1. Identify the Sense
Ask which sense is being treated as evidence: sight, sound, smell, touch, or sacred space.
Research Method
Methodology
This project treats stigma as a sensory and interpretive process. It asks how evidence was seen, heard, smelled, touched, spatially organized, and authorized.
2. Identify Authority
Ask who interprets the sensory sign: priest, physician, superintendent, photographer, journalist, filmmaker, patient, or historian.
3. Name the Mechanism
Ask whether stigma is produced as fear, pollution, discipline, diagnosis, possession, spectacle, or media repetition.
4. Read Against the Record
Ask whose voice is missing and what institutional or social conditions are being hidden.
5. Verify Sources
Prototype entries must be replaced or supported by primary sources, citations, dates, provenance, and interpretive notes.
6. Preserve Ethical Distance
Historical terms such as madness, insanity, and possession should be analyzed as categories, not applied to people today.