Between two worlds: an ethnographic study of gay consumer culture in Rio de Janeiro

It is not easy to study socially marginalized groups such as gays, ethnic minorities, and others. This is, however, an extremely relevant topic in the consumer behavior area since the status of members of a modern consumer society is largely denied to stigmatized social groups (Barbosa, 2006). The objective of this work is to shed light on how gay men in Rio de Janeiro use the discourse associated with their possessions to build and maintain the symbolic and hierarchical boundaries between the gay and heterosexual worlds, as well as to investigate the role consumption plays in this boundary se...