The Maze of Gaze: The Color of Beauty in Transnational Indonesia

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dc.contributor.advisorMoses, Claireen_US
dc.contributor.advisorKim, Seung-kyungen_US
dc.contributor.authorPrasetyaningsih, Luh Ayu S.en_US
dc.contributor.departmentWomen's Studiesen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2007-09-28T14:56:29Z
dc.date.available2007-09-28T14:56:29Z
dc.date.issued2007-05-25en_US
dc.description.abstractWhat are the effects of transnational circulations of people, objects, and ideas on our understanding of skin color, as it intersects with and complicates other categories of identity such as race, gender, nationality, and sexuality, in a transnational context? This dissertation addresses this question by providing evidence for the ways in which meanings of skin color, as it intersects with race, gender, sexuality, and nationality, are constructed transnationally through people, objects, and ideas that travel across national boundaries from pre- to postcolonial Indonesia. This dissertation uses "beauty" as an organizing trope to limit its analysis, ensuring analytical depth within each chapter. This analytical depth is further ensured by choosing specific sites of analysis to highlight particular historical periods and countries from which specific people, objects, and ideas travel. The sites I examine include Old Javanese adaptations of Indian epics (to understand the workings of "color" in precolonial times); beauty product advertisements that functioned as propaganda for Dutch and Japanese colonialism; skin-whitening ads published after 1998 in the Indonesian edition of American women's magazine Cosmopolitan; and an interpretive reading of the Buru Tetralogy novels (Bumi Manusia, Anak Semua Bangsa, Jejak Langkah, and Rumah Kaca) by Indonesia's best known author, Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Interviews with Indonesian women are also integrated in this dissertation. This dissertation aims to help us understand the semiotics of skin color: 1) as a transnational construction; 2) as a signifier for constructing distinctions and justifying gender discrimination; 3) as it is signified by (rather than a signifier for) race, gender, sexuality, and nation; 4) as a site where women articulate their resistance to or complicity with dominant racial, color, and gender ideology; and 5) as a "boundary object" that perpetuates racial and gender hierarchy in a global context.en_US
dc.format.extent2558364 bytes
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/7161
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledWomen's Studiesen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledtransnational feminismen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledskin coloren_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledrace and racializationen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledglobalizationen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledwomen in Indonesiaen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledbeautyen_US
dc.titleThe Maze of Gaze: The Color of Beauty in Transnational Indonesiaen_US
dc.typeDissertationen_US

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