St Mary's Academic Publishes Book Chapter on Stigma and Identity

Dr Carole Murphy, joint Programme Director for Sociology in the School of Arts and Humanities at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, has recently published a new book chapter examining stigma and identity construction in recovery from addiction. The chapter, Negotiating Stigma: Constructing and Performing a ‘Normal’ Identity, forms part of the book “Addiction and Performance”, edited by Dr James Reynolds and Dr Zoe Zontou. Based on work carried out for her PhD thesis, Dr Murphy used a comparative approach to explore recovery from substance use. This included interviewing 27 respondents in various stages of recovery from ‘addiction’ and charts the way that identity is performed, transformed and reconstructed within the interview space. The research examines the specificities of language and how it is used by respondents to create and perform a new ‘recovery’ identity and how participants make use of the category ‘normal’ to explain and describe past experiences and make sense of their identity in recovery in the present. From this perspective, within the context of the interview, the chapter demonstrates how respondents actively engage with confronting stigma as part of the performance of a recovery identity. Speaking of the book chapter, Dr Murphy said, “Dealing with stigma is a very real obstacle for some people in recovery. Many of the research participants relayed stories of the discriminatory practices they had encountered in services that were reputedly there to provide support. These experiences, coupled with self- awareness of their stigmatised, ‘outsider’ identity, often prolonged substance use and obstructed their engagement with recovery programmes. “For those who eventually had more constructive encounters, the recovery process presented new challenges related to issues of identity, specifically within the context of what it is to be ‘normal’. Confronting ‘normative’ and discriminatory societal attitudes is crucial to providing a more positive context for those struggling to re-engage with ‘normal’ society in recovery.”