{"id":48475,"date":"2016-07-29T19:05:07","date_gmt":"2016-07-29T19:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48475"},"modified":"2016-07-29T19:05:07","modified_gmt":"2016-07-29T19:05:07","slug":"towards-a-biopolitics-of-beauty-eugenics-aesthetic-hierarchies-and-plastic-surgery-in-brazil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48475","title":{"rendered":"Towards a Biopolitics of Beauty: Eugenics, Aesthetic Hierarchies and Plastic Surgery in Brazil"},"content":{"rendered":"

Towards a Biopolitics of Beauty: Eugenics, Aesthetic Hierarchies and Plastic Surgery in Brazil<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies: Travesia<\/a>
\nVolume 24, Issue 4, 2015<\/a>
\nSpecial Issue: Visual Culture and Violence in Contemporary Mexico
\nDOI: 10.1080\/13569325.2015.1091296<\/a><\/p>\n

Alvaro Jarr\u00edn<\/strong><\/a>, Assistant Professor
\nDepartment of Sociology and Anthropology
\nCollege of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts<\/em><\/p>\n

This article provides a historical and ethnographic perspective to explain the saliency of beauty within the reproduction of racial inequalities in Brazil<\/a>. I argue that Brazil\u2019s neo-Lamarckian<\/a> eugenics <\/a>movement was the first to craft beauty as an index of racial improvement within the nation, and this eugenic legacy undergirds many of the contemporary discourses of beautification. Plastic surgery, in particular, inherited the biopolitical<\/a> aim to produce a homogeneous body politic through beautification, an aim that was easily adapted to the contemporary context of neoliberal self-improvement. Today, beauty is a technology of biopower<\/a>, one which ranks the population within an aesthetic hierarchy that produces non-white facial characteristics as undesirable, and interpellates<\/a> patients as responsible for their own surgical corrections, albeit with state support in the case of the poor. Thus, this article contributes to the literature that understands science and medicine as key within the history of racialization in Latin America, making explicit how biopolitics has fashioned race and beauty as inextricable and intertwined elements of social inclusion and exclusion.<\/p>\n

Read or purchase the article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Towards a Biopolitics of Beauty: Eugenics, Aesthetic Hierarchies and Plastic Surgery in Brazil Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies: Travesia Volume 24, Issue 4, 2015 Special Issue: Visual Culture and Violence in Contemporary Mexico DOI: 10.1080\/13569325.2015.1091296 Alvaro Jarr\u00edn, Assistant Professor Department of Sociology and Anthropology College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts This article provides […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,83,21,2039,8,394],"tags":[24631,24630,24634,24635,2065,24633,24632,17728],"class_list":["post-48475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-brazil","category-latincarib","category-health-medicine","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","tag-alvaro-e-jarrin","tag-alvaro-jarrin","tag-beauty","tag-biopolitics","tag-eugenics","tag-journal-of-latin-american-cultural-studies","tag-journal-of-latin-american-cultural-studies-travesia","tag-plastic-surgery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48475"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48476,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48475\/revisions\/48476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}