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Technikzukünfte, Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft, 2020
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Feminist anthropology, Jan 21, 2022
In recent years, feminist anthropologists have contributed to an interdisciplinary debate on beau... more In recent years, feminist anthropologists have contributed to an interdisciplinary debate on beauty, which focuses on gendered desires, affectivity, and projects of self-making amid a global boom in beauty products and services. Drawing on the emergent field of critical beauty studies and ethnographic research on middle-class femininity in urban Turkey, this article explores the salience and potential of beauty as a feminist keyword in anthropology. It argues that despite men's increasing investments in beauty, beauty continues to be tied to "women" in existential ways. Moreover, while beauty still means work for women, this work is often outsourced to female migrant or racialized workers. Beauty norms and body images materialize in intimate encounters and particular settings. In Turkey, the recent extension of the urban beauty economy has created spaces of possibility and aesthetic desires for ordinary women to "take care of themselves." With its neoliberal emphasis on self-care, the urban beauty economy has fueled the emergence of new female subjectivities and affective desires. Finally, the article argues in favor of a relational feminist ethnography and pedagogy of beauty, which is conscious of what we define as beautiful, desirable, harmful, or healthy and what the implications are of doing so.
kommunikation @ gesellschaft, 2006
Citizenship Studies, Aug 2, 2019
Berghahn Books, Sep 30, 2022
Sociologus, Jun 1, 2016
Recent decades have seen the rise of a global beauty industry, with profound effects on people&am... more Recent decades have seen the rise of a global beauty industry, with profound effects on people's body images, ideals of beauty and beauty practices worldwide. In this special issue, we bring together original ethnographic contributions in order to explore an emerging field in social anthropology, showing how bodily grooming and beautification are linked to the creation of gendered bodies and moral selves in the global economy. Following the focus on the relationship between physical beauty and femininity in the scholarly literature, as well as the pattern of responses to our editorial call for papers for this issue, we will address the role of beauty and self-making in relation to the creation of gendered, especially female, subjectivities. While contemporary beauty regimes affect all genders, this introduction will argue that they do so in different ways.
South East Asia Research, Jun 1, 2011
Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, Jul 1, 2016
Based on research in Istanbul in 2013–14, the article describes a changing urban geography of bea... more Based on research in Istanbul in 2013–14, the article describes a changing urban geography of beauty, which has multiple repercussions on women’s spatialized notions of femininity, intimate bodily grooming, and aesthetics. Beauty salons in two neighborhoods typically placed on different ends of both the social and the Islamist-secularist axes highlight the similarities and differences of intimate concerns and encounters. Urban beauty salons are where publicly debated ideals of femininity and sexuality are visibly manufactured, and those involved have to negotiate new styles of bodily appearance and forms of intimate relations. Beauty salon customers and workers create strategies to deal with (bodily) intimacy and test the moral, social, and religious boundaries of what is attractive, respectable, or permissible. Defying common assumptions, upwardly mobile pious women display a willingness to establish intimate relationships and negotiate the boundaries of moral permissiveness and bodily well-being.
Bloomsbury Academic eBooks, 2019
Ethnos, Jun 1, 2013
This article investigates the sensual participation of Filipina care workers in Israel, more spec... more This article investigates the sensual participation of Filipina care workers in Israel, more specifically in the urban space of Tel Aviv. By creating a rich communal life, by parading icons of the Virgin Mary through the streets, and by crafting Origami paper swans that have conquered urban spaces in all sizes, shapes and colours, migrants have fashioned modes of aesthetic and sensual belonging in the city. Their popular aesthetics, I argue, is intricately linked to the ironic Americanisation of a post-colonial nation, as well as the gendered niche of care, which Filipinos in the global economy have come to occupy. Drawing on the concept of ‘aesthetic formation’, this article foregrounds the performative aspects and centrality of objects, appearances and the senses in migrants’ making of community. Filipinos’ aesthetic formations in diaspora speak of collective struggles as well as of the emergence of new subjectivities beyond ethnic or cultural identities.
Springer eBooks, Aug 25, 2018
Beauty and the Norm contains chapters based on empirical research across a wide range of geograph... more Beauty and the Norm contains chapters based on empirical research across a wide range of geographical locations and cultural contexts, as well as shorter conversations between scholars that also include more personal reflections. It represents a first attempt to expose the generative operations of human standardization and normative looks in everyday life to more systematic analysis. In doing so, the volume brings together hitherto rather separate debates in critical beauty studies, cultural anthropology, sociology, the history of science and disability studies on the gendered, classed and racialized body, normative regimes of representation and the global beauty economy. In this introductory chapter, we provide a framework that ties the various contributions together, beginning with a brief history of the notion of the norm and of the closely related debates on standardization and normalization, followed by a discussion of the global economy of gendered and racialized bodies.
Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, Sep 1, 2010
... Kreiner & Kliot 200012. Collins-Kreiner , N. Kliot , N. 2000 'Pilgrimage tourism in ... more ... Kreiner & Kliot 200012. Collins-Kreiner , N. Kliot , N. 2000 'Pilgrimage tourism in theHoly Land: The behavioural characteristics of Christian pilgrims' , GeoJournal , 50 , 55 67 . [CrossRef] View all references). The number has risen ...
Routledge eBooks, Jun 18, 2021
transcript Verlag eBooks, Dec 31, 2008
Technikzukünfte, Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft, 2020
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Feminist anthropology, Jan 21, 2022
In recent years, feminist anthropologists have contributed to an interdisciplinary debate on beau... more In recent years, feminist anthropologists have contributed to an interdisciplinary debate on beauty, which focuses on gendered desires, affectivity, and projects of self-making amid a global boom in beauty products and services. Drawing on the emergent field of critical beauty studies and ethnographic research on middle-class femininity in urban Turkey, this article explores the salience and potential of beauty as a feminist keyword in anthropology. It argues that despite men's increasing investments in beauty, beauty continues to be tied to "women" in existential ways. Moreover, while beauty still means work for women, this work is often outsourced to female migrant or racialized workers. Beauty norms and body images materialize in intimate encounters and particular settings. In Turkey, the recent extension of the urban beauty economy has created spaces of possibility and aesthetic desires for ordinary women to "take care of themselves." With its neoliberal emphasis on self-care, the urban beauty economy has fueled the emergence of new female subjectivities and affective desires. Finally, the article argues in favor of a relational feminist ethnography and pedagogy of beauty, which is conscious of what we define as beautiful, desirable, harmful, or healthy and what the implications are of doing so.
kommunikation @ gesellschaft, 2006
Citizenship Studies, Aug 2, 2019
Berghahn Books, Sep 30, 2022
Sociologus, Jun 1, 2016
Recent decades have seen the rise of a global beauty industry, with profound effects on people&am... more Recent decades have seen the rise of a global beauty industry, with profound effects on people's body images, ideals of beauty and beauty practices worldwide. In this special issue, we bring together original ethnographic contributions in order to explore an emerging field in social anthropology, showing how bodily grooming and beautification are linked to the creation of gendered bodies and moral selves in the global economy. Following the focus on the relationship between physical beauty and femininity in the scholarly literature, as well as the pattern of responses to our editorial call for papers for this issue, we will address the role of beauty and self-making in relation to the creation of gendered, especially female, subjectivities. While contemporary beauty regimes affect all genders, this introduction will argue that they do so in different ways.
South East Asia Research, Jun 1, 2011
Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, Jul 1, 2016
Based on research in Istanbul in 2013–14, the article describes a changing urban geography of bea... more Based on research in Istanbul in 2013–14, the article describes a changing urban geography of beauty, which has multiple repercussions on women’s spatialized notions of femininity, intimate bodily grooming, and aesthetics. Beauty salons in two neighborhoods typically placed on different ends of both the social and the Islamist-secularist axes highlight the similarities and differences of intimate concerns and encounters. Urban beauty salons are where publicly debated ideals of femininity and sexuality are visibly manufactured, and those involved have to negotiate new styles of bodily appearance and forms of intimate relations. Beauty salon customers and workers create strategies to deal with (bodily) intimacy and test the moral, social, and religious boundaries of what is attractive, respectable, or permissible. Defying common assumptions, upwardly mobile pious women display a willingness to establish intimate relationships and negotiate the boundaries of moral permissiveness and bodily well-being.
Bloomsbury Academic eBooks, 2019
Ethnos, Jun 1, 2013
This article investigates the sensual participation of Filipina care workers in Israel, more spec... more This article investigates the sensual participation of Filipina care workers in Israel, more specifically in the urban space of Tel Aviv. By creating a rich communal life, by parading icons of the Virgin Mary through the streets, and by crafting Origami paper swans that have conquered urban spaces in all sizes, shapes and colours, migrants have fashioned modes of aesthetic and sensual belonging in the city. Their popular aesthetics, I argue, is intricately linked to the ironic Americanisation of a post-colonial nation, as well as the gendered niche of care, which Filipinos in the global economy have come to occupy. Drawing on the concept of ‘aesthetic formation’, this article foregrounds the performative aspects and centrality of objects, appearances and the senses in migrants’ making of community. Filipinos’ aesthetic formations in diaspora speak of collective struggles as well as of the emergence of new subjectivities beyond ethnic or cultural identities.
Springer eBooks, Aug 25, 2018
Beauty and the Norm contains chapters based on empirical research across a wide range of geograph... more Beauty and the Norm contains chapters based on empirical research across a wide range of geographical locations and cultural contexts, as well as shorter conversations between scholars that also include more personal reflections. It represents a first attempt to expose the generative operations of human standardization and normative looks in everyday life to more systematic analysis. In doing so, the volume brings together hitherto rather separate debates in critical beauty studies, cultural anthropology, sociology, the history of science and disability studies on the gendered, classed and racialized body, normative regimes of representation and the global beauty economy. In this introductory chapter, we provide a framework that ties the various contributions together, beginning with a brief history of the notion of the norm and of the closely related debates on standardization and normalization, followed by a discussion of the global economy of gendered and racialized bodies.
Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, Sep 1, 2010
... Kreiner & Kliot 200012. Collins-Kreiner , N. Kliot , N. 2000 'Pilgrimage tourism in ... more ... Kreiner & Kliot 200012. Collins-Kreiner , N. Kliot , N. 2000 'Pilgrimage tourism in theHoly Land: The behavioural characteristics of Christian pilgrims' , GeoJournal , 50 , 55 67 . [CrossRef] View all references). The number has risen ...
Routledge eBooks, Jun 18, 2021
transcript Verlag eBooks, Dec 31, 2008
With an estimated total of over 1,000 plastic and aesthetic surgeons, Turkey recently ranked amon... more With an estimated total of over 1,000 plastic and aesthetic surgeons, Turkey recently ranked among the top ten of countries worldwide with the highest number of plastic surgeons per capita, and its cultural capital Istanbul has become a regional center for cosmetic surgery tourism, as well as for the fashion and beauty industry. Drawing on anthropological research on aesthetic body modification and femininity in Istanbul, my paper looks at aesthetic body modification and surgery as a form of 'surveillance medicine' (Armstrong 1995), which, alongside so-called corrective measures, seeks health and wellness through 'preventive' measures that are tied to wider consumption practices. While in contrast to Beirut or Teheran, post-surgery pride is still rare in Istanbul, against the background of neoliberal urban restructuring, the feminization of the urban service sector and the expansion of the urban middle classes, aesthetic surgery has become ever more normalized and is seen as a form of investment in bodily capital by an increasing number of (working) men and women. Finally, with beauty therapists and aesthetic surgeons musing on the specificities of the Turkish body and 'race' in private TV make-over shows and other media, aesthetic medical practices are becoming intricately linked to specific imaginations of modernity, glamour and the beautifying nation on the margins of the Middle East.
Feminist Anthropology, 2022
In recent years, feminist anthropologists have contributed to an interdisciplinary debate on beau... more In recent years, feminist anthropologists have contributed to an interdisciplinary debate on beauty, which focuses on gendered desires, affectivity, and projects of self-making amid a global boom in beauty products and services. Drawing on the emergent field of critical beauty studies and ethnographic research on middle-class femininity in urban Turkey, this article explores the salience and potential of beauty as a feminist keyword in anthropology. It argues that despite men's increasing investments in beauty, beauty continues to be tied to "women" in existential ways. Moreover, while beauty still means work for women, this work is often outsourced to female migrant or racialized workers. Beauty norms and body images materialize in intimate encounters and particular settings. In Turkey, the recent extension of the urban beauty economy has created spaces of possibility and aesthetic desires for ordinary women to "take care of themselves." With its neoliberal emphasis on self-care, the urban beauty economy has fueled the emergence of new female subjectivities and affective desires. Finally, the article argues in favor of a relational feminist ethnography and pedagogy of beauty, which is conscious of what we define as beautiful, desirable, harmful, or healthy and what the implications are of doing so.
Anthropological Journal of European Cultures, 2023
Zeitschrift für Ethnologie ZfE/JSCA, 2021
Notions like ‘relations’ and ‘relationality’ have become key terms and common parlance in anthrop... more Notions like ‘relations’ and ‘relationality’ have become key terms and common parlance in anthropology, closely linked to Marilyn Strathern’s project of making ‘a topic from one of anthropology’s principal means and objects of study’ (Strathern 2018). In this contribution, we reflect on our joint discussion of the British social anthropologist’sbook Relations: An Anthropological Account (Strathern 2020). The book consists of a ollection of essays in which she simultaneously reflects on and contributes to the centrality of the term within anthropological debates. It offers a historical account of ‘relations’ as an often-valorized epistemological device in the natural and social sciences, notably
in Anglophone anthropology. Arguing that ‘comparison,’ which presumes similarities and differences, has become a kind of central relation in modern thinking, she examines how the notion is applied to particular sets of persons by comparing ‘friends’ and ‘kin,’ for example. She also shows how both the ‘art of comparison’ (Strathern 2020: 19) and a certain ‘compulsion of relations’, have shaped anthropology in relation to Anglophone thinking more generally. In the final part of the book, Strathern returns to the early modern period to describe the occlusion of alternative ways of European enlightenment thinking as a ‘drama’, with decisive effects for modern knowledge-making, kin-making and, of course, anthropology.