Descrizione del progetto
Specchio, specchio delle mie brame...
La bellezza può essere solo superficiale, ma è sufficiente per ricoprire un ruolo importante nelle società odierne. La preoccupazione per il proprio aspetto è elevata e legata a sentimenti di inclusione sociale e di privilegio. In questo contesto, il progetto BINQ, finanziato dal CER, affronterà i fattori «immateriali» adottando un approccio scientifico basato sulla ricerca multidisciplinare e comparativa. Approfondirà come l’aspetto fisico possa effettivamente contribuire alla disuguaglianza sociale. Il progetto costruirà un nuovo modello teorico completo utilizzando metodi esplorativi e sperimentali per studiare e confrontare i risultati ottenuti in cinque città del mondo (Accra, Bruxelles, Buenos Aires, Hong Kong e Teheran) al fine di comprendere in che modo le valutazioni dell’aspetto fisico funzionino e producano disuguaglianze durature.
Obiettivo
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 todays media-saturated, service-based consumer societies. It hypothesizes that 1. in contemporary societies beauty is an important form of capital for all genders over the life-course; 2. beauty as a form of capital intersects with existing axes of inequality like gender, race, class, age, sexuality, nationality; 3. the growing importance of appearance spawns new forms of inequality. The project investigates these hypotheses in 5 global cities on 4 continents: Accra, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Hong Kong and 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. 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. It 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. All subprojects study two domains where mediatization has made appearance more salient: dating and job search. 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. 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.
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Argomento(i)
Invito a presentare proposte
(si apre in una nuova finestra) ERC-2021-ADG
Vedi altri progetti per questo bandoMeccanismo di finanziamento
HORIZON-ERC -Istituzione ospitante
3000 Leuven
Belgio