer was Alice Bloch – No, not the same Alice Bloch. Our sound engineer was Dave Crackles. Thanks for listening.