Paper short abstract:

The history of stigma is about power written on bodies. However, many stigmata are not visible but can manifest, for example, when verbally revealed as feelings of dirtiness in an interview. How does studying invisible stigma affect stigma, and the power relation between interviewer/interviewee?

Paper long abstract:

Dirt, as Mary Douglas have shown us, is an emotional device for the upholding of cultural norms and social structures, rather than a material category. Feelings of dirtiness can therefore both help to order the world, and define one’s position within it. Self-reflexive judgements of dirtiness, or its opposite – cleanliness - were recurrent in the reports by the twelve women who used drugs, that I interviewed for my doctoral thesis “Det hade ju aldrig hänt annars” Om kvinnor, klass och droger (2021). Drug use has specific connections to the concepts of dirt and cleanliness, and in my dissertation I analyse these connections in relation to the societal context of Sweden, where drugs - just like in many other Western countries - at the same time are taboo, central to everyday life (eg. as medications) and uplifted as a components of celebrity life. Drugs are thus only dirty in specific contexts and requires an intersectional and contextual analysis, interested in the meanings and conditions of dirt. Drugs are often described as dirty, for example in anti-drug campaigns as well as by users and ex users, that can describe the dirtiness of drugs as a long-lasting stigma. Such internalized stigma, conceptualized as dirt, can be invisible until revealed by the stigmatized. This differs from historical stigmas such as penal tattoos, or current stigmas based on racism, for example, and creates a situation where the inscription of the stigma on the body can, partly, be the work of an interviewer.