The Biopolitics of Beauty: Cosmetic Citizenship and Affective Capital in Brazil

Author/Contributor(s):	Jarrin, Alvaro
Publisher:	University of California Press
Date:	08/29/2017
Binding:	Paperback
Condition:	NEW

"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. In a voice both critical and poignant, Jarrín offers a prescient platform from which to consider the ethical, cultural, and political underpinnings of the approaching global boom in cosmetic procedures."--Robin Sheriff, author of Dreaming Equality: Color, Race, and Racism in Urban Brazil

"At once timely and sharp-edged, The Biopolitics of Beauty examines the affective labor wrought by plastic surgeons and everyday Brazilians to render their bodies 'beautiful' in regimes that privilege, and racialize, class. 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