Abstract
Beauty and the Norm contains chapters based on empirical research across a wide range of geographical locations and cultural contexts, as well as shorter conversations between scholars that also include more personal reflections. It represents a first attempt to expose the generative operations of human standardization and normative looks in everyday life to more systematic analysis. In doing so, the volume brings together hitherto rather separate debates in critical beauty studies, cultural anthropology, sociology, the history of science and disability studies on the gendered, classed and racialized body, normative regimes of representation and the global beauty economy. In this introductory chapter, we provide a framework that ties the various contributions together, beginning with a brief history of the notion of the norm and of the closely related debates on standardization and normalization, followed by a discussion of the global economy of gendered and racialized bodies.
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Liebelt, C. (2019). Beauty and the Norm: An Introduction. In: Liebelt, C., Böllinger, S., Vierke, U. (eds) Beauty and the Norm. Palgrave Studies in Globalization and Embodiment. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91174-8_1
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