About

In recent years, skin has been conceptualized in myriad ways, including in ways to think “with and through” skin (Ahmed & Stacey 2001: 1) rather than simply about skin, giving rise to the transdisciplinary field of skin studies (Lafrance 2018). In Social and Cultural Anthropology, much has been written on skin, especially in relation to bodily adornment, subjectivity, everyday experiences and the politics of skin colour. The cultural politics of skin are complex and situated: skin functions both as a metaphor and a site of struggle where the making of categorial differences and social distinction materialize in the flesh. Skin may be covered by fabrics and materials such as facial masks, gloves, clothes and make-up or it may be exposed; it may be considered beautiful, vital and clean, or ugly and sick, in need of treatment or even, treated as waste. It comes in different textures: as callous or soft baby skin, scarred or wrinkled, covered by stretch marks, as foreskin or on the scalp.


Skin has been analyzed as an epidermal field of personal creativity, a site of pleasure and lived experience, a membrane between the individual and society as well as a medium for sensing and relating to the world. In addition, skin is subject to constant becoming, not only in terms of aging, but also due to its material vulnerabilities and changes in its infrastructural support, as in the case of skin-in-becoming with a tight shoe. Skin is commonly perceived as an indicator of well-being and care or the lack thereof, with signs of irritation and abrasion giving away the need for healing and therapy. Dermal infrastructures may be therapeutic or toxic, and in some cases both, as when therapeutic care includes toxic substances. Skin and skin care are also sites for consumption, subject to commercialization and mass-mediation. Finally, far from simply
being a surface or canvas, skin consists of numerous multi-sensorial and relational layers, being a habitat for bacteria and fungi, giving rise to sweat, hair, and odour.


This workshop builds on and extends existing anthropological scholarship by approaching skin in its porous materiality and multi-sensorial relationality. It aims at bringing together ethnographic and conceptual approaches to the study of skin from a multi-sensorial and relational perspective in social and cultural anthropology. We invite contributions that draw on original empirical research to engage with one or more of the following questions:

  • In what ways are everyday dermal experiences and practices, such as skin care and treatment related to societal norms and gendered and racialised subjectivities: What is considered and experienced as ‘good’ and ‘beautiful’ skin? What a good or bad dermal treatment? What kind of anxieties and desires give rise what kind of everyday practices in relation to skin and skin care and how are these integrated into subjects’ cosmologies as well as everyday routines? How do these change throughout the life-course?
  • What are the material infrastructures and politics of skin, in regard to skin colour, but also extending to questions of covering, exposing or adorning the skin: What is the relation between intersectional forms of oppression and the public exposure, covering and valorisation of skin? Also, whose skin is considered worthy of treatment? How do these parameters change? What are the historical and colonial afterlives of skin politics and how do they impact upon contemporary subjects’ dermal lives? In what ways is skin not only “social” (Turner 1980), but also a site of public intimacy (Berlant 1997)?
  • Skin as a sensory organ and intersensorial space (Howes 2018), especially in regard t0 non-visual aspects, such as olfactory or haptic sensuality and affects.
  • Questions of more-than-human dermal relationality and materiality: how does human and non-human skin become-with others, including with objects or substances, such as clothing, ink, or biochemical substances?
  • Finally, how are dermal intimacy and touch mediated by digital interfaces, such as touchscreens, and what happens when these ways of touching take on a central role in everyday lives, as during epidemic lockdowns.


References:
Ahmed, S. & J. Stacey. 2001. “Introduction: Dermographies” In: Ahmed, S. & J. Stacey (eds). Thinking through the Skin. London: Routledge, pp. 1-17.
Berlant, Lauren. 1997. The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship. Duke University Press.
Lafrance, M. 2018. “Skin Studies: Past, Present and Future,” Body & Society 24 (1–2): 3-32.
Howes D. 2018. “The Skinscape: Reflections on the Dermalogical Turn,” Body & Society 24 (1–2): 225-239.
Turner, T.S. 2012 [1980]. “The Social Skin,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2 (2): 486-504.