Abstract
This introductory chapter has five parts: After introducing the Politics of ‘Skin Colour’ (1.1), I present my research design and position myself as a scholar of Cultural Studies in a disciplinary landscape (1.2). Next, I explore three relevant theoretical discourses framing my work: Intersectionality, Critical Beauty Studies, as well as theories on Colourism and Critical Whiteness (1.3). I then present a state of research on skin bleaching, including my own contribution to this emerging field of study (1.4). After that, I provide an overview of my methodological approach, introducing the data and the field (1.5). Finally, I render a brief overview of the structure of the book (1.6).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Throughout this thesis, I find myself in conflict with the marked contradiction between arguing for an understanding of ‘skin colour’ as a social construct, on the one hand, and the necessity of working with precisely these categories to have a shared linguistic or conceptual basis for debates on colourism, at least to some extent, on the other. To point to this problem, I set ‘skin colours’ in single quotes troughout this study. Moreover, I would have liked to mark all colour categories appearing in this text—such as ‘gorā’, ‘fair’ or ‘white’—as socially constructed classifications of differentiation, not least to stress how these shades of colour are significantly co- and re-structured in and by my work. However, for the sake of better readability, I henceforth refrain from setting these terms in quotation marks.
- 2.
Although the term ‘caste’ is an invention of the British colonizers, I use it in this study to refer to all the different scholarly interpretations and locally lived variations of varna and jati related processes ofgroup identification and differentiation. Whilst there are several thousand different jātis in contemporary India, with their own professions, rank orders, endogamous practices, dietary regulations, and purity laws; the varṇa system, on the other hand, is commonly associated with four hierarchically ranked categories: Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas and Shudras (Gupta 2000, Oberlies 2008). This, however, is an idealised Brahmin interpretation of select Hindu scriptures; restructured by colonialism and orientalist scholars. In both practice and scholarship, the varṇa system is highly controversial, primarily in terms of amount, definition, and rank order of varṇas. Moreover, the religious texts are ambiguous and inconsistent with one another (cf. Ayyar and Khandare 2013). For an introduction to varna and jati, see 2.1.3.
- 3.
The term white used by me in this thesis does not refer to any biological conception of ‘race’ or ‘colour’ but instead indicates a social position within a society that is ordered along a racialised hierarchy. Since the ‚Europeanisation of the earth‘ (Reinhard 1994) whites constitute themselves by producing a ‚other‘. Thereby whites—as the very producer of these hierarchising differences—present themselves as naturalised norm. In the so-called ‚postcolonial‘ era whites further tend to present themselves as colour-blind, albeit still inhabiting a privileged and dominant (power) position within a racialised order. Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) “evolved as an offshoot from Black Studies and Critical Race Theory in the late twentieth century mainly in U.S. academia” (Lauré al-Samurai and Piesche 2018, 16) and relocates—as a postcolonial broadening of perspectives—the academic focus from ‘objects’ effected by racism to the analyses, visualisation, and confrontation of white subjects, discourses, and structures. Blacks and People of Colour have turned their gazes towards whites and whiteness for centuries. For interventional and theoretical critical perspectives on whitness, Lauré al-Samurai and Piesche (2018 suggest to look into W.E.B. Du Bois (Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil, 1920), James Baldwin (The Fire Next Time, 1963) and Toni Morrison (Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, 1992). For the German speaking context, see: El-Tayeb, Fatima. 2005, „Vorwort“ und die „Konzeptionellen Überlegungen der Herausgeberinnen“. In: Mythen, Masken und Subjekte. Kritische Weißseinsforschung in Deutschland. Maureen Maisha Eggers, Grada Kilomba, Peggy Piesche und Susan Arndt (eds.). Münster: Unrast-Verlag. 2005. 7–10 and 11–13; Wollrad, Eske (2005): Weißsein im Widerspruch. Feministische Perspektiven auf Rassismus, Kultur und Religion. Königstein/Taunus: Ulrike Helmer. I would have liked to follow the editors of ‘Mythen, Masken and Subjekte’ in italicing the term white as I did in this footnote—however, the term white is applied in so many contexts by so many vioces in this thesis, that I would not want to anticipate upcoming debates.
- 4.
The concept of ‘New Indian Woman’ encompasses both supposedly ‘Western’ as well as ‘Indian’ features: It demands that women be(come) ‘modern’, educated and working, while remaining ‘traditional’ and ‘Indian’ and retaining strong family values. This ideal image corresponds to the urban, Hindu, middle-class prototype, the so-called ‘Globo-Indian.’ The anti-colonial image of the New Indian Woman was constructed as a counterpart to ‘Western’ women, emphasising women’s purity and spirituality as well as their role as mothers. Since liberalisation, the desire for distinction from ‘common’ women has gained in importance, with Titzmann (2014), for instance, now seeing this figure in contrast to what political feminism in India stands for: weakening and silencing women and women’s movements in times of social and economic change.
- 5.
Osuri (2008) explains that the “Euro-American discourses of diversity which are eager to embrace an approximation of whiteness in the form of Aishwarya Rai [Bollywood actress and former Miss World] as an assimilable marketable form of cultural difference […] Therefore, comments that describe Aishwarya Rai as a Greek goddess or the fact that she cannot be placed as Indian appear to make her a more attractive Indian celebrity” (Osuri 2008, 116–118). Likewise, Parameswaran (2005) hints to the fact that “Beauty and fashion experts quoted widely in the media argue that India’s beauty queens are the striking new alternatives to the mainstream because they represent the best of East and West. One entrepreneur in the beauty industry claims that Indian women have Caucasian features, but are ‘packaged in lovely shades of brown, olive, and cream’” (Parameswaran 2005, 425).
- 6.
“Color-blind ideology assumes a race-neutral context, and it promotes a racially assimilated society in which race is portrayed as irrelevant; thus, it serves to reinforce the current racial order” (Ebert 2004, 177).
- 7.
For this introductory part, cf. Kullrich, Nina. 2019. ‘In This Country, Beauty Is Defined by Fairness of Skin’. ‘Skin Colour’ Politics and Social Stratification in India. In: Beauty and the Norm. Debating Standardization in Bodily Appearance. Edited by Liebelt et al. Palgrave Macmillan. 245–281.
- 8.
“narrative identity” with Ricœur (1991, 73–81).
- 9.
Produced by the act of narrating, it entails a ‘story’ (events) and a ‘fabula’ (particular arrangement of events)—the latter is considered the main field for literary analysis; the arrangement of the four following elements is examined in detail: event(s), time(s), location(s) and actor(s) (Bal 1985).
- 10.
E.g., Crenshaw 1989, Chebout 2011, Hull, Scott and Smith 1982.
- 11.
Cf. their interview in: Langreiter, Nikola and Elisabeth Timm 2011, 55–76.
- 12.
This problem is also reflected in scholarly debates on intersectional theory. For some scholars, ‘skin colour’ and race constitute one and the same category, while race is separated from the category of ethnicity, etc. (cf. Lutz and Wenning 2001).
- 13.
“While other communities experience discrimination, communities from the Northeast are the only category of citizens to be construed at the national level as a separate racial group with a dubious connection to the rest of the nation—‘mongoloids’, ‘chinkies’, ‘Chinese’. There are many non-citizens who experience ethnic, national, and even racial discrimination in India ranging from Afghani migrants to African students. However, the treatment of these groups does not raise the same questions around citizenship, nationalism, and belonging as Northeast communities. Indeed as will be seen in later chapters, one of the tactics for addressing racism against Northeast communities is to point out their status as Indian citizens and thus undeserving of poor treatment. […] Racism experienced by Northeast communities is framed as a problem of Indian cities, not of everyday life in the borderland occupied by the Indian armed forces and under a series of extraordinary laws and exceptional governance provisions. […] the violence of state-making that triggers migration into Indian cities and increased encounters at the heart of race debates fades further into the opaque and mysterious workings of parallel governance and extraordinary laws” (McDuie-Ra 2015, 3–4).
- 14.
Dalit is a self-designation of social groups excluded by the caste system.
- 15.
The activists supposed that caste discrimination, too, is “systemic and institutionalized, rests on ethnocentric theories of cultural superiority, results in social segregation, causes sometimes horrific violence and untold forms of social sufferings, has specific material consequences, comes attached to notions of purity and pollution” (Reddy 2005, 558).
- 16.
In the course of a debate preceding the 2001 UN ‘World Conference Against Racism’ (WCAR), the question whether race and caste were comparable systems of oppression was controversially discussed in Durban, where the refusal of the Indian government to include ‘caste’ on the agenda led to a massive Dalit opposition campaign (Reedy 2005, 545).
- 17.
Jayani is a 22-year-old student at Delhi University I met on campus. She identitified as Hindu and Khatriya, and was born and raised in Assam. She speaks Bengali, Assamese, Hindi, English and Marwari.
- 18.
“‘white’ is now—since I study anthropology—like, a racial matlab [that means/meaning] discrimination among people. It’s not [only] because I study, but I know it’s not correct to use that term. Even ‘fair’ is not correct because you cannot say someone is fair or someone is good just by complexion; it’s not his or her fault [that he or she is] dark skinned or white-skinned; that’s because of heredity that’s been followed from his part of the family, so it won’t be right to go just by the looks […]. You can say, like, ‘she is pretty, she is beautiful’; you can say that, but to say someone is fair or someone is dark means you are discriminating [against] the person only based on complexion—something like that—but when you say she is beautiful or something, you are lightly indicating that, yes, she is very beautiful but only by the looks, not [because of] his or her family side or heredity; no, you are not saying anything like ‘oh, that family is all from a dark side; that means they come from a lower caste system’” (interview with Jayani, 5 February 2014).
- 19.
Zahra is a 29 years old PhD student from Kashmir. She identified as Syed and Muslim, is engaged and currently pursuing her doctorate in educational planning in Delhi. She speaks Kashmiri, Urdu, Hindi and English.
- 20.
I met Veena, Virmati and Shambu, all activists with the feminist collective Saheli in Delhi, for a group discussion. They were ranging from the early 40 s to mid 50 s when we met. Upon their request, no further demographic details will be given in this thesis.
- 21.
Winker & Degele suggest analysing the categories gender, ‚race‘, class and body, albeit stressing that sensitivity and openness for other and different categories of discrimination are imperative in empirical research (2009, 59).
- 22.
“Post-globalisation India has created an increase in the aesthetic labour that women are expected to perform on their bodies. It is no longer enough to be virtuous, one must also be sexually desirable—defined in increasingly narrow ways in body shapes and clothing—and even as one is expected to be articulate and ‘modern’ one must nevertheless not be feminist for that is undesirably strident” (Phadke 2017, 250). Phadke further refers to Talukdar and Linders (2013) who argued that “concerns about body shape and size are overwhelmingly located among those women for whom liberalisation had opened up career and other opportunities and for which the symbolic value of a fit, often read as healthy and active body, were a distinct advantage” (ibid.).
- 23.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-41264072, last visited 20 April 2019.
- 24.
“[T]he distribution of wealth among the so-called middle class covers a very large range […]. According to the National Council of Applied Economic Research, middle-class incomes range from 35,000 rupees to 140,000 rupees and above per month, although a more calibrated range (Sengupta 1998 in Fernandez 2006, 76) delineates five segments within the middle class ranging from destitute (earning 16,000 rupees and less) to very rich (earning 215,000 rupees and above). Particularly at the lower end of the spectrum, there is an important distinction between the working class and the aspiring lower middle class; a distinction based on the kind of work being done as much as on income per se (Gooptu 2001)” (Alter 2011, 156).
- 25.
Evoking Nancy Fraser, John explains: “Though India enjoys a rich legacy of political economic analysis, it is troubling that discussions of secularism and communalism, for instance, so rarely address the structural forms of marginalization that have gone into the making of the ‘Muslim’. Conversely, we know far too little about the reasons behind the successes of the upper castes in reproducing their hegemony in a world so remarkably different from the one which ostensibly gave us the caste system in the first place” (John 1998, 207, my emphasis).
- 26.
When I speak of ‘women’ in this study, I mostly refer to people who are socially read as ‘female’. All the people who self-identify as ‘female’, irrespective of cultural interpretations of their outer appearance or the gender status they were assigned by birth, are thus not only excluded from the kind of ‘femininity’ that the fair skin norm (re)produces, but further from this study. I found Hijras (Hindi/Urdu for ‘non/binary’ or ‘third gender’) basically absent from or ‘extraordinary’ to beauty (as any other) mainstream discourses and society. Even though I tried to open up a space for talking about diversity in desires in my interviews, I mostly generated irritation and uncertainty among my interviewees. Only one participant referred to himself as homosexual—although not in the beginning—in the course of our conversation.
- 27.
Following Kang (2010, 20), I define ‘beauty labour’ as “commercialized exchanges in which service workers attend to the physical comfort and appearance of the customers, through direct contact with the body (such as touching, massaging, and manicuring) and by attending to the feelings involved with these practices” (for a similar approach, see also the concept of ‘holistic labour’; Jie Yang 2017, 117–132). Beauty work, on the other hand, is understood as beautification practices performed at and by the self, or collectively; treatments are either offered unpaid or given in exchange. Within this categorisation, skin lightening can be seen as an individual daily (care) routine work performed at home. Among the interviewees, its treatment was also offered as a gesture of friendship, or given in exchange for a haircut, mehandi, make-up or the like, especially when a visit to the beauty parlour was unaffordable (see section 4.5 on Skin bleaching and (Aesthetic) Labour).
- 28.
Interview with 22-year-old student Jyoti, 7 February 2014. She referred to her religion as Sikh, to her caste as Bakshi, and described her family background as middle class.
- 29.
Initially, I would ask all participants about their sexual desire(s)/orientation(s), but later decided against it for the following reasons: 1) The question caused confusion, incomprehension, misunderstandings and was, at times, perceived as offensive. Even though I consider sexual desire/orientation an important factor within the fairness debate, I had the feeling that the answer to such a question would be given in accordance with the heterosexual norm, regardless of actual desires and sexual practices, due to the fact that this norm is powerful and ‘deviation’ from it is both socially taboo as well as punishable (again) by law: In 2013—the year before my research took place—the Indian Supreme Court ruled to uphold Sect. 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which considered homosexual practices as a punishable offence, and which had been disputed by the Delhi High Court in 2009—a decision, however, that was eventually overturned in 2018. There was only one interviewee who mentioned and openly talked about his homosexuality (see 1.5.2). Ultimately, even though I do not consider all the participants I talked to as having had (solely) heterosexual desires, I cannot say anything about their orientations with certainty; what I can do, nonetheless, is to analyse how the powerful, normative, heterosexual frame is dealt with as an important part of how the beauty matrix operates (cf. chapter 4).
- 30.
The variety of concepts underlying the term ‘beauty’ is further apparent in the wide range of meanings within the Hindi language. The Hindi-English online dictionary Shabdkosh, for instance, lists twenty-five phrases under the entry ‘beauty’—one of which, ‘rup’, has itself forty-five different meanings, including, e.g., ‘look’, ‘figure’, ‘position’, ‘design’, ‘nature’ and ‘picture’ (https://www.shabdkosh.com/search-dictionary?e=beauty&lc=hi&sl=en&tl=hi, last visited 13 April 2019). A person looking beautiful is described as ‘sundar’, whereas a beautiful object is called ‘achha’. Beauty in terms of good character traits is also described as ‘accha’, while for beauty in terms of outer appearance ‘sundar’ is used.
- 31.
Deepika is a 29 years old fashion designer from Delhi. She gave Hindu as her religion but stressed that she would describe herself as “spiritual”, and referred to her caste as Gupta. She had recently married. Her father was a charter accountant and her mother, a housewife. She speaks Hindi and English.
- 32.
Although the terms ‘Caucasian’ and ‘Caucasian whiteness’ are commonly used in studies on colourism, they will not be reproduced in this thesis. As Roth (2009) has pointed out, “[t]he term ‘Caucasian’, referring to the ‘White race’ and coined in 1795 by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840), an influential German scholar at the time, is a contested, troubling, and obsolete term of racial classification that is no longer recognized as having scientific validity (Painter 2003)” (Roth 2009, 133).
- 33.
Indeed, to be “truly beautiful [one had to be] rosier than pale skinned sisters and whiter than brown ones [such] perfect in-betweenness [was] achieved only through make-up [with] ground alabaster being used in early modern skin whiteners” (Tate 2016, 5, quoting Poitevin 2011, 70–72).
- 34.
Processes of identity formation include reflections upon one’s own position within a given social context and one’s relations to other people—a ‘we-group’ is constructed and defined, the ‘other’ thereby devalued and excluded. Certain aspects of one’s own identity such as fears or desires are projected onto the ‘other’ and some constructed external characteristics—colour of the eye, clothing, or social behaviour, for instance—facilitate and simplify group classifications. When differentiation is accompanied by devaluation, dominance occurs (Rommelspacher 1995; Amesberger and Halbmayr 2008).
- 35.
Wollrad (2005) describes how, in 1449, the catholic councillors of Toledo adopted a new law excluding all citizens of Jewish origin who had been forcibly converted in the course of the Reconquista, introducing the concept of “limpieza de sangre” which became a legal force throughout Spain under Charles I (V) in 1539: The segregation of the so-called ‘conversos’ showed how identity was no longer solely constructed upon shared religious beliefs but on a ‘common ancestry category’, hence laying the foundation for the “first racialisation project within Europe History” (Wollrad 2005, 56–58). For the relation between Christianity and ‘skin colour’ in the Indian context, see Thomas on Syrian Christians in Kerala in Thomas, Sonja (2018). Privileged Minorities. Syrian Christianity, Gender, and Minority Rights in Postcolonial India. University of Washington Press.
- 36.
I agree with Aijaz Ahmad (1995) who used to emphasise more generally that, in histories of gender, caste and class in India, the precolonial, the colonial and the postcolonial would be too deeply intertwined “to treat the social and cultural consequences of colonialism as discrete and sui generis” (Ahmad 1995, 36).
- 37.
As an overview: there are transnational approaches (Russell-Cole, Wilson and Hall 2013 [1992]; Blay 2011; Glenn 2009), Tate’s study on the Black Atlantic Zone (2016), but also studies engaging with specific regions as varied as Mexico (Moreno Figueroa 2012; Sue 2009); Nicaragua (Lancaster 2003); Brazil (Telles 2004); the Surinamese Society (Menke 2012); Jamaica (Charles 2009); the Indo-Caribbean diaspora (Khan 2009); the Latin Americans (Bonilla-Silva/Dietrich 2009, Hunter 2005), African Americans (Dorman 2011) and South Asians in the US (Mazumdar 1989); Zimbabwe (Gwaravanda 2011), the Filipinos (Rondilla 2009); and Japan (Ashikari 2005).
- 38.
“Before diagnosing a psychological disorder, clinicians must study the themes, also known as abnormalities, within psychological disorders. The most prominent themes consist of deviance, distress, dysfunction, and danger. These themes are known as the 4Ds, which define abnormality (University of Wisconsin [UWC] 2011). We shall see how the skin bleachers conform to the 4Ds” (Olowu and Ogunlade 2013, 40).
- 39.
“To reiterate, this ignores the fact that the practice is enabled by a multibillion-dollar global pharmaceutical and cosmetics industry—parts of which are based in Europe and the United States—and that bleaching is transracial and transnational in scope (Mire 2001). Furthermore, it fails to recognise the fact that white bodies are also bleached/lightened/toned and, most importantly, that the aim of black people who engage in skin bleaching/lightening/toning is decidedly not to be white” (Tate 2016, 10).
- 40.
This is apparent in Greco-Buddhist art (fourth century BC—seventh century AD) or in the formation of the Urdu language (since 1300), for instance.
- 41.
“In contrast to what Lionel Caplan calls the Anglo-Indian ‘fixation with claiming kinship with the rulers’ (Caplan 2000, 867), for Thiyyas with a white connection, reclaiming the white man as a relative is not as much about claiming an affinity to British society as it is, I believe, about resisting the stain and stigma imposed by caste society” (Abraham 2006, 149).
- 42.
“Sociological ethnography has to deal with what we call ‘fuzzy fields’, that is fields without clear boundaries with regard to many dimensions. From a symbolic interactionist vantage point, we conceive of ethnographic fields as ‘social worlds’ and these are formed by ‘sets of common or joint activities or concerns bound together by a network of communications’ (Kling and Gerson, cited in Strauss 1984, 123). They are formed by a set of actors focused on a common concern and acting on the basis of a minimal working consensus (Clarke 1991, Strübing 1997). Social worlds are contexts for certain processes, actions and ideas and their protagonists, which are the actual object of an ethnographic study” (Nadai and Maeder 2005, n.p.).
- 43.
Since my Hindi was not fluent, I worked with a translator, Rituparna—a 24-year-old student of sociology in the final year of her MA studies at Delhi University with a main research interest in gender studies—with whom I had a cordial yet professional relationship. A translation always affords a whole other level of interpretation, which is why I consider the translated material as having been co-created by yet another ‘inside’ perspective. Within the interview settings, Rituparna’s presence and social interactions further fulfilled an important ‘mediation role’: She was addressed as an ‘insider’, not only because she spoke the interviewees’ mother tongue but because she was also familiar with local particularities, especially beauty-parlour services.
- 44.
With regard to both beauty parlours and other interview settings, I was determined to cover diverse districts of Delhi: I visited beauty parlours in Kamla Nagar, Kalkaji, Alaknanda, Lajpat Nagar, Model Town, Green Park, Khan Market, Kathputli Colony (Shadipur), another informal settlement located between Tughlaqabad and Okhla Industrial Area, and lastly, a home-integrated beauty salon in Faridabad—which does not belong to the City of Delhi (NCT) but is part of the wider National Capital Region (NCR). Most of the salons were “women only”, some were run as “unisex”, and only a few as “men only”.
- 45.
The Colony is named after the marionette theatres native to Rajasthan and was, until recently, home to almost three thousand itinerant street performance families of magicians, acrobats, singers, dancers, musicians and especially puppeteers or Kathputli performers from Rajasthan. At the moment, the Colony is undergoing a redevelopment plan by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) of the Government of Delhi, amid a wide range of protests and resistance by its inhabitants.
- 46.
These ‘citations’ entailed the notion of the making of ‘skin colour’s, distinctions between ‘fairness’ and ‘whiteness’, as well as the fact that bleaching was highly gendered and classed.
- 47.
Since our preselection limited and predetermined the debate significantly, I would have preferred to have the respondents bring their own pictures to the interviews; however, this procedure was simply impractical in the field, primarily due to spontaneity of meetings. I still learnt from the interviewees’ interpretations of these pictures nonetheless.
- 48.
She also talked about how people had spoken to her about her skin tone: “You are very black so you will not get married, and even if you do get married, you will have a horrible husband.” Interview from Fair? A documentary about ‘skin colour’ in India (3:27). http://www.etherealauraspa.com/blog/eastern-whitening-vs-western-tanning, last visited 13 April 2019.
- 49.
I am aware of the fact that asking this question reinforces heteronormativity. The question was always predicated upon the presupposed heterosexuality of the respondents, especially in a country were not only same-sex marriage is illegal but where, until very recently, homosexuality itself was grounds for persecution and prosecution. Furthermore, gender dichotomy was firmly adhered to, as well as certain social beliefs about values and order. Yet marriage is such an important social structure in India (and most of the world) that I wanted to include it as a category.
- 50.
My question about ‘desire’ or ‘sexual preference’ usually generated irritation and uncertainty among my interviewees. Since I had the impression that a socially accepted ‘heterosexual’ (or in some interviewees’ vocabulary, “normal”) orientation was the only answer I would receive, I finally refrained from asking about it at all. Only one participant referred to himself as homosexual—albeit not in the beginning but in the course of our conversation. Therefore, I cannot make statements about all respondents’ sexual desires; however, preferences were often disclosed in the course of the interviews, when they would state, for instance, that they were looking for a fair bride, or pointing to the importance of men noticing them.
- 51.
After the legal prohibition of caste discrimination was established in the constitution of the Republic of India 1950 the government made further attempts to introduce a comprehensive legal framework enabling discrimination to be combated. They set up a Commission in 1953 with the main task to identify ‘scheduled castes’ (SC), ‘scheduled tribes’ (ST) and ‘other backward castes’ (OBC)—the implementation of a reservation or quota system followed. Although affirmative action created opportunities for discriminated groups to find employment in civil service it also lead to a reinforcement and further cementation of the discriminatory system as such—due to the general binary distinction made between ‘forward’ and ‘backward’ castes.
- 52.
Except in cases when the interviewee(s) did not feel comfortable being recorded.
- 53.
“Codes are labels that assign symbolic meaning to the descriptive or inferential information compiled during a study […]. Codes are prompts or triggers for deeper reflection on the data’s meanings” (Miles et al. 2014, 71–72).
- 54.
See personal reflection of Kija Bergen on living as white woman in Cambodia, where skin bleaching is also common practice: Most days I’m beautiful: A reflection on skin and body hair in Cambodia. In: Jafar/Casanova 2013, 83–88.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kullrich, . (2022). “In This Country, Beauty is Defined by Fairness of Skin”. In: Skin Colour Politics. J.B. Metzler, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-64922-0_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-64922-0_1
Published:
Publisher Name: J.B. Metzler, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-662-64921-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-662-64922-0
eBook Packages: J.B. Metzler Humanities (German Language)