Master'sOpen Access

The body control in the consumer society through the norms of beauty built by biopower

2019
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Advisor: Doç. Dr. Merih Taşkaya

Abstract (EN)

According to Foucault, who describes biopower as a kind of power that dominates over and even penetrates deep into the body in general, this power tries to reach into the minds of individuals in order to control their perceptions and all the aspects of their lives, in a nutshell, their very existence and thus tries to control and regulate the bodies of individuals and it tries to normalize these individuals into a certain kind of norm. In this contex, what the audit and normalization efforts target is important. This study determined its problematic within the framework of the 'consumption' phenomenon. Therefore, the intention to direct consumption in the control and normalization efforts through biopower is positioned as the main axis. As in many areas, at the point of directing to consumption, biopower does not practice this control and regulation by means of oppression instead uses incentives towards the body and consumption, in the form of a new control exclusive to biopower. At this point, women's magazines where many women have access to advice such as care, beauty and staying young, are an important agent of this control and consumption incentive. Women's magazines, which act almost like an authority, are among the assumptions of this context in which individuals present their written and visual discourses to their bodies, affect their perceptions, behaviors, control and regulate their bodies and thus normalize individuals by placing them within a predefined and limited category. In many of the discourses regarding the control of the body and the incenting of consumption in women's magazines rely on the theme of beauty as the dominant concept. In this context, beauty-themed articles, advertisements and the discourses and indicators that define how the images next to such articles and advertisements appeal to the readers around the biopower concept of Foucault were identified as research objects of this study. Through these discourses and indicators, it was aimed to reveal how perceptions about the ideal body and beauty are tried to formed, how norms are formed, how the body is taken under control in time and how the systematic to direct the individual towards consumption is created. For this purpose, beauty-themed articles, advertisements and visuals along these articles and advertisements in the magazine "Cosmopolitan" were examined via quantitative and qualitative content analysis. Keywords: Consumption, Body, Beauty, Biopower, Foucault.

Author

Dr. Can Güneş Karagöz

How to Cite

Can Güneş Karagöz (Master Thesis). The body control in the consumer society through the norms of beauty built by biopower, 2019, Akdeniz University.

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