1. The Nigerian Factor
2. Snapshots of Nigerian Pageantry
3. The Making of Beauty Diplomats
4. Miss Cultural and Miss Cosmopolitan
5. The Business of Beauty
6. As Miss World Turns
7. After the Spotlight
Oluwakemi M. Balogun is Associate Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Sociology at the University of Oregon.
"With vivid description and sharp analysis, Beauty Diplomacy
reveals the layers upon layers of complexity that surround the
Nigerian beauty pageant industry. Seen through the eyes of
contestants, producers, and anti-pageant protesters, the pageants
are the object of contradictory desires, ambitions and fears. This
highly engaging study shows how pageants have become the focal
point for debates about the meaning of the nation, global political
campaigns, and more."-Maxine Leeds Craig, author of Sorry I
Don't Dance: Why Men Refuse to Move
"It's one thing to describe beauty practices and place them in
historical context. It's quite another, bigger challenge to show
how these practices embody disputes over national identity,
culture, and economic development. Combining deep knowledge of
Nigerian society with rich, painstaking field research, Dr.
Balogun's book is the best I've read on the intersection of
postcolonial nationalism, globalization, and bodies."-Erynn Masi de
Casanova, University of Cincinnati, and co-editor of Bodies
without Borders and Global Beauty, Local Bodies
"In Beauty Diplomacy, Balogun argues that beauty pageants
are not benign; rather, they are arenas in which young women are
trained, transformed, and deployed as beauty diplomats-forging ties
among Nigerian businessmen and politicians, embodying nationalism,
and serving as cultural ambassadors tasked with repairing the
nation's reputation on the global stage. This clearly written and
conceptually innovative book is a significant achievement."-Sanyu
A. Mojola, author of Love, Money, and HIV: Becoming a Modern
African Woman in the Age of AIDS
"Compellingly, Balogun uses the framework of global nationalism to
describe the ways in which pageant organizers and participants
navigate between constructing and embracing new forms of Nigerian
nationhood....This engagingly written volume, of accessible length,
should be read by academics at all levels, but will be a
particularly excellent selection for advanced undergraduate courses
in African studies and related fields. Highly recommended."-E. E.
Stiles, CHOICE
"Oluwakemi M. Balogun's Beauty Diplomacy is a rich
sociological study of the strategic role beauty pageants play when
developing countries try to elevate their status as an emerging
economy in the global neoliberal order."-Jaita Talukdar,
American Journal of Sociology
"It can be challenging to trace how abstract concepts like
globalization or nationalism appear in everyday life. But beauty
pageants are an excellent site to explore cultural
meaning-making.Beauty Diplomacyis a welcome addition to
scholarship in global and transnational sociology as well as
sociology of the body, embodiment, and gender."-Alka Menon,
Contemporary Sociology
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