The Managed Hand: Race, Gender, and the Body in Beauty Service Work / Edition 1

by Miliann Kang

Overview

Two women, virtual strangers, sit hand-in-hand across a narrow table, both intent on the same thing-achieving the perfect manicure. Encounters like this occur thousands of times across the United States in nail salons increasingly owned and operated by Asian immigrants. This study looks closely for the first time at these intimate encounters, focusing on New York City, where such nail salons have become ubiquitous. Drawing from rich and compelling interviews, Miliann Kang takes us inside the nail industry, asking such questions as: Why have nail salons become so popular? Why do so many Asian women, and Korean women in particular, provide these services? Kang discovers multiple motivations for the manicure-from the pampering of white middle class women to the artistic self-expression of working class African American women to the mass consumption of body-related services. Contrary to notions of beauty service establishments as spaces for building community among women, The Managed Hand finds that while tentative and fragile solidarities can emerge across the manicure table, they generally give way to even more powerful divisions of race, class, and immigration.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520262607
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	06/02/2010
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Miliann Kang is Assistant Professor of Women's Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and affiliated faculty in Sociology and Asian/Asian American Studies.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: Manicuring Work 1

1 "There's No Business Like the Nail Business" 32

2 "What Other Work Is There?": Manicurists 57

3 Hooked on Nails: Customers 96

4 "I Just Put Koreans and Nails Together": Nail Spas and the Model Minority 133

5 Black People "Have Not Been the Ones Who Get Pampered": Nail Art Salons and Black-Korean Relations 165

6 "You Could Get a Fungus": Asian Discount Nail Salons as the New Yellow Peril 201

Conclusion: What Is a Manicure Worth? 239

Notes 255

References 275

Index 301

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Overall Kang has written an exceptionally well-argued, insightful book."—American Journal of Sociology / Ajs

Editorial Reviews

"A beautifully designed and brilliantly executed study. . . . Skillful analysis . . . An important contribution to the growing literature on 'mundane' beauty practices, as well as to scholarship dealing more generally with the 'body/work nexus.'"

Social Forces

Overall Kang has written an exceptionally well-argued, insightful book.

American Journal Of Sociology

Rich and textured account.

Women's Review of Books

A poignant account of the ways those seeking beauty services realize their own sense of self with the assistance of the low-wage immigrant women.

Contexts

"A beautifully designed and brilliantly executed study. . . . Skillful analysis . . . An important contribution to the growing literature on 'mundane' beauty practices, as well as to scholarship dealing more generally with the 'body/work nexus.'"

Social Forces - Debra Gimlin

“Overall Kang has written an exceptionally well-argued, insightful book.

American Journal Of Sociology / AJS