Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Understanding Stigmatization and Resistance Through Ethnography: Implications for Practice and Research

2018; University of Chicago Press; Volume: 9; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1086/699659

2334-2315

Wendy Haight,

Racial and Ethnic Identity Research

Previous articleNext article FreeUnderstanding Stigmatization and Resistance Through Ethnography: Implications for Practice and ResearchWendy L. HaightWendy L. HaightUniversity of Minnesota, Twin Cities Search for more articles by this author University of Minnesota, Twin CitiesFull TextPDF Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreThis invited article is based on the 2018 Aaron Rosen Lecture presented by Wendy Haight at the Society for Social Work and Research 22nd Annual Conference—"Achieving Equal Opportunity, Equity, and Justice"—held January 10–14, 2018, in Washington, DC. The annual Aaron Rosen Lecture features distinguished scholars who have accumulated a body of significant and innovative scholarship relevant to practice, the research base for practice, or effective use of research in practice.I was honored to present the Aaron Rosen Lecture at the 2018 meeting of the Society for Social Work and Research. Preparing for this talk provided me with an invaluable opportunity to reflect on the research projects I've conducted over the past 25 years. I considered those studies that have been most influential in shaping the way I think about social work research, practice, and their relationship, and which might be illuminating to others. In revisiting three of these studies, I noticed that they have several things in common. All addressed issues of stigmatization and resistance to stigmatization, and all were ethnographies. In the Rosen Lecture, I described these ethnographies, suggested how we might think differently about reducing stigmatization through social work practice, and discussed the relationship between social work practice and research.The three ethnographies that I described focus on stigmatized groups. Stigmatization is a social process through which individuals with differences considered to be undesirable within their particular social group are marked, separated, and discredited in the larger society (Goffman, 1963). This occurs through labeling, stereotyping, status loss, discrimination, and social exclusion (Link, Yang, Phelan, & Collins, 2004). Most social work clients experience stigmatization, or what Goffman refers to as a "spoiled identity." That is, they are socially discredited by virtue of physical appearance (e.g., a visible disability), by their behavior (e.g., substance misuse or other mental health issues), or by the group to which they belong (e.g., an ethnic minority group). For the targeted person, stigmatization is essentially an attack on the inherent worth of the self as a member of the social group.Consider the experiences of three children growing up in very different cultural communities.In 1995, a 10-year-old girl stands up in Sunday school at her Black Baptist church in Salt Lake City, UT, and confidently recites the books of the New Testament from memory. On Monday, she goes to public school and fails her spelling test. In 2005, a 10-year-old White girl from rural Illinois, whose impoverished parents are addicted to methamphetamine, is distraught when excluded from her childhood friend's 11th birthday party. In 2015, a 10-year-old Japanese boy with a learning disability, who was unable to contribute to his peer group as expected, cries to his teacher, "I want to die." I suggest to you that stigmatization is a common thread connecting the experiences of these children.My Rosen Lecture had three basic aims. First, I described how adults from several very different cultural communities supported the emerging "self" of children exposed to stigmatization—in other words, how they helped children to resist the "spoiled identity." Second, I illustrated how that understanding provides important lessons or models for culturally based social work interventions. I suggested that interventions informed by an understanding of how others in our clients' cultural communities have successfully resisted stigmatization are more likely than those imposed from the outside to make sense to our clients and be effective and sustainable in their everyday lives. Finally, I described implications of this set of ethnographies for evidence-based practice: specifically, for designing a social work methodology that strengthens the link between social work research and practice.The approach to social work research and evidence-based practice that I described is analogous to the strategy taken by designers and engineers when they look to nature for problem-solving inspiration—that is, biomimicry (Haubursin, 2017). For example, the Kingfisher's beak has evolved over millions of years, resulting in an ability to dive seamlessly into water. Japanese engineers remodeled the bullet train's nosecone after the Kingfisher's beak to eliminate the extremely loud bangs that occurred when trains emerged from tunnels and into neighborhoods with strict noise regulations (Fitzpatrick, 2018). In the Rosen Lecture, I illustrated two simple ideas. First, social workers must look for inspiration to the solutions that members of stigmatized groups have evolved over the generations to resist oppression. Second, ethnographic research provides the lens for discerning those solutions and helping us to think differently about reducing stigmatization through social work practice.In the Rosen Lecture, I described several examples of metaphoric bullet trains from my own research, but I recognize that there are many others. The idea of building social work practice based on a deep understanding of the responses to human challenges that have evolved in diverse cultural communities is not new. For example, at the University of Minnesota Duluth Center for Regional and Tribal Child Welfare Studies, both non-Native and Native social work students are educated in the child-rearing beliefs and practices of the tribes of northern Minnesota. The culturally based practices of these social workers harness tribal resources to improve outcomes for Native families involved with child protection. The contemporary challenge is to design and articulate a social work research methodology that can systematically link such cultural knowledge to social work practice within the many diverse communities in the U.S. and internationally.Conceptual FrameworkFirst, let us consider some of the basic concepts underlying the three social work ethnographies. At the most general level, we can approach these issues from the perspective of developmental cultural psychology—specifically, the concept of "universalism without uniformity" (Shweder & Sullivan, 1993). This concept refers to challenges that, although common across diverse cultural groups, are nonetheless understood and responded to differently. My Rosen Lecture was concerned with stigmatization, which is widespread across cultural groups. However, the ways in which members of diverse groups respond are culturally nuanced.Why is this concept so important? Because any particular perspective—including on stigmatization—has blind spots. Close attention to diverse cultural cases exposes the blind spots in our own theories and practices and suggests new, creative ways of thinking about and approaching persistent social justice issues. A basic premise of my work is that we can conduct more relevant research, and design more effective social policies and practices, by learning from one another.Scholars describe stigmatization as an attack on the inherent worth of the self. But, what is meant by the self, how does it develop, and how is it affected by stigmatization? George Herbert Mead (1934) argued that the self is a fundamentally social concept and experience. It is part of a conscious, sharable, social process. To be a self is not to be aware merely of one's physical body, but to be self-aware of one's own behavior as part of a dynamic social process. When the individual becomes self-aware of her or his own part of the social act and also the part carried out by another, then she or he is a self. In other words, the self develops through social interaction.But how does the self develop through social interaction? At the most general level, children actively construct a self through socialization and acquisition. Socialization is the process through which more experienced individuals structure the social environment and display patterns of meanings for the child (e.g., Miller & Sperry, 1987; Wentworth, 1980). Socialization may be direct, as when a teacher discusses a child's disability with the class; or indirect, as when the teacher models empathy and acceptance of a child with a disability.Socialization may be intentional, as when South Korean educators organize a school-wide disability day, or it may be unintentional, as when a classmate overhears a teacher encourage or berate a child who is struggling because of a disability.Of course, children are not passive in the developmental process. Acquisition is the process through which children interpret, respond to, and ultimately embrace, reject, or elaborate upon the social patterns to which they are exposed (e.g., Miller & Sperry, 1987; Wentworth, 1980). Finally, socialization and acquisition are dialectical processes. Just as children are influenced by adults' socialization messages, so too are adults influenced by children (e.g., Corsaro, 1997; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Rogoff, 1990). For example, a Black Sunday school teacher described to me the ways she supported children in responding to racism, but then she went on to describe how such interactions with her young students enhanced her own understanding of the scriptures.There is, of course, variation in the outcomes of this process of developing a cultural self. The shared understandings of self that are necessary to function appropriately as a member of a particular cultural group—that is, the cultural self—vary widely (e.g., Shweder et al., 2006). For example, culture groups differ, broadly speaking, in the relative emphasis placed on the self as individual, distinct from other selves, and with stable traits (e.g., the prototypical European American self), and the self as interdependent, connected, and flexibly responsive to the social context (e.g., the prototypical East Asian self; see Lebra, 1976; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Rogoff, 2003). Developing a cultural self requires incorporating an understanding and experience of self that is shared with other community members in a complex, extended social developmental process.How can this process of developing a cultural self go awry? Stigmatization is a social process that undermines the developing self (Goffman, 1963). In some sense, the experience of stigmatization is a fundamental part of the human experience. At some point in our lives, most of us who are not born with stigmatized conditions or as members of stigmatized groups will acquire a disability through illness or accidents, or experience unemployment, mental health issues, or some other condition stigmatized by our cultural group. How stigmatization affects one's self, however, can vary with development. If we first experience disability and stigmatization in adulthood, we may experience challenges in readjusting our self; that is, re-establishing our roles and social status. When stigmatization occurs early in development, in childhood, the attack is on the emerging self. When one is newly acquiring a sense of oneself as a member of a peer group, for example, the experience of being labeled, discredited, and held apart can fundamentally disrupt the developmental process.During elementary school, children become increasingly sensitive to social comparisons and external feedback (Harter, 2006), and peer groups are central contexts for development (Chen, French, & Schneider, 2006). Yet disability and associated stigmatization can pose challenges for children's place within peer groups. Indeed, evidence indicates that school-aged children with disabilities from several countries report teasing by peers and feelings of being isolated, different, and "less than" other children (e.g., Kelly, 2005; McMaugh, 2011; McNulty, 2003). Those who report more stigmatization from peers tend to experience increased symptoms of depression, lower self-esteem (see Heary, Hennessy, & Swords, 2014), and poorer social functioning (McMaugh, 2011).The EthnographiesI turn now to the ethnographies for a better understanding of how adults support children's resistance to the stigmatized self and how that understanding can be used in evidence-based practice. I will briefly describe the methodology used in these three studies—what I call "social work ethnography." By methodology, I mean the underlying logic, perspectives, and values of the research (Greene, 2007).Similar to traditional ethnography, the overarching goal of social work ethnography is to understand the beliefs and practices of particular cultural communities. What makes social work ethnography distinct is that these understandings are then used to generate fresh approaches to addressing persistent social justice issues.Also similar to traditional ethnography, social work ethnography is a form of mixed-methods research that entails a deliberate integration of qualitative and quantitative perspectives primarily for the purposes of breadth and depth of understanding. What makes social work ethnography distinct is the integration of qualitative and quantitative perspectives for the purpose of the design and evaluation of social work practice.Finally, traditional ethnography and social work ethnography are similar in that they both involve sustained community engagement. In social work ethnographies, however, community members contribute directly to identifying the issues being investigated and may be involved as partners in the research—similar to community-based participatory-action research.Resisting the "Mark of Cain": Supporting Children's Self-Worth Through StorytellingThe first example of a social work ethnography is my first research project as a new assistant professor at the University of Utah. It emerged from concerns of African American community leaders with the school experiences of Black children in Salt Lake City. Our goal was to understand the socialization and acquisition processes through which Black children achieved academic success and to use that as a model for reducing disparities in academic achievement and discipline in public schools. (Haight, 2002).At the time of this ethnography, the 1990s, Blacks in Utah were experiencing challenges similar to African Americans in other parts of the country. They also faced some additional challenges: They were religious and ethnic minorities in a larger social context where religious affiliation was central. In the state of Utah, the influence of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as the LDS or Mormon church) was pervasive in the larger social, business, and political contexts. About 70% of the state's residents were members of this close-knit community. Mormon theology has particular teachings with respect to Black people. In the 19th century, the Mormon church adopted a proslavery position formulated primarily as the "curse of Canaan." In brief, this interpretation of the Old Testament asserts that Black people descended from Cain. Mormon theology teaches that the "mark" of Cain was black skin. It also teaches that Black people failed to perform properly in the "War in Heaven" between Lucifer and God. The spirits of those despised groups who took a neutral position have inherited the bodies of Black people living on earth (see Haight, 1998, 2002).At the time of my study, African Americans were less than 1% of Utah's population, and there were no primarily Black neighborhoods in Salt Lake City. Likewise, there were no predominantly Black LDS churches in Utah. African Americans were primarily members of Black Baptist churches. The site of the ethnography, First Baptist Church (a pseudonym), was considered by Black members to be the "mother church" and was a center of the Black community in Utah. It was where my biracial family was directed by the University of Utah dean for diversity upon our arrival in Salt Lake City (see Haight, 2002).The social work ethnography developed over a 10-year period, beginning with 4 years of sustained community engagement. This engagement involved systematic, audio-recorded observations of Sunday school classes for children ages 3–15, participant observations in church and at church events, in-depth audio-recorded interviews with Sunday school teachers and administrators, and informal conversations with children and parents captured in field notes.One of the themes that emerged in this social work ethnography was how adults used narratives of personal experience to create relationships with children, shift the locus of moral authority from the majority White group, and develop an alternative belief system that contrasted with the stigmatized mainstream self. Three cornerstones of that protective cultural and religious belief system emerged: the centrality of community to provide a sense of belonging and support, the equality of believers, and the inherent dignity and worth of each individual as a child of God.These socialization messages were redundantly conveyed in narratives told in multiple social contexts—at Sunday school, church, home, special events, and celebrations—and by multiple respected adults. The following fragment from a narrative told to me by "Grandma Edith" is illustrative. (All names of child and adult study participants referred to in this paper are pseudonyms.) At the time, Grandma Edith was 73 years old and a respected elder of First Baptist Church. She recounted to me her experience as a 7-year-old child walking with her classmates to a segregated school in the deep South during the Jim Crow era:The Whites would be walking one way, and we'd be walking the other. They'd yell at us, "You dirty, black niggers! We hate you! We hate you!" I'd go to Mama and ask her, "Why do they hate us?" She'd always take me to the Bible. She taught me that God loves us all. God is the judge. She taught me not to take hate inside myself.(Haight, 1998, p. 213)Grandma Edith went on to explain that when we hate, we destroy the part of God that he left inside each of us when he created us. From the perspective taught to her by her mama and reinforced throughout her community, 7-year-old Edith was not the victim in this story; rather, her taunters were.Now, this is not to say that Grandma Edith was not profoundly affected by racism. When Edith was 10 years old, her mother died because she did not have access to health care widely available to Whites. As an intelligent, ambitious young girl, Edith was denied the opportunity to attend school past the ninth grade. As a mother, she lost a beloved stepson to gun violence in Oakland, CA, during the civil rights era. As her dementia progressed in her 80s, Grandma Edith begin to lose the stories told to her by her parents while she was growing up. She also lost her ability to cope through her beliefs, and this loss caused her great anguish (Hudley, Haight, & Miller, 2009). What I am saying is that the socialization Edith received as a child and that she passed down to her children and grandchildren, and to the children in her community, helped her to resist a spoiled identity. It allowed her to live life with a sense of dignity, purpose, optimism, and a deep love of people.When we allow ourselves as researchers to assume the stance of learner and truly enter into other people's experiences, we become acutely aware of the many assumptions that we share with others in our own cultural communities. Awareness of these cultural blind spots can shift our perspectives and help us to think differently about how we can reduce stigmatization through social work practice. A few of my many cultural blind spots that became apparent to me during this social work ethnography included the importance of indigenous beliefs—in this case, beliefs central to African American Christianity—as a source of resistance to stigmatization. I also became sensitized to the powerful role played by the deliberate and strategic use of oral narrative in formal settings—Sunday school in this case—and recognized its potential as a model for social work practice.Indeed, we used the understandings gained from this social work ethnography to design, implement, and evaluate an intervention to strengthen the educational performance of African American children: a computer club. Perhaps more significantly, we aimed to reduce the stigmatization of Black children through the next generation of professionals: White University of Utah students planning to enter education, social work, or other helping professions. Our computer club was staffed every Saturday morning by adult church members, who mentored and were assisted by the university students. The University of Utah students also received preparation at the university in the form of oral narratives of personal experience from Grandma Edith and the pastor, and ongoing supervision (Haight, 2002). The computer club was sustained by the church for over a decade and evolved into a tutoring program.Resisting Stigmatization in White, Impoverished, Methamphetamine-Involved Families: Children's Mainstream Leisure Activities With GrandparentsThe second example of a social work ethnography was conducted during my time at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. It emerged from the concerns of two of my former MSW students who had become child-protection workers. They were experiencing an influx of children from methamphetamine-involved families onto their caseloads. They perceived that the needs of children from these families were extensive, and they needed more information to respond effectively. Together we launched an ethnography of methamphetamine-involved families in rural, east-central Illinois (Haight, Ostler, Black, & Kingery, 2009).Social workers were focused on methamphetamine use for a variety of reasons. It is a powerful, highly addictive central nervous system stimulant and neurotoxin. Regular methamphetamine use is associated with a variety of serious health and mental health problems. In the first decade of the 21st century, when our research was conducted, it was a significant criminal justice and public health problem across the U.S., especially in rural areas. Law enforcement officers and child-welfare workers in rural areas were encountering children living in substandard homes where their parents produced and used methamphetamine (see Haight et al., 2009).Our ethnography involved sustained engagement in a rural, low-income area of east-central Illinois. To understand the contexts in which children were reared, we spent 90 hours shadowing an investigator visiting homes of parents suspected of methamphetamine involvement. We also conducted in-depth interviews with knowledgeable professionals (child-welfare workers, law enforcement officers, substance abuse treatment providers, and foster parents), as well as children and parents from methamphetamine-involved families. We also conducted home visits with methamphetamine-involved families to learn about the conditions of the home and family relationships. Finally, we conducted developmental and clinical assessments of parents and children in their homes (Haight et al., 2009).Overall, we learned that many children were brought by their parents into a rural drug subculture characterized by distinct antisocial beliefs and practices. Children's experience of this subculture included environmental danger from the toxins and explosions associated with cooking methamphetamine, adult violence, chaos, neglect, abuse, loss, and isolation. In the vast majority of cases, children's experiences also included a deep love and loyalty to family.We also observed that people addicted to methamphetamine were a highly stigmatized group of "White trash, meth heads." Of course, school-aged children were well aware of this stigmatization, and some described experiences similar to what Goffman (1963) termed "courtesy stigma"—that is, a loss of status through close association with a stigmatized person, in this case parents. For example, some children described being excluded from after-school social activities with classmates from mainstream families.Some children developed antisocial beliefs and behavior such as lying, stealing, drug use, and violence through direct teaching by their parents and, indirectly, through observing parents' own behavior. But some children resisted this socialization. As a group, children showed clinically significant levels of externalizing behavior—especially aggression—as measured by Achenbach's (1991) Childhood Behavior Checklist. But not all children were struggling. We were very interested in understanding this variation.One source of variation appeared to be relationships with grandparents. When children were invited during qualitative interviews to talk about their families, many described socially and emotionally supportive relationships with healthy grandparents. Although some of their grandparents had misused substances in their earlier years, including while raising their own children, some were no longer doing so. Other grandparents had never misused substances. A number of grandparents had jobs and stable relationships, and they appeared to participate in the wider "mainstream" community.Results indicated that children who spontaneously reported positive relationships with grandparents scored significantly lower on Childhood Behavior Checklist externalizing behaviors—specifically, aggressive behaviors. Basically, children describing positive relationships with grandparents during qualitative interviews had fewer behavioral problems than those who did not.We wanted to better understand how relationships with grandparents might protect children. We went back to the qualitative interviews for clues. As we expected, some children described grandparents providing shelter and psychological support during times when their parents were incapacitated. More children, however, described engagement with their grandparents in mainstream leisure activities (e.g., school, church, sports, scouting, and 4-H) with healthy adults and nondelinquent peers.Like the study in Salt Lake City's Black community, this ethnographic research revealed for me a few of my many cultural blind spots. They included the power of resources available in the everyday environment—including relatively isolated, impoverished, rural communities—to resist stigmatization. Another blind spot for me was the resilience of adults who may have been severely dysfunctional as younger people but who by midlife were stable and able to serve as literal lifelines for their grandchildren. Next, I became aware of the potential for participation in leisure activities to create a sense of belonging in children who have experienced courtesy stigma. Finally, I was interested in using these understandings as a model for social work interventions.We used this ethnographic research to design a "community grandparent" intervention for rural children from methamphetamine-involved families. Consistent with evidence-based practices in children's mental health, we used a narrative intervention. Our innovation was to use rural community members who had worked professionally with children to deliver the intervention. Retired school teachers, child protective services workers, and counselors served as "community grandparents" to one or two children. As community members, they knew how to tell stories in this cultural context, and they were familiar with mainstream leisure activities. The intervention was sustained over 7 months to allow children—many of whom had problematic relationships with adults—to develop a relationship with their community grandparents. Also important was that the intervention occurred in and around the child's home. These contexts supported children's personal storytelling. For example, one child wanted to visit the gravesite of the mother she had lost to methamphetamine addiction. Another child began talking about his imprisoned father for the first time while watching a truck similar to the one his father had driven. Also essential was the training and ongoing, supportive supervision that community grandparents received from a team consisting of a rural psychiatrist, a child clinical psychologist, a developmental psychologist, and a social worker (see Haight et al., 2009; Haight, Black, & Sheridan, 2010; Sheridan, Haight, & Cleeland, 2011).We conducted a mixed-methods pilot evaluation of our community grandparent intervention (Haight et al., 2010). All children from methamphetamine-involved families who were receiving services from the rural field office during a 3-month period were randomly assigned to the intervention or a wait-list control group. A repeated-measures analysis of variance revealed a group (intervention or control) by time (preintervention or postintervention) interaction on externalizing behavior, but no main effects. Externalizing scores for the intervention group decreased modestly, and wait list control-group externalizing scores increased modestly over the 7-month intervention. Intervention-group gains remained stable over the 7-month follow up.We wanted to better understand how the intervention may have been helpful and how it could be improved, so we conducted qualitative interviews with the children, their caregivers, and community grandparents about their experiences. In brief, children and their caregivers said that they enjoyed the relationships they developed with their community grandparents and found it helpful to share and solve problems with them. For 14-year-old "Brad," it was important that "Lynn" was "a local person." He e