Can I read The Biopolitics of Beauty : Cosmetic Citizenship and Affective Capital in Brazil on EtoBox?

The Biopolitics of Beauty : Cosmetic Citizenship and Affective Capital in Brazil by Jarron, Alvaro is a health book available to read on EtoBox.

What is The Biopolitics of Beauty : Cosmetic Citizenship and Affective Capital in Brazil about?

The Biopolitics of Beauty examines how beauty became an aim of national health in Brazil. Using ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Brazilian hospitals, the author shows 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, Jarrín 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 Jarrín 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 explores not only the biopolitical regime that made beauty a desirable national project, but also the subtle ways in which beauty is laden with affective value within eve

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

Author

Jarron, Alvaro

Publisher

University of California Press

Published

2017

Language

EN

ISBN

9781433122767

Category

health

Subjects

Medical, Anthropology, Health & Fitness

Rating

5 / 5 (3 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14