Abstract
With The Tender Cut, Adler and Adler present a wealth of data on the socio-cultural meanings and practices associated with self-injury. Self-injury (and self-harm more broadly) has come under increasing sociological scrutiny in recent years, and the book is a welcome addition to this developing area. Their research spans over a decade, during which they have observed internet message boards and communities that deal with self-injury, and conducted over one hundred interviews (both face-to-face and online) with people who have self-injured. As such, this is one of the largest qualitative, and one of very few sociological, investigations of self-injury. The authors frame self-injury as a ‘deviant’ behaviour, and much of their discussion is grounded in Cultural Studies literature.
The first chapter provides an overview of the book, setting out a central thesis – that self-injury has become ‘transformed from an essentially psychological disorder into a sociological occurrence’ (p. 3). Chapter 2 presents a review of existing literature on self-injury. I found this chapter rather brief: much existing sociological work on self-harm was not included, while clinical perspectives could have been addressed more critically. Chapter 3 details the methodological approaches – ethnographic and longitudinal – that Adler and Adler used over the course of their research. Much of the chapter deals with their ‘online ethnography’ of self-injury communities, and this will be useful to others grappling with virtual fieldwork.
The majority of the subsequent chapters focus closely on the data Adler and Adler generated. Chapter 4, ‘Becoming a Self-injurer’, and Chapter 11, ‘Careers in Self-Injury’, are two of the strongest. In these, the authors address two important issues that are generally absent in much existing work on self-injury, namely, how people begin self-injuring, and how they stop (or not, as the case may be). Chapter 5, ‘The Phenomenology of the Cut’, addresses another oft neglected area, presenting rich and detailed data on how people who self-injure describe the practical, corporeal activities and consequences entailed by their self-injury.
Chapters 6 to 9 focus more heavily on their online data. As such, these will be of interest to a wide audience, particularly those working on the ways in which electronic communication and communities mediate understandings about social practices. The use of online data allows Adler and Adler to make broad observations regarding socio-cultural discourses about self-injury. In addition, their longitudinal perspective enables commentary to be made regarding the changing nature of online discourse and activity relating to self-injury. Chapter 9 includes a useful comparison between ‘solid world’ and ‘cyber’ relationships which will be widely relevant to scholars of contemporary culture.
Chapters 10, 11 and 12, while remaining focused on the data, begin to make more expansive theoretical claims. Chapter 12 in particular raises a number of important sociological points with regard to understandings about self-injury, dealing with stigma, medicalization and ‘the body’. Many of these are ripe for further theorization, investigation, and debate.
Indeed, although Adler and Adler acknowledge that both their interview and online data are unrepresentative (p. 200), they make some challenging, and certainly debateable, assertions. This includes their central thesis: that the social meaning of self-injury has transformed over the last two decades, from ‘being primarily a mental disorder, or a disease, into a social trend’ (p. 167), an argument that implies (perhaps inadvertently) that ‘mental disorders’ are exempt from the sociological gaze. In addition, this claim has the potential to minimize the emotional, social and psychological problems faced by people who have begun self-injuring in recent years, as well as downplaying the agency (and sociological significance) of those engaging in self-injury at the start of its ‘evolution’. Further, self-injury remains closely related to mental illness for many, and this is not well accounted for.
Overall, I found The Tender Cut by turns fascinating and frustrating, compelling and contentious. The wealth of data presented, and the fact that hitherto overlooked areas, particularly non-clinical groups, are explored is a great strength of both the book and of Adler and Adler’s research. However, though undoubtedly adding greatly to our knowledge about self-injury as a ‘cultural phenomenon’, The Tender Cut also reproduces some of the many ‘myths’ about self-injury: that it is practised largely by women (p. 35), and that men self-injure in particular (gendered) ways (see Brickman, 2004, for a critique of this); that it is (latterly) a symptom of mental illness and (more recently) a ‘trendy fad’ (p. 199). Additionally, the use of the term ‘self-injurer’ throughout will jar with some readers who may prefer to avoid such proscriptive labelling. Nevertheless, The Tender Cut should be read (albeit critically) by any sociologist working on self-harm, as well as being of interest to scholars engaged with virtual methodologies, ‘deviant’ behaviours and youth cultures.