Stigma Given And Image Rebuild:Identity Construction Of Marginalised People With Spoiled Body-Living Experience Of ’AIDS Patients’ In City X, Province H

Every member of the society is an individual with both commonality and particularity, which indicates that our difference with others is actually the commonest thing that means nothing at all. In our daily lives, however, differences on the body are marked and strengthened because of its visibility. People thus experience transformations in their lives and are consequently marginalized. Based on literature review and theoretical analysis, this paper focuses on the construction process of marginalized identity with the examples of people infected HIV. The aim is to reveal this dynamic process by theoretical and empirical analysis, and furthermore, has a discussion about the ’structure-agency’agenda.Through the research, it is found that the construction of marginalized identity usually begin with creation and action of the social forces. Based on knowledge and its power system in the mainstream society, the society produce a stigma discourse, in which people with biological difference was categorized and identified. For people who infected with HIV, they are identified by the’professional’medical discourse, categorized by the administrative discourse, which the collective interests are valued, justified by the moral discourse, and then, isolated by other social participants. Therefore, an identity of’AIDS patients’with’unhealthy, disempower, doubtful and wired’image is constituted, and then given to every people who is infected with HIV. In short, the nature of social construction here is’stigma given’.In the meanwhile, social actors, who are reflective, un-determinative and social, response to the social construction actively by avoiding, modifying and resisting to the outer construction. Thus the construction has been changed. For instance, people infected with HIV try to categorize themselves to other identity, like, common people; or change the direction of identity construction to other’good’identity; or deny and change the stigma given by the society. By doing that, the influence of stigma is reduced and then replaced by active and strategic identity choosing and self-presenting.It is through such a process which social construction and personal construction waved and interacted that the marginalized identity was constructed. For people with HIV, these two forces acted on information control, identity reparation and organized production, which produces the core mechanism of their identity construction. As a result, a’rational different’identity has been formed, by which people with spoiled bodies readapt to the society.