Biographical Opportunities: How Entrepreneurship Creates Pride in Alterity in Stigmatized Fields

In this paper we explore the role entrepreneurship plays in influencing the shame of stigmatized work and its impact on actors’ institutional biographies. We do this through an inductive, qualitative study of female and transgender entrepreneurs operating in the sex trade. Our findings reveal that entrepreneurship created biographical opportunities that allowed for the construction of pride in alterity: a process of viewing the distinctiveness or “otherness” of one’s biography as a value rather than a constraint. Pride in alterity shielded these individuals from feeling shamed by stigma associated with the field. Two distinct biographical opportunities allowed for the creation of pride in alterity: altering social position, by positioning as expert and in control; and building relational ties, the creation of supportive and intimate connections. Despite these opportunities, we found that the type of social change involved in the entrepreneurial efforts was an important source of variance. While some of th...