What makes accounts ethnographic

The period of economic, social and political reforms that started in the late s, commonly known as the reform era, has brought about important changes in the country, shifting it from a centrally planned economy to a market economy with the aim of reaching a modern and industrialized society Cao et al. As mentioned above, beauty parlors are widespread in the urban areas of China, and to my knowledge there are no updated official statistics about their exact quantity. Xu and Feiner mention some numbers: 1.

However, these numbers are about fifteen years old and we should expect them to have increased since then. Some Chinese websites address the growth of the beauty business, such as chinabgao. Another website, showlan. The difficulty in quantifying the beauty salons is also due to their nature, which is sometimes or even often not completely legal. It seems that the situation is similar in Japan, which Miller neatly described in the following words: «the aesthetic salon occupies a place on the border between legitimate business and shady operation» Miller, This confirms the trend that Xu and Feiner already discussed several years ago: that the beauty economy is one of the most productive economic sectors in China.

Considering the formation of modern Chinese beauty ideals and the extent to which they are the result of cultural exchanges with the West, Wen argues that. The globalization of beauty images is a hybrid process which invokes both the internalization of certain Western beauty ideas and the local redefining of global beauty ideals. In this regard, it is relevant to acknowledge the influence of South Korea and Japan, which began having cultural and economic exchanges with the West much earlier and whose beauty and fashion industries have enjoyed great success in China.

This has made the beauty ideals of the three neighboring countries quite similar, to the extent that they may often be referred to as East Asian beauty ideals Lotti, These beauty ideals are often embodied by celebrities, such as Chinese actresses Fan Bingbing, Liu Yifei and Angelababy, who flaunt their fair skin, large double-lidded eyes and straight nose.

As a result, many non-highly-educated young women go to work in beauty salons instead of factories Ip, ; Liao, And these women are at the core of this article, because they are those who act within the special realm of the beauty salon, and whose work reflects the ambiguity that characterizes the beauty salon itself. Yet, it can be performed in beauty salons too, although with different techniques. In particular, Alexander Edmonds , has examined the cosmetic surgery sector in Brazil, one of the countries with the highest consumption of plastic surgery and the only country where those procedures may be provided free to those who cannot afford them.

The right to beauty comes to coincide with the right to medical care, and it belongs to everyone: in this sense, beautification becomes a healing process from ugliness, which in turns becomes a form of disease Edmonds, In other words, it facilitates the overlapping of medicine and aesthetics. Both Black and Cochennec enter the realm of beauty salons, the former in the United Kingdom, the latter in France. They emphasise the medicalised nature of some of the treatments available, as well as the claims to professional status of the staff».

The beauty salon is then analysed as a place that not only deals with beautification, but also with a complex assortment of femininity, identity, health, and labour. It is precisely this complexity that makes the beauty salon a stimulating subject for socio-anthropological research.

Cochennec focuses on beauty parlors on the Ile-de-France and especially in Paris. She explores the professional figure of the beautician in relation to the legitimization of the beauty care world, which is constantly undermined by its inevitable comparison to the medical world.

In this study, too, the salon is considered a place of femininity that goes beyond beautification in itself. However, in this particular society it acquires a special significance related to the rather recent flourishing of the beauty sector after decades of suppression. How does the medical-cosmetic negotiation unfold in the case of China? And more specifically: what role does the beauty parlor play in the negotiation of surgical and non-surgical treatment?

And then, how does the engagement of beauty salons and beauticians in the labour process facilitate the acceptance of micro-surgery?

The initial focus was on clinics and hospitals, since those are the primary sites where cosmetic surgery is performed, but it then expanded to beauty salons as well, because the specific aspects of the most popular procedures extend beyond the clinical realms.

The beauty salons opened further research paths that diverged from the main project but that proved equally exciting: those secondary paths led to the creation of this paper, which may be regarded as a side development of an ongoing research project. Fieldwork was carried out in Hangzhou, capital city of Zhejiang province, and to a lesser extent, in Shanghai.

For what concerns this article, Hangzhou was the primary site, because it is there that most of the interviews and the observation were carried out. In Shanghai I interviewed one woman who had undergone a type of non-surgical treatment that was also performed in a salon like the one described in the introduction.

These women were introduced to me by mutual acquaintances and friends, which proves the efficacy of a solid personal network in the field. It covers most of the Southern part of Jiangsu province, the Northern part of Zhejiang province, and the municipality of Shanghai.

The economic and social characteristics of this area made it a fitting candidate for research on the beauty business. On a more romantic note, beauty has always had a special connection with Hangzhou, which has long been considered among the most beautiful cities of the Celestial Empire, together with Suzhou.

I visited other salons besides that one, but none of them granted me the opportunity to interview the beauticians and conduct observations as I could do there. The three beauticians mentioned in this paper represented very different types: Mei was very passionate about her job, and in fact she accomplished more advanced tasks, while the others mostly carried out simpler treatments like nail-care and make-up.

The other two, Jin and Luo, did not seem very passionate: the former only did the job for the money and the latter did it for fun and because she was herself a beauty enthusiast. I first met Jin in April she did nail-care on a friend of mine who, knowing about my research interests, introduced me to her. I met Luo in September through a mutual acquaintance, while she worked full time in the beauty parlor.

She then introduced me to Mei, who was a colleague of hers. This time I was focusing more narrowly on the study of advanced non-surgical treatments, and beauty salons triggered my curiosity much more than clinics. They saw me as a foreigner who knew their culture well enough to deserve their taking time to talk and share their experience. If I had not spoken their language, I would have needed an interpreter, which would have made the whole process much less spontaneous, which might have had an impact on their responses.

Therefore, her interaction with me was shaped around mutual interest, which is more likely to arise when the two parties feel that they share similar characteristics — two women the same age having a conversation in a language they both speak about a topic they both find interesting.

My fieldwork included two separate stays, first in spring and summer and then in autumn , but it must be noted that the first and longer stay was predominantly dedicated to my main research project on cosmetic surgery and the evolution of beauty ideals. It was only during my second stay that beauty parlors attracted my interest as an additional path to explore.

They point out that in contemporary social science research. Rather it involves intensive excursions into their lives, which use more interventional as well as observational methods to create contexts through which to delve into questions that will reveal what matters to those people in the context of what the researcher is seeking to find out Ibid. Her focus, however, was on the precarious labour of migrant women who work in beauty parlors, whereas mine had nothing to do with migration.

As a result, Hangzhou has not experienced the massive flux of domestic migration that Shenzhen has, and therefore a focus on migrant workers would hold less significance in that case 2. Being a social product, the significance of a place is enriched by the experiences of the people living in it: the place is thus linked to the perceptions of people. This experiential concept of place can be employed to analyse the beauty parlors: their role goes beyond that of a geographical place, but also includes the feelings and emotions people experience in it.

And because their function is linked to emotions, beauty parlors tend to have a homey ambiance in order to make people feel at home. According to Friedmann , we generally arrange a place in a way that makes us feel at home, because feeling at home means feeling comfortable. After all, Friedmann observes that. I have stepped into many beauty parlors in China and all of them, in one way or another, looked warm and cozy. Most of the time it was the colours of the walls and furniture that evoked that sentiment of comfort — usually shades of pink and orange symbolizing coziness, together with light blues and white symbolizing tranquility.

The front room was more girly and colourful, with pink decorations and posters of beautiful women on the walls, and had comfortable reclining chairs where customers sat for nail-care and facial treatments like masks and make-up. The beauticians usually gave customers and visitors a cup of tea — or of simple hot water, as is the custom in China even on hot days. There were beauty magazines for the customers to read while waiting, though most of them just played or chatted on their smartphones.

The overall atmosphere was lighthearted. The back room looked more scientific: it had simple white walls, a couple of posters showing perfect wrinkle-free and oval-shaped faces, two beds like those you find in a medical practice, and a shelf that held a skin-purifying machine and several bottles and boxes of skin products. There were no beauty magazines here, but instead brochures explaining various skin treatments. The atmosphere here was more serious, but still comfortable.

Both rooms sought to seduce the customers; they just did it in a different way: one by offering a feminine homey ambiance, the other by showing a professional, but not threatening, face. In this way the salons attempt to raise themselves, in the eyes of their customers, to the same level as hospitals and clinics, because they provide treatments that aim at the same outcomes but boast non-invasive techniques.

Moreover, they offer to carry them out in a pleasant environment, where the customers can feel at ease, comfortable and relaxed, and where they can interact with friendly and caring beauticians.

A conjecture might be that they aim at an indirect confrontation with the hospitals and doctors. In order to win over prospective customers, they propose a certain image opposed to that of hospitals and doctors: it is unlikely for people to feel at home in a hospital, let alone for the medical personnel to establish friendly relationships with the patients.

These contrasting images may encourage people to choose beauty salons over clinics to undergo advanced beautifying treatments, since they are attracted to an intimate and friendly place rather than an impersonal though professional setting. This ambiguity is also part of my personal experience, since I too sometimes happened to go to a beauty salon as a customer, mainly during my late teens in my hometown in Italy. I clearly remember that particular atmosphere that oscillated from light to serious, but that always remained very intimate, as if to cement a special secret connection between the beautician and each of her customers.

Although the beauty salon is a public space, it is also an intimate place, since the treatments performed there concern the body, a vulnerable and private territory for the human being. In my perspective, the whole ambiance of the beauty parlor with its warmth, comfort, and intimacy aims to cast some kind of spell over the customer, who then feels sheltered and pampered however brief her stay there.

The Hangzhou salon had the potential to cast such a spell over its customers, thanks not only to its decor, but also to the sociable manners of its beauty workers. She said that she wanted to learn new skills, because she was a bit bored with her job in the beauty industry, where she had worked for two years, mostly doing nail-care. She was not a beauty enthusiast and went into beauty care only because it seemed like something she wanted to try. Neither Jin nor the other two beauticians were, however, real migrants: only moving around Zhejiang province, from small suburban areas to the provincial capital, Hangzhou, which could offer them more job opportunities.

In fact, there are beauty schools in China, as confirmed by Liao , who mentioned the existence of beauty schools in Shenzhen. Very often, however, the training takes place within beauty salons, as was the case for the beauticians I interviewed. The salon where Mei and Luo worked provided them with an initial training when they started working there, and then with intermittent training to keep them updated about new products on the market.

Luo affirmed with satisfaction that every few months an instructor would go to the salon and train the beauticians. Indeed, she occupied a higher position. While talking to her, she appeared better prepared and motivated than the others, and this made conversing with her far more enjoyable than conversing with the others.

From what Miller wrote, in Japan there is a similar situation of lack of official beauty training. This observation, together with the information shared by the beauticians themselves, suggests that the training is usually carried out directly in the beauty salons, although beauty schools do exist. Beauticians do not usually earn a fix salary, with their earnings depending on the treatments they perform: the more the better, and especially the more expensive the better Shi, ; Ip, Their basic salary is quite low or in some extreme cases even non-existent , with commissions increasing it significantly.

Therefore, clients are essential for the beautician to make a good income Shi, ; Ip, I observed that Mei, while talking to me about her job, emphasized her committment to the customers by saying that she tried all the creams she used for treatments on her face before proposing them to the customers: she would never sell anything she did not like and trust herself. She had earned the confidence of her customers and would never place it in jeopardy, as she took her job very seriously.

Acting friendly with customers is surely one strategy to make them purchase more, in suggesting what suits them best and thus gaining their trust, as pointed out by Ip The personal connection is what wins them over, and beauticians spend a lot of time establishing and strengthening that connection, treating the regular customers like family, in order to transform a business transaction into a personal relationship Shi, This supports the consideration that human interactions are a key aspect of work in beauty parlors.

Developing relations has something to do with the ability to listen, which is often presented as a fundamental quality of the beautician, even more than her professional competence Cochennec, This dynamic applies to the Chinese case as well, with the significant difference being that the migration does not cross international borders, but is a domestic movement: from the poorer West to the richer East, from the countryside to urban areas, and from small towns to big cities.

But the nature of the jobs, in being temporary, poorly paid, and sometimes even illegal, is similar. In China, neoliberalism has prioritized economic development at the expense of class and gender struggles, which instead were a focal point of Maoist politics at least officially , insofar as socialist ideology also promoted gender equality by promoting the participation of women in the workplace Liao, ; Angeloff, Four decades ago, Pierre Bourdieu observed that it is no coincidence that jobs in the service sector and beauty care are mostly occupied by women.

In China, too, the service sector seems to be strongly associated with femininity Hanser, ; Otis, Much more recently than Bourdieu, Liao commented: «Unlike factory work, the beauty business is largely considered the province of women, and it evinces such feminine characteristics as caring, patience, and somatic, as well as emotional, intimacy». She argues that the beauty parlor has become an extension of the household: the same family norms and assumptions are enforced, those that direct women toward child-care, supporting a husband, and offering care to others both physically and emotionally.

In fact, the strategies that beauticians employ to persuade customers to purchase more treatments are often successful thanks to their friendly relations with the customers, rather than their skills at doing those beautification treatments. Mei, Luo and Jin all graduated from high school but did not pursue college education; in this regard, Mei felt that she lacked the educational qualifications to start a career of higher prestige i.

Their work in the beauty salon revolved around building friendly relations with the customers, through taking care of their bodies while talking and listening to them; this possibility to share and connect with other women was very much appreciated by Luo. In the case of beauticians in China, Liao points out that care seems to them the one thing they can do well, and therefore the one thing they should be doing, together with being flexible, entrepreneurial, and capable of working long hours.

This generates a paradox: in a way, non-highly-educated women are empowered by their ability to choose their own work — being no longer obliged to go work in a factory — but then they are, at the same time, limited by that very choice. The choice that offered them freedom also constrains them into a gendered type of labour. At this point it is evident that a third branch needs to be added, that is beauty care, which is an aspect of the service sector as well but does not fall into either of the two categories Falquet set out.

The work of the beauty therapist belongs to its own category and acts within the same gray zone as the beauty parlor, according to its own rules of caring for the body. At that time she was twenty-six and had been working in the salon for a little over a year. She had not yet given injections to customers, though, but practiced on herself, on her mouth precisely: she did not only like performing beautification treatments on others, but also enjoyed undergoing them herself.

We might call her a beauty enthusiast, always up-to-date, always eager to try new things. Working in a salon surely provided her with abundant access to the beauty universe, and also gave her the prospect of progressing in her career by learning advanced treatments, as she had just started doing. In that way, she could reinforce the mechanism that positions beauty parlors and beauty therapists on the edge between cosmetic and medical care, in that ambiguous land where the body is skillfully touched and treated for improvement.

Thus, the English translation of weizheng is not simple, because it needs to incorporate the nuances of several Chinese characters. Usually, the advanced treatments performed in the beauty salon, such as filler injections, wrinkle removal, and even the creation of a fold in the eyelid, are perceived as weizheng. But what about procedures such as rhinoplasty nose job , which are undoubtedly considered surgeries?

Can they still belong to weizheng? It all depends on the paradigm we choose to define this special category. If we decide that what counts is the size of the area involved, then yes, a nose job is a weizheng , because it operates on a rather small area. However, if we decide that what determines the categorization is the degree of complexity of the procedure, then a nose job is not a weizheng , because it requires breaking and replacing bone and cartilage.

In this sense, a rhinoplasty falls into the same category as breast augmentation surgery: zhengxing or zhengrong , that is, proper cosmetic surgery. Even among the professionals of beauty and medicine there are various perspectives that may all be valid. They are non-surgical treatments and strongly advertised as such, even when they aim at bodily modifications that are usually obtained through surgical methods.

The double eyelid is a great example and will be addressed later on. During the time I spent in the salon, that room was always inaccessible due to the absence of the specialist, who only came when she had appointments with customers. Unfortunately I did not have the occasion to meet her during my stay in the area, and she remainned in my imagination a mythical creature who eluded my regard.

She was probably busy elsewhere, since she collaborated with more than one salon, and perhaps had no interest in being interrogated by a researcher. In the hierarchy of the salon she was above all the other beauticians, because of the type of treatments she performed. When I asked Mei whether this woman had some sort of medical degree, she was unable to tell me. The possession of a degree was totally irrelevant to her: this woman had skills and experience, and that was enough to make her a specialist.

Ethnographic research can run the risk of researcher bias. Writing an ethnography involves subjective interpretation, and it can be difficult to maintain the necessary distance to analyze a group that you are embedded in. There are often also ethical considerations to take into account: for example, about how your role is disclosed to members of the group, or about observing and reporting sensitive information. Each approach has its own advantages and disadvantages.

The setting of your ethnography—the environment in which you will observe your chosen community in action—may be open or closed. An open or public setting is one with no formal barriers to entry. For example, you might consider a community of people living in a certain neighborhood, or the fans of a particular baseball team. A closed or private setting is harder to access. This may be for example a business, a school, or a cult. Most ethnography is overt. In an overt approach, the ethnographer openly states their intentions and acknowledges their role as a researcher to the members of the group being studied.

Sometimes ethnography can be covert. This means that the researcher does not tell participants about their research, and comes up with some other pretense for being there. Different levels of immersion in the community may be appropriate in different contexts.

The ethnographer may be a more active or passive participant depending on the demands of their research and the nature of the setting. An active role involves trying to fully integrate, carrying out tasks and participating in activities like any other member of the community.

While ethnographers usually have a preference, they also have to be flexible about their level of participation. For example, access to the community might depend upon engaging in certain activities, or there might be certain practices in which outsiders cannot participate.

See an example. An important consideration for ethnographers is the question of access. The difficulty of gaining access to the setting of a particular ethnography varies greatly:. For example, if you had the idea of observing the staff within a particular finance company but could not get permission, you might look into other companies of the same kind as alternatives.

Ethnography is a sensitive research method, and it may take multiple attempts to find a feasible approach.

All ethnographies involve the use of informants. This might be someone in a high position at an organization allowing you access to their employees, or a member of a community sponsoring your entry into that community and giving advice on how to fit in. However, i f you come to rely too much on a single informant, you may be influenced by their perspective on the community, which might be unrepresentative of the group as a whole.

In addition, an informant may not provide the kind of spontaneous information which is most useful to ethnographers, instead trying to show what they believe you want to see. The core of ethnography is observation of the group from the inside.

Field notes are taken to record these observations while immersed in the setting; they form the basis of the final written ethnography. They are usually written by hand, but other solutions such as voice recordings can be useful alternatives. Field notes record any and all important data: phenomena observed, conversations had, preliminary analysis.

Field notes should be as detailed and clear as possible. This entails going through the field notes and formulating a convincing account of the behaviors and dynamics observed. An ethnography can take many different forms: It may be an article, a thesis, or an entire book, for example.

Ethnographies often do not follow the standard structure of a scientific paper, though like most academic texts, they should have an introduction and conclusion. For example, this paper begins by describing the historical background of the research, then focuses on various themes in turn before concluding. An ethnography may still use a more traditional structure, however, especially when used in combination with other research methods.

For example, this paper follows the standard structure for empirical research: introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. The goal of a written ethnography is to provide a rich, authoritative account of the social setting in which you were embedded—to convince the reader that your observations and interpretations are representative of reality. Ethnography tends to take a less impersonal approach than other research methods. Due to the embedded nature of the work, an ethnography often necessarily involves discussion of your personal experiences and feelings during the research.