Beautification and Belonging

This collection of essays focuses on the body and urban space as they are linked to notions of democracy, and citizenship. It highlights essays that emphasize the processes and results of molding oneself and one’s community to be attractive to the demands of the global economy. As neoliberal economic policies are increasingly applied to city planning, urban spaces worldwide increasingly reflect the deliberate effort to stimulate consumer spending by marketing certain spaces as beautiful. This extends past citywide anti-homeless campaigns, for example, right into deliberate self-improvement schemes that promise economic and social inclusion. In this respect, beauty and the creation of the beautiful could motivate many contemporary moments of production, development and citizenship.

Transforming the body-- be it the national body or the individual one – whether through cosmetic surgery, fashion, city littering campaigns or anti-immigration laws –is a method of engagement with the neoliberal process that posits perpetual self improvement and development as a necessity for economic survival.

In many ways this is an expansion on Aalok Khandakar’s list:  Neoliberalism, Subjectivity, and Citizenship with a particular focus on beauty its perceptions and consequences.

We Were Dancing in the Club, Not on the Berlin Wall: Black Bodies, Street Bureaucrats, and Exclusionary Incorporation into the New Europe
Damani James Partridge
Cultural Anthropology Nov. 2008, Vol. 23, No. 4: 660-687

"But What If I Should Need To Defecate In Your Neighborhood, Madame?": Empire, Redemption, and the “Tradition of the Oppressed” in a Brazilian World Heritage Site
John Collins
Cultural Anthropology May 2008, Vol. 23, No. 2: 279-328.

Compassion and Repression: The Moral Economy of Immigration Policies in France
Didier Fassin
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 2005, Vol. 20, No. 3: 362-387.

Desired Publics, Domestic Government, and Entangled Fears: On the Anthropology of Civil Society, Farm Workers, and White Farmers in Zimbabwe
Blair Rutherford
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 2004, Vol. 19, No. 1: 122-153.

Of Mimicry and Membership: Africans and the "New World Society"
James G. Ferguson
Cultural Anthropology Nov. 2002, Vol. 17, No. 4: 551-569.

"Empty Cradles" and the Quiet Revolution: Demographic Discourse and Cultural Struggles of Gender, Race, and Class in Italy
Elizabeth L. Krause
Cultural Anthropology Nov. 2001, Vol. 16, No. 4: 576-611.

The Theft of Carnaval: National Spectacle and Racial Politics in Rio de Janeiro
Robin E. Sheriff
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 1999, Vol. 14, No. 1: 3-28.

"Visible Signs of a City Out of Control": Community Policing in New York City
Benjamin Chesluk
Cultural Anthropology May 2004, Vol. 19, No. 2: 250-275.

Spatial Reconfigurations, Imagined Geographies, and Social Conflicts in Cartagena, Colombia
Joel Streicker
Cultural Anthropology Feb 1997, Vol. 12, No. 1: 109-128.

Conforming Disconformity: “Mestizaje,” Hybridity, and the Aesthetics of Mexican Nationalism.
Ana Maria Alonso
Cultural Anthropology Nov. 2004 Vol. 19 No. 4: 459-490.

"Keep Cyprus Clean": Littering, Pollution, and Otherness
Vassos Argyrou
Cultural Anthropology May 1997, Vol. 12, No. 2: 159-178.

Stumped Identities: Body Image, Bodies Politic, and the Mujer Maya as Prosthetic
Diane M. Nelson
Cultural Anthropology Aug 2001, Vol. 16, No. 3: 314-353.