Contenu du sommaire : Travail des corps, travail de la beauté. Approches sociologiques

The article attempts to analyse the displacements, in the experience of women having taken part in Miss contests, from body work carried out within the context of local level contests towards forms of aesthetic labour. Under what conditions can body work carried out in the context of contests support the access of women to remunerat-ed aesthetic labour? How does the associative context of Miss contests and their in-teractions involving body work support these dynamics? After having illustrated the women's reappropriations of their experiences in contests into professional life, using concrete examples, the article provides an account of the socialisation of the body at work in the contests and of what the configuration of contests produces in terms of potential access to employment involving aesthetic labour. Access to a remunerated form of aesthetic labour is nevertheless contingent on the effects of class, gender and age. Moreover, if body work done within the contests represents a means of reinforc-ing body capital, it is not effective in every space of aesthetic labour. In addition, that body capital does not operate alone and its effectiveness in individual trajectories depends on other capital, in particular social and cultural.

Based on a survey carried out in CAP hairstyling classes in both a training centre for apprentices and a vocational school, in this article we examine body work and transformations in appearance during training in a trade aimed at beautifying others, which mainly attracts and recruits young women of working-class origin. We first analyse the contents of this body socialisation and methods for exercising it in schools and enterprises. We then show that youth sociabilities provide a sounding board for body socialisation. Finally we look at how these young people appropriate the aesthetic standards they are confronted with and provide an account of the conditions of effectiveness of this socializing programme.

Choosing to adopt an approach that is both critical and based on the discourses of actors, producers and directors of gay pornographic films, this article seeks to show that the injunctions of pornographic work and the logics of professionalisation produce standards of beauty that mix together in the form of corporeal competencies. This relationship to a specific work tends to produce “the pornographically handsome”, which sometimes profits from potentials on the margins to produce erotic counter-discourses and, at other times, reaffirms prevailing aesthetic standards. Adopting an intersectional interpretation grid allows us to illustrate the paradoxical processes and logics subjacent to this work on “beauty” and bodies, particularly through its relationship to health, food, life rhythms and sports, as well as to pornographic rhythms and rates.

The Brazilian cosmetics industry was built around standards of beauty fostering the promotion of Euro-centred representations of femininity. If, since the late 1970s, it has focused its attention on broadening its offer of cosmetic products to black women, it has long remained limited. The emergence of a “natural movement” driven by black women, consumers and bloggers, via social media, aimed at the valorisation of afro hair, curly and frizzy, has led the industry to reconsider its approach to a segment of beauty known as “ethnic” as well as the norms it promotes. Can we talk about an effective revision of the representations and styles of femininity by the industry? What does the increased visibility of women, and more broadly, of black populations signify? Being interested in how the general cosmetics industry manufactures ethnic beauty involves taking its material and discursive productions, and how they are integrated into the structures of domination criss-crossing questions of race, gender and class, into account.

The article deals with a highly feminized, working class profession, beauticians, in placing it in the economic sector it belongs to: aesthetics-cosmetics. It is however dominated by a cosmetics industry which produces the various substances used in beauty care by both the professionals (beauticians) and consumers. Our first part rapidly sketches the contours of the relations existing between the profession of beautician and the cosmetics industry: the history of this relationship began with the invention, in the early 20th century, of the profession of beautician, as well as the economic and representative structuring of the sector around the distribution channels for cosmetics production the beauticians and their work places formed part of. The next two parts are devoted to how these bonds are incarnated in the beauticians' work, all in focusing on the place taken by the cosmetic products. On the one hand, the work of sales, and the commercial relations with the brands producing the products used as a part of services, place the beauticians in a relationship of dependence with regard to those brands, and lead to a feeling of disqualification. But the other hand, beauticians may free themselves from the cosmetics industry's grasp in developing their own cosmetological expertise.

The economic reforms that triggered China's extremely fast development since the 1980s have also involved the beauty sector: the so-called beauty economy has flourished along with all the commercial activities related to the beauty industry, from pageants to fitness, to cosmetic treatments. This article focuses on beauty salons and the beauticians who work there, considering some particular treatments performed in that environment. It is common to find beauty parlors that have an agreement with “specialists” who perform “advanced treatments” in a separate room. The treatments range from wrinkle removal to filler injection, up to double eyelid creation – procedures that are typical of cosmetic surgery clinics, but those in the beauty salon are performed with non-surgical methods. The treatments are performed in a warm and cozy environment, as opposed to the cold and intimidating clinics where surgeries take place. The beauticians who perform them are usually friendly and far from the impassive image of doctors. This suggests a negotiation of the boundary between medical and non-medical settings that is carried out by the beauty workers, and creates a “gray zone” that needs to be explored. What role do the beauty salons and the beauty workers play in this negotiation? I attempt to answer this question by analysing the data collected during my research stay in Hangzhou and Shanghai in autumn 2018. This insight has been further enhanced by some of the findings of my previous stay in the same area, when I was carrying out broader research on cosmetic surgery trends.

This article's objective consists in questioning the concepts used by researchers in the social sciences so as to understand radicalisation processes described as Islamic. If certain university disciplines like geopolitics or psychology propose global explanations on the subject of radicalisation, sociologists appear to be more reserved or, in any case, more moderate as to the analyses to bring to the phenomenon. For that matter, the very concept of radicalisation is provoking debate within the discipline. Indeed, the various approaches in sociology remain too compartmentalised to permit a consensual analysis of jihadism to emerge. Hence the task here is one of proposing an inventory of some of the concepts mobilized in the social sciences on urban revolts in order to take a step back from the overarching interpretations of the phenomenon. Thus the concepts expo­sed here may not only clarify certain aspects of this complex object in analysing the paths of jihadists more closely, but also demonstrate complementarity with a view to enriching our knowledge of a controversial phenomenon.