Citation

Adler PA, Adler P. J. Contemp. Ethnogr. 2007; 36(5): 537-570.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0891241607301968

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This article offers a glimpse into the relatively hidden practice of self-injury: cutting, burning, branding, and bone breaking. Drawing on eighty in-depth interviews, Web site postings, e-mail communications, and Internet groups, we challenge the psychomedical depiction of this phenomenon and discuss ways that the contemporary sociological practice of self-injury challenges images of the population, etiology, practice, and social meanings associated with this behavior. We conclude by suggesting that self-injury, for some, is in the process of undergoing a moral passage from the realm of medicalized to voluntarily chosen deviant behavior in which participants' actions may be understood with a greater understanding of the sociological factors that contribute to the prevalence of these actions.