Inequality, distress and harm-reduction: a social justice approach to self-injury
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Inequality, distress and harm‑reduction: a social justice approach to self‑injury Kay Inckle1
© Springer Nature Limited 2020
Abstract In this paper I argue that sociology is intricately related to social justice. To paraphrase Mills (The sociological imagination, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002), by revealing the ways in which experiences which are normatively framed as “private troubles” are in fact “public” or social issues, sociologists expose the structures of power which shape individual lives. These structures are not only evident in easily identifiable material, social and environmental inequalities but also in what appear to be individual “health” experiences such as mental distress and self-injury. I draw on qualitative research to explore a social justice perspective of self-injury via the intersections of social class, gender and sexuality and the oppressions and injustices inherent to them. Next, I turn my attention to social justice responses to self-injury, and I explore the importance of user-led interventions for developing social justice oriented responses to both mental distress and self-injury, and the ways in which these have been marginalised in medical and sociological perspectives. Finally, I argue that with the urgency of social justice interventions never more apparent, sociologists and social researchers should be working as allies with rights movements both within “mental health” and beyond. Keywords Self-injury · Social justice · Qualitative methods · Harm-reduction
Introduction: sociology, social justice & self‑injury Sociology is intricately related to social justice. To paraphrase Mills (2002), by revealing the ways in which experiences which are normatively framed as “private troubles” are in fact “public” or social issues, sociologists expose the structures of power which shape individual lives. These structures are not only evident in easily identifiable material, social and environmental inequalities but also in what appear to be individual “health” problems such as disability and mental * Kay Inckle [email protected] 1
Independent Scholar, Liverpool, UK Vol.:(0123456789)
K. Inckle
distress (Inckle 2018). Moreover, not only do social structures create these inequalities, they also explain and legitimate them. For example, individualising the responsibility for experiences of poverty, social marginalisation, unemployment, disability and mental distress is integral to the current neo-liberal agenda, alongside the concurrent classification of people into categories of those who are deserving of support and those who are not (Galvin 2002; Levitas 2005; Stewart 2016; Thomas and Knight 2018). As such, the socio-political context in which self-injury occurs is inseparable from the way in which it is framed, understood and responded to. Millard (2015) argues that for much of last century self-injury was largely viewed as “a cry for help”: a socially contextual experience which was both intelligible and legitimated within the collectivist welfare-state ethos that dominated
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