4. The Body Politics of Class Formation

2020 ◽  
pp. 91-112
Author(s):  
Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen ◽  
Alessandra Severino da Silva Manchinery

This essay looks at the construction of personhood in Brazilian Amazonia from the perspective of Indigenous youth. In Amazonian sociocosmology, personhood is constructed relationally, a process in which the body is a distinctive factor. Consequently, during schooling and university studies, young people have responded to and resisted representations and policies that have often silenced Indigenous voices and limited their fabrication of bodies. The contemporary social responsibilities of Indigenous youth and the challenges faced in undertaking them shape how their subjectivity, agency, and recognized social belonging are being constantly increased, removed, or even denied. The essay draws from anthropological theories of relational personhood, as well as ideas of geo- and body-politics present in theorizing on the Global South.


Author(s):  
Alvaro Jarrín

This concluding chapter reflects on the transnational dimensions of beauty. Beautification can be thought of as a global industry that takes on very different registers depending on the specific histories and the body politics where it emerges. Nonetheless, there are common methodologies and theoretical insights that allow us to think about beauty globally and about the ways it travels, producing certain forms of affect that transcend boundaries and which enable transnational biopolitical operations that are tied to both colonial histories and new forms of empire. The twin concepts of biopolitics and affect can be applied to many different contexts where beauty matters, and they allow us to think beyond the structure/agency or empowerment/disempowerment debates that have long plagued academic discussions of beauty practices.


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