Almost Equal: Consumption under Fragmented Stigma
研究历史上被污名化的社会群体（如德国男同性恋）在获得更多社会认可后，如何策略性地消费，发现污名碎片化为压迫、赋能和正常化三种社会表征，群体内部分化为五个子群体，消费用于隐藏、抵抗或解构差异。
Abstract How do historically stigmatized social groups consume strategically when they have achieved greater recognition, status, and respectability in society? Based on a seven-year interpretive social representations analysis of gay men in Germany, the authors first show that dominant, stigmatizing representations of such groups do not ameliorate uniformly and for all. Instead, they fragment into oppressive, enabling, and normalized societal representations that different consumers encounter to different degrees in their everyday lives. In the wake of these societal shifts, the stigmatized group itself disintegrates into five representational subgroups, referred to as underground, discrete, hybrid, assimilated, and post-stigma social groups. These subgroups use consumption for different and partly opposing strategic purposes, such as hiding and denial, collective resistance, and deconstruction of differences. The authors synthesize their findings into a conceptual model of consumption under fragmented stigma that extends prior research on consumption under dominant and total stigma configurations and suggests ways in which consumption can not only mitigate but also reinforce stigma. In doing so, they also shed light on the complex lived experiences of a vulnerable social group that has become almost equal.