The Biopolitics of Beauty (eBook)

Cosmetic Citizenship and Affective Capital in Brazil

Alvaro Jarrín (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017
272 Seiten
University of California Press (Verlag)
978-0-520-96721-2 (ISBN)

Infos

The Biopolitics of Beauty examines how beauty became an aim of national health in Brazil. Using ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Brazilian hospitals, the author shows how plastic surgeons and patients navigate the public health system to transform beauty into a basic health right. The book historically traces the national concern with beauty to Brazilian eugenics, which established beauty as an index of the nation's racial improvement. From here, Jarrn explains how plastic surgeons became the main proponents of a raciology of beauty, using it to gain the backing of the Brazilian state. Beauty can be understood as an immaterial form of value that Jarrn calls ';affective capital,' which maps onto and intensifies the social hierarchies of Brazilian society. Patients experience beauty as central to national belonging and to gendered aspirations of upward mobility, and they become entangled in biopolitical rationalities that complicate their ability to consent to the risks of surgery. The Biopolitics of Beauty explores not only the biopolitical regime that made beauty a desirable national project, but also the subtle ways in which beauty is laden with affective value within everyday social practicesthus becoming the terrain upon which race, class, and gender hierarchies are reproduced and contested in Brazil.

Inhalt

Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Biopolitical and Affective Dimensions of Beauty
1. The Eugenesis of Beauty
2. Plastic Governmentality
3. The Circulation of Beauty
4. Hope, Affect, Mobility
5. The Raciology of Beauty
6. Cosmetic Citizens
Conclusion: Thinking of Beauty Transnationally

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Produkt-Details

• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Schönheit / Kosmetik
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Archäologie
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Vor- und Frühgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Schlagworte: anthropologist • Anthropology • Beauty • Beauty culture • Beauty standards • Brazil • brazilian • Brazilian Culture • Central America • class issues • ethnographic • ethnography • Eugenics • Fieldwork • health and wellness • healthcare rights • healthcare system • Hospital • medical patients • physical appearance • plastic surgeons • Plastic Surgery • Public Health • Race • race issues • Racism • Social hierarchy • Social Studies • South America • Surgery • Upward Mobility
• ISBN-10: 0-520-96721-6 / 0520967216
• ISBN-13: 978-0-520-96721-2 / 9780520967212