Ange La Furcia al995@cam.ac.uk
Colombia
Centre of Latin American Studies, Clare Hall
PhD thesis: Sea antics: A Caribbean Case Study of care, body and emotional labour in Beauty Salons
Research interests:
1. Gender studies and intersectionality
2. Caribbean, ethnic and racial studies
3. Sociology of work
4. Individuation
My PhD focuses on the beauty salons sector of the Archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina in the Colombian Caribbean. In a multi-ethnic context, this research seeks to explore the work practices and senses, with emphasis on the relationship between workers and clientele and their strategies of action to resignify existing aesthetics and to politicise their ethnic-racial, gender and sexual identities.
The islands have been populated by the Raizal ethnic group since British colonizers settled on Providencia to form a Puritan colony in 1629 during the long course of the Transatlantic slave trade. Raizal people identify themselves differently from the descendants of Hispanics from the Colombian continent and from other groups that today inhabit the island territory as Arabs of Lebanese origin.
Accordingly, the research will highlight the diversity of practices and senses in customer relationships, tensions between care, art, profession, service, servitude and resistance of these different social groups.
Who or what inspired you to pursue your research interests?
I was inspired by Professor Luz Gabriela Arango’s research on beauty salons in Bogotá. My proposal will pay homage to her contributions to the Labour and gender studies in Latin America (1957-2017). Preliminary results were published in the posthumous book “Gender, care work and beauty salons" in 2018. I also participated as a research assistant in the project on hair care services in Cali (2011-2014), conducted by Dr. Jeanny Posso.
This interest in the subject is also concerned with social intervention. This is the case of my collaboration from 2014 with the grassroots organisation Miss Nancy Land for Caribbean Women, led by Silvia Elena Torres, working with the LGBTIQ population, especially transgender stylists.