{"title":"Elites, bodies, and gender: Women’s appearance as class distinction","authors":"Anne Monier, Ashley Mears","doi":"10.1177/14661381241232675","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Despite the importance of both gender and elites in contemporary social life, few empirical works examine gender among the elite. With a focus on embodiment, we develop a gendered theory of elite display, grounded in ethnographic observations of two elite spaces in which women are prominent: VIP clubs and philanthropy galas in the U.S. and Europe. Using a Goffmanian perspective, we examine the micro-dynamics through which elite bodies express status, in particular for women. We argue that, in elite social spaces, women’s bodies signify wealth, and their bodily rituals and displays concretize status distinctions. To do so, we analyze the management of bodies backstage, frontstage, and off-stage, showing that a hallmark of elite display is the careful obfuscation of differences and gaps between backstage and frontstage spaces, which serves to naturalize the status superiority of elites.","PeriodicalId":47573,"journal":{"name":"Ethnography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8000,"publicationDate":"2024-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Ethnography","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381241232675","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Despite the importance of both gender and elites in contemporary social life, few empirical works examine gender among the elite. With a focus on embodiment, we develop a gendered theory of elite display, grounded in ethnographic observations of two elite spaces in which women are prominent: VIP clubs and philanthropy galas in the U.S. and Europe. Using a Goffmanian perspective, we examine the micro-dynamics through which elite bodies express status, in particular for women. We argue that, in elite social spaces, women’s bodies signify wealth, and their bodily rituals and displays concretize status distinctions. To do so, we analyze the management of bodies backstage, frontstage, and off-stage, showing that a hallmark of elite display is the careful obfuscation of differences and gaps between backstage and frontstage spaces, which serves to naturalize the status superiority of elites.
期刊介绍:
A major new international journal successfully launched in 2000 Ethnography is a new international and interdisciplinary journal for the ethnographic study of social and cultural change. Bridging the chasm between sociology and anthropology, it is becoming the leading network for dialogical exchanges between monadic ethnographers and those from all disciplines involved and interested in ethnography and society. It seeks to promote embedded research that fuses close-up observation, rigorous theory and social critique.