The Biopolitics of Beauty: Cosmetic Citizenship and Affective Capital in Brazil
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.97 (900 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0520293886 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 272 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-10-01 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
From the Inside Flap"What lies at the heart of the yearning for beauty? In this sophisticated but accessible ethnography about plastic surgery in Brazil, Alvaro Jarrín unpacks the historical entanglement of beauty, race, and gender. Combining biopolitics with affect, and critiquing a governmentality that fosters a 'cosmetic citizenship' that does nothing to undo the precarity of those (classed/raced) at the bottom despite the 'gift' of free surgery, Jarrín is masterful in a book as ethnographically as theoretically rich."—Anne Allison, Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University and author of Precarious Japan. In a voice both critical and poignant, Jarrín o
The book historically traces the national concern with beauty to Brazilian eugenics, which established beauty as an index of the nation’s racial improvement. 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. 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. From here, Jarrín explains how plastic surgeons became the main proponents of a raciology of beauty, using it to gain the backing of the Brazilian state. 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 s