Recuperative Whiteness and Anti-Ageing Wellness in the Age of Climate Change with Amina Mire

Recuperative Whiteness and Anti-Ageing Wellness in the Age of Climate Change with Amina Mire

Categories: Lectures and Seminars | Intended for , , , ,

Thursday, November 21, 2019

2:30 PM - 4:30 PM | Add to calendar

A720 Loeb Building

1125 Colonel By Dr, Ottawa, ON

Contact Information

Kimberley Seguin, 613-520-2600 x. 2583, soc-anthro@carleton.ca

Registration

No registration required.

Cost

Free

About this Event

Host Organization: Department of Sociology and Anthropology
More Information: Please click here for additional details.

The history of colonial-era environmental determinism, defined here as a claim that environmental conditions determined evolutionary and civilizational advances or lack of civilizational and evolutionary advances continues to influence the contemporary phenomenon of anti-ageing biotechnology and the globalization of skin-whitening in the following ways.

First, contemporary anti-ageing discourse and skin-whitening cite climatic factors such as urban pollution, thinning of the ozone protective shield against harmful effects of the sun and the overall stresses of modern living as the root causes of premature ageing in women and especially in white women. Second, these environmental aggressors are often formulated in terms of increased unwanted hyper-pigmentation on women’s faces and skin. Third, consumable whiteness is proposed as the ideal means of countering unwanted pigment accumulation and reversing the process of ageing. It is in this context that this presentation seeks to sketch a theoretical map that can reveal how anti-ageing whiteness and the globalization of the skin-whitening industry came to be associated with regenerative wellness.

This presentation is taken from Amina Mire’s recently published book: Mire, A. (2019), Wellness in Whiteness: Biomedicalization and the Promotion of Whiteness and Youth among Women, Routledge (Open Access).