Handbook of Beauty and Inequality

This open access handbook offers a state-of-the-art overview of theoretical perspectives, empirical insights and scholarly debates into the relationship between beauty and inequality: how does beauty shape and reproduce social inequalities, and how does social inequality shape appearance and beauty standards? This comprehensive review emerges out of the burgeoning research on appearance and inequality in recent years. The handbook brings together under one volume the widely dispersed research on this topic which uses different concepts, approaches and methods, often without reference to one another. It does so by pulling together knowledge on appearance and inequality from different subfields of sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, gender studies, philosophy, management studies, communication and media studies, economics, legal studies, gerontology, psychology and evolutionary psychology, and creates talking points between and within disciplines. It presents different conceptualizations of beauty, including beauty as morality, capital, stigma, asset, merit and fashion. It also focuses on mechanisms linking beauty to inequality, drawing mainly on quantitative and analytical approaches, and looks at intersections between beauty and various axes of inequality. Finally, the work highlights institutional approaches to various fields in which beauty standards are created and reproduced. The chapters are written by established scholars from a range of disciplines and countries and discuss the literature, while also presenting original empirical research. This is a highly useful and handy resource for anyone interested in learning more about the field.



This exemplary and ambitious Handbook of Culture and Inequality is a timely contribution to our understanding of how beauty operates in our social world. The introduction offers a sharp analytical framework to organize what is a multi-layered interdisciplinary field, while the contributions carefully parse how beauty shapes inequality in fields of activity ranging from teaching, to politics and fashion. This book is certain to become a classic reference for everyone intrigued by the power of beauty.

Michèle Lamont, Harvard University



Beauty has emerged in recent years as a key arena for social scientists interested in inequality. This invaluable volume brings together cutting-edge thinkers from different disciplines to think about the myriad ways beauty is related to various forms of advantage and exclusion in contemporary societies. Timely, comprehensive, and asking important, provocative questions, this volume demonstrates that beauty and inequality represents a distinct and urgent field of emerging social science research.

- Sam Friedman, The London School of Economics and Political Science



Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but vision is socially structured along quite unequal lines. This original, timely and rich handbook looks at the intersection of beauty and social inequality and compiles a wealth of interdisciplinary research into how beauty both creates, maintains and sometimes capsizes inequality.

- Roberta Sassatelli, University of Bologna