Stigma Resistance through Body-in-Practice: Embodying Pride through Creative Mastery
基于对变装艺术家的民族志研究，提出“实践中的身体”框架，揭示消费者如何通过创造性消费实践从想象角色转变为有能力的身体，从而抵抗羞耻、体现自豪，并总结出六种抵抗策略。
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.