SubsidieMeestersBeauty and Inequality: Physical Appearance, Symbolic Boundaries and Social Dis/advantage in Five Global Cities
This multidisciplinary project examines how physical beauty influences social inequality across five global cities, aiming to develop a new theory on beauty as capital intersecting with existing inequalities.
Projectdetails
Introduction
How does physical beauty contribute to social inequality? This innovative multi-disciplinary comparative project aims to build a comprehensive new theory that explains how evaluations of physical appearance work, and how they re/produce durable inequalities in today’s media-saturated, service-based consumer societies.
Hypotheses
The project hypothesizes that:
- In contemporary societies, beauty is an important form of capital for all genders over the life-course.
- Beauty as a form of capital intersects with existing axes of inequality like gender, race, class, age, sexuality, and nationality.
- The growing importance of appearance spawns new forms of inequality.
Research Scope
The project investigates these hypotheses in five global cities on four continents:
- Accra
- Brussels
- Buenos Aires
- Hong Kong
- Tehran
An international team will employ a mixed-method design to study how aesthetic evaluations of appearance are shaped, and identify the mechanisms by which these evaluations shape social dis/advantage.
Significance
This high risk/high gain project breaks new ground in our understanding of human beauty and its consequences. It brings together scattered insights from many disciplines in a new theoretical model and tests and refines this model with explorative (Q-sort, survey, ethnography) and hypothesis-testing (lab/field experiments) methods.
Societal and Scientific Challenges
The project addresses central societal and scientific challenges by foregrounding the importance of a “soft” cultural factor in shaping social divides, and the growing role of media in shaping social dis/advantage and exclusion.
Subprojects
All subprojects study two domains where mediatization has made appearance more salient:
- Dating
- Job search
Project Structure
The project structure is designed to tackle its high risks: its global scope, multidisciplinarity, and its ambition to simultaneously develop novel methods and a new theory.
Leadership
The project is led by a cultural sociologist with a strong track record in interdisciplinary and comparative research, and in analyzing the serious consequences of frivolous topics.
Financiële details & Tijdlijn
Financiële details
| Subsidiebedrag | € 2.499.333 |
| Totale projectbegroting | € 2.499.333 |
Tijdlijn
| Startdatum | 1-1-2023 |
| Einddatum | 31-12-2027 |
| Subsidiejaar | 2023 |
Partners & Locaties
Projectpartners
- KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVENpenvoerder
Land(en)
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