Body Мodification and the Labor Market: From Stigma to Social Capital

The article considers the phenomenon of body modification as a social stigma taking into account the peculiarities of the position of its carriers in the labor market in the conditions of personnel assessment require-ments determined by the organizational culture, presents a panorama of angles of consideration of the categories ‘stigma’ and ‘body modification’ in modern socio-humanitarian knowledge, characterizes body modification as a social phenomenon and its potential through the types, functions and factors that determine its perception in society, provides empirical data containing assessments of employees' body modifications by organization managers, as well as self-assessments of such employees. Body modification is considered as an element of initiation ritual and as a condition of social exclusion. The analysis of the theoretical and empirical data obtained (results of interviews of managers and workers) allowed us to identify markers for the study of body modification as a social stigma in the labor market.