Ulf Vierke

Claudia Liebelt

Sarah Böllinger

Recent decades have seen the rise of a global beauty boom, with profound effects on perceptions of bodies worldwide. Against this background, Beauty and the Norm assembles ethnographic and conceptual approaches from a variety of disciplines and across the globe to debate standardization in bodily appearance. Its contributions range from empirical research to exploratory conversations between scholars and personal reflections. Bridging hitherto separate debates in critical beauty studies, cultural anthropology, sociology, the history of science, disability studies, gender studies, and critical race studies, this volume reflects upon the gendered, classed, and racialized body, normative regimes of representation, and the global beauty economy.

Debating Standardization in Bodily Appearance

Beauty and the Norm

In Israel, as in numerous countries of the global North, Filipina women have been recruited in large numbers for domestic work, typically as live-in caregivers for the elderly. The case of Israel is unique in that the country has a special significance as the ‘Holy Land’ for the predominantly devout Christian Filipina women and is at the center of an often violent conflict, which affects Filipinos in many ways. In the literature, migrant domestic workers are often described as being subject to racial discrimination, labour exploitation and exclusion from mainstream society. Here, the author provides a more nuanced account and shows how Filipina caregivers in Israel have succeeded in creating their own collective spaces, as well as negotiating rights and belonging. While maintaining transnational ties and engaging in border-crossing journeys, these women seek to fulfill their dreams of a better life. During this process, new socialities and subjectivities emerge that point to a form of global citizenship in the making, consisting of greater social, economic and political rights within a highly gendered and racialized global economy.

Claudia Liebelt

Books

Your next favorite book is out there