Stigma Resistance through Body-in-Practice: Embodying Pride through Creative Mastery

Rohan Venkatraman, Julie L Ozanne and Erica Coslor

Journal of Consumer Research, 2024, vol. 51, issue 4, 797-819

Abstract: Stigma, as a process of shame, fosters social exclusion and diminishes bodily competences. Thus, stigmatized consumers often turn to the marketplace for respite. Based on an ethnographic study of drag artists, this study proposes a new understanding of the body that emerges from the mastery of creative consumption practices to combat shame. We theorize a novel “body-in-practice” framework to examine how consumers transform from an imagined persona to an accomplished body to embody pride. Six novel stigma resistance strategies emerged—experimenting, guarding, risk-taking, spatial reconfiguring, self-affirming, and integrating. Body-in-practice thus explains how shame weakens, pride strengthens, emotions stabilize, and self-confidence grows. This research contributes by explaining the hard work of identity repair, exploring stigma resistance across safe and hostile social spaces, and highlighting the emancipatory potential of embodied mastery.

Keywords: body-in-practice; practice theory; stigma; shame; pride; creative practices; drag; teleological frames; mastery; gender (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jconrs:v:51:y:2024:i:4:p:797-819.

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