The cooperative relationship between pope and city is the subject of this chapter. First, this chapter examines the political maneuvers necessary to execute change in Rome’s built environment and traces the conflict over jurisdiction between civic and papal polities, particularly over matters of urban improvements, licensing, and taxation. The papacy has long been a catalyst for transformation in Rome’s complex and layered urban landscape. Second, this chapter considers the ideology of the cityscape and the tradition of pilgrimage, historically and in our global age. From Martin V’s return in 1420, the papacy aimed to establish Rome as the epicenter of Christendom through its temporal and spiritual authority. As Christendom expanded through exploration and missionary efforts, so too did its capital. Popes continued to influence public space during the tumultuous period after the Unification of Italy, when fierce political rivalry materialized in the spaces of the city.

In their seminal piece in the Journal of Consumer Research, Arnould and Thompson (2005) discuss marketplace cultures as a key research programme within marketing and consumer research. Marketplace cultures look at the ‘ways in which consumers forge feelings of social solidarity and create distinctive, fragmentary, self-selected, and sometimes transient cultural worlds through the pursuit of common consumption interests’ (p 873). Inspired by the tradition of sociological and cultural work on the power and marketplaces, from McCracken (1986) to modern work in the consumer culture theory canon, the chapters in this collection have explored how consumers, marketplaces and drag artists have forged a cultural world based on deviance, solidarity, commodification and dissent. The chapters that make up this collection, and the authors who have contributed to them, explore these intersections in ways that coalesce (and are thus organized) around three main substantive areas that inform contemporary drag marketplace cultures: politicizing drag identities, marketizing drag and digitizing drag.

In this concluding chapter to the book, our primary goal is to offer directions for future research into drag marketplace cultures, and we do so by taking a macro-level critical reading of the conversations that the various chapters have with each other. As we assembled this book, it became clear that the authors of each chapter not only spoke to one or more of the key substantive areas just mentioned, but also to one or more of three larger, more abstract themes embedded into contemporary drag marketplace cultures (henceforth marketplace themes) – artisanship (Chapters 2, 4, 6, 7 and 8), stigma (Chapters 2, 3 and 5) and commodification (Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 7). In turn, the themes of artisanship, stigma and commodification were further used to problematize a key issue that is germane to the question of why drag is an interesting marketplace culture – the issue of legitimacy. Drag has historically been a subcultural enterprise, a creative expression of queerness that seeks to defy normativity (see, for example, McCormack and Wignall, 2022), but, in its myriad interactions with the contemporary (often mainstream) marketplace, as explored in the chapters that comprise this book, we see a constant problematizing of the nature of drag, of drag artists and of the dominating nature of marketplace cultures.

In the sections that follow, we first explore the three emergent theoretical narratives of artisanship, stigma and commodification, highlighting theoretical confluences between the arguments and perspectives presented within this book.

Drag is a highly stylized art combining extravagant costumes, exaggerated make-up and entertaining personae in musical and theatrical performances. Drag as an artistic practice challenges gender stereotypes and the epistemic regimes of gender (Butler, 1990), establishing a non-fixed gender reality. While scarcely represented in the field of consumer research, the appeal of drag has increased in recent years due to its visibility in the cultural and media mainstream. Traditionally performed in LGBTQ+ venues, drag has recently ‘gone to the market’: the contemporary drag marketplace represents a multimillion-dollar industry that reaches far beyond traditional queer venues and audiences. With its increased popularity, drag has evolved into an international consumer pastime, with drag performers-cum-celebrities featuring on national tours, in concerts and at large-scale events, appearing regularly in television shows, movies and advertising, developing their own brands, products and collaborations. This newly acquired visibility allows for contemporary drag to highlight its boundary-spanning nature across art, politics, lifestyle and entertainment. Drag is indeed, as this book shows, a profession – a product bought and sold – but also a political act.

A drag queen may be described as a professional male performer appearing as a female character (Newton, 1979); she is ‘the realisation of the “veiled woman” … such is the androgynous power of the drag queen that what lies behind the veil may represent reassurance as much as alarm’ (Baker, 1995: 128, 130). Drag as female impersonation is anchored in the contested myth that the term drag would date back to Elizabethan theatre and stand for DRess As Girl, an acronym for a role where the male actor would portray a female character (Baroni, 2006). Women impersonating hyper-masculine characters on stage are drag kings. For a long time, if impersonating a female character, women were called faux queens or bio queens (Nicholson, 2017). These distinctions are increasingly antiquated and it is widely accepted (as well as practised) that persons of any gender (women, men, non-binary) may be drag queens and drag kings.

During its long history, drag has been a staple of both high and popular culture traversing opera, theatre, cinema, popular music and ‘the club’. A drag performance, regardless of genre or context, includes entertaining by, often, lip-syncing, singing, comedy and audience engagement.

Chapter 8 summarizes the book as a whole and discusses theoretical implications. I briefly review the argument and the evidence provided to substantiate its claims. I then assess the implications of these findings for the comparative study of ethnoracial and identity politics and the interdisciplinary study of race in Brazil and Latin America. For comparative political scientists studying ethnic and identity politics, I emphasize how my argument highlights an alternative role for the state in these processes: as a set of actors responsible for shaping citizenship rights and subjective experiences, which in turn shape the subjectivities and identities that citizens bring into the political arena. For interdisciplinary scholars interested in Brazil and Latin America, I emphasize the dynamic nature of the state of racial politics in Brazil, and suggest that future studies move beyond the well-trod characterization of the Brazilian case as the go-to example of the absence of racial politics. I conclude the book with discussion of the challenges ahead for Brazil's racialized democracy.