CALL FOR PAPERS
BODIES IN TRANSITION - POWER, KNOWLEDGE AND MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
EASA Medical Anthropology Network
2017 Biannual Conference Network Meeting
5-7 July, Lisbon, Portugal
Local organization: Portuguese Anthropological Association (APA)
Venue: University of Lisbon, Institute of Social Sciences (Av. Prof. Aníbal Bettencourt, 9)
http://medanthlisbon2017.apantropologia.org/presentation/
PANEL 35
Title: PLASTIC BODIES: TRANSNATIONAL CIRCUITS OF SELF-IMPROVEMENT PROJECTS.
Coordinators:
Chiara Pussetti (ICS-UL) and Carole Myers (University of Manchester)
http://medanthlisbon2017.apantropologia.org/p35/
Short abstract:
This panel seeks to investigate the employment of cosmetic enhancement technologies to promote individuals self-image to increase their opportunities of professional success and social climbing. We invite researchers to submit ethnographic papers that discuss beauty as a cultural and economic construction, and as a means of social distinction and mobility.
Long abstract:
Throughout the world, more and more people are spending time and money investing aesthetically in themselves, using contemporary technologies such as skin bleaching, plastic surgery and hair straightening to modify their physical appearance. This panel seeks to investigate the employment of cosmetic enhancement technologies to promote individuals self-image to increase their opportunities of professional success and social climbing. The individual body has become a major focus for consumption and spending and the main site for investment of resources: self-optimization, attractiveness and competitiveness are the watchwords. Taking care of our bodiesin order to produce more socially valued selves through fitness, fashion, cosmetics, or surgery - has become the cultural equivalent of improving our economic and social capital. Understanding beauty as a social, cultural, and economic construction, and emphasizing the process of achieving beauty as a means of social distinction, this panel engages in a series of questions. Does beauty matter economically, socially and politically? How do individuals transform their bodies to respond to the pressures, anxieties and aspirations of work and intimate life? Does beauty allow increased social mobility, across a multitude of borders? How do bodily improvement projects change in relation with individuals specific identities such as social class, ethnicity, religion, gender and sexual identities, age, marital status, professional status? Financial crisis and economic uncertainty as well as socioeconomic developments have a deep impact on the structure of society, but what impact have they had on the body? In what ways have ethnically or racially charged beauty ideals functioned as instruments of social oppression, on the one hand, or for the empowerment of individuals, on the other? To what degree can we observe a globalization and standardization of beauty ideals and practices?
If you are interested, please send your proposal (up to 300 words) directly to Chiara Pussetti ([log in to unmask]) and Carole Myers ([log in to unmask]). Deadline for paper proposals: April 1st, 2017.
Paper proposals will be evaluated by panel coordinators. The list of papers accepted will be announced on April 15th, 2017.
Chiara Pussetti
PhD University of Turim (Italy)
Researcher ICS/UL
University of Lisbon
Institute of Social Sciences
ORCID: 0000-0002-2146-3587<orcid.org/0000-0002-2146-3587>
Perfil Scholar<http://scholar.google.pt/citations?hl=pt-PT&user=hHFw0GQAAAAJ&sortby=pubdate&citft=1&citft=2&email_for_op=chiaragemma.pussetti%40gmail.com&cstart=20&pagesize=20>
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