The Biopolitics of Beauty examines how beauty became an aim of
national health in Brazil. Based on ethnographic fieldwork carried
out in Brazilian hospitals, the author explains 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, Jarrin 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 Jarrin 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 not only examines the biopolical regime that made beauty
a desirable national project, but also the subtle ways in which
beauty is laden with affective value within everyday social
practices, thus becoming the terrain upon which race, class, and
gender hierarchies are reproduced and contested in Brazil.
General
Imprint: |
University of California Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
September 2017 |
First published: |
2017 |
Authors: |
Alvaro Jarrin
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 152 x 20mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Hardcover - Cloth over boards
|
Pages: |
272 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-520-29387-8 |
Categories: |
Books >
Humanities >
Archaeology >
General
|
LSN: |
0-520-29387-8 |
Barcode: |
9780520293878 |
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