Malmö University Publications
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Will Beauty Save the World? A historical context study of the Miss Venezuela pageant as a conceivable contributor to communication for development
Malmö University, Faculty of Culture and Society (KS).
2019 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (One Year)), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

In recent years, old-hand development scholars, in the category of Dan Brockington, have expressed their concern over academia’s neglect of the significance of celebrities in the field. As has been the case of an outturn hereof, namely beauty pageants. In the last six decades, Venezuela has positioned itself not only as one of the world's largest exporters of oil but also as one of the leading engenderers of titleholders in international pageantry. The latter, which has resulted in Venezuelans regarding the pageant as a fundamental cultural undercurrent in their collective identity, seems to be a ceaseless manifestation in spite of the country’s worrisome current socio-economic status. Rather than adopting a condescending paradigm towards the Miss Venezuela pageant, it is precisely this vertex of ambiguity that opens the avenue for an interesting development question. After all, if celebrity beauty queens from Venezuela are deemed as part of the nation’s identity, could the pageant, in the same breath, be deemed as a contributor to communication for development? While espousing historical context as an analysing method and in pursuit of David Hulme’s Celebrity-Development nexus and Elizabeth McCall’s four strands of communication for development, this paper presents a qualitative study in which hands-on experts are given a platform. The findings show the evolution of a beauty pageant from a, nearly, nationalist device into a system that is grounded in the Millennium Development Goals and that aims to forge socially responsible beauty representatives that are competent enough to herald purposeful messages.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Malmö universitet/Kultur och samhälle , 2019. , p. 40
Keywords [en]
celebrity beauty queens, beauty with a purpose, communication for development, cultural identity, national identity, popular culture, race and class, internationalisation, economic transnationalism, social norms of beauty, representation women, social change, Celebrity-Development nexus, Venezuela, historical context, qualitative research
National Category
Social Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-22325Local ID: 27750OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mau-22325DiVA, id: diva2:1482250
Educational program
KS K3 Communication for development
Supervisors
Examiners
Available from: 2020-10-27 Created: 2020-10-27Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(861 kB)810 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 861 kBChecksum SHA-512
b22f7e800587e8ce6a26b2e258090b00a35f3059a88339aadc4e41c395d639b46e658fa00f6dd47c3bc9e26b03c429eaeb0f9254dd9275a8179d4f27db0ab313
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

By organisation
Faculty of Culture and Society (KS)
Social Sciences

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 816 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

urn-nbn

Altmetric score

urn-nbn
Total: 1114 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf