Meredith Jones

• Professor (Full) at Brunel University London

Executive Summary This report presents the findings of an in-depth, qualitative study of digital poverty from the perspectives of two hyperlocal communities in the UK seaside town of Margate. Specifically, the study examined members of the Roma and Creative Diaspora. We interviewed individuals in their milieu, using semi-structured questions that e...

Beautyscapes explores the global phenomenon of international medical travel, focusing on patient-consumers seeking cosmetic surgery outside their home country and on those who enable them to access treatment abroad, including surgeons and facilitators. It documents the journeys of those who travel for treatment abroad, as well as the nature and pow...

In this article I set out an argument that skins and screens, once distinctly different types of surface, are merging. I show how in contemporary highly mediatized worlds skins are required to be visually expressive while also noting a parallel movement whereby screens are becoming more affective. Using the ‘designer vagina’ – specifically labiapla...

Cosmetic surgery tourism is a significant and growing area of medical tourism. This article explores the gendered construction of cosmetic surgery tourism in different geographical locations through an analysis of destination websites in Spain, the Czech Republic and Thailand. We examine the ways in which gender and other intersections of identity...

This paper reports findings from a large-scale, multi-disciplinary, mixed methods project which explores empirically and theoretically the rapidly growing but poorly understood (and barely regulated) phenomenon of cosmetic surgery tourism (CST). We explore CST by drawing on theories of flows, networks and assemblages, aiming to produce a fuller and...

Sleep has long been associated with transformation. Here I review how this manifests in fairytale, science fiction, and managerial/corporate approaches to sleep. I argue that, in line with neoliberal sensibilities that overvalue action, self-control and self-transformation, sleep is increasingly understood not as a state of rest, release, or dreami...

This multi-site, mixed methods project charted the experiences of British, Chinese and Australian patients travelling abroad for cosmetic surgery. Cosmetic surgery tourism is a fast developing industry that incorporates novel forms of labour and organisational structures that cross national boundaries, as well as drawing together pre-existing medic...

We have always adjusted photographs to suit different temporal and spatial moments: their borders morph as we snip or rip to remove unsavoury elements — the ex-husband, the child who became a criminal, the awful handbag. Photographic imagery is made from what lurks outside the frame as much as by what is contained within it. And yet, photography’s...

In this chapter we will: contextualise cosmetic surgery tourism and sketch some of its defining features; look more closely at how cosmetic surgery tourism works as a phenomenon that assembles a complex set of people, places and practices; examine how the cosmetic surgery tourism industry is developing; consider debates in tourism studies to unders...

This article traces some of the relations between cosmetic surgery and fashion, arguing that they both operate inside a cultural aesthetic where two-dimensional images intertwine with three-dimensional “reality.” This is both a complex and a simple idea; my concern is not to definitively categorize the nature of this relationship but rather to disc...

This paper examines cosmetic surgery tourism, arguing that it can be meaningfully analysed as part of makeover culture. It shows that while cosmetic surgery tourism sits at a junction of cosmetic surgery and medical tourism, it also has much in common with contemporary tourism practices. The paper posits cosmetic surgery tourism not only as an econ...

This paper explores the ways in which cosmetic surgery tourism can be thought of specifically as a tourist experience. We argue that whilst essentially involving travel for the purpose of undertaking painful surgery, cosmetic surgery tourism has a particular resonance with the holiday, most usually constructed as relaxing and restorative. This reso...

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Practices of cosmetic surgery have grown exponentially in recent years in both over-developed and developing worlds. What comprises cosmetic surgery has also changed, with a plethora of new procedures and an extraordinary rise of non-surgical operations. As the practices of cosmetic surgery have multiplied and diversified, so have feminist approach...

The word 'makeover' is dotted through popular culture and is applied to a range of activities including home renovation, gardening, urban renewal, and business invigoration. Makeover culture is part of a socio-cultural paradigm that values endless improving, renovating and rejuvenating. Makeover citizens enact urgent and never-ending renovations of...

A review of Alan Petersen, The Body in Question: A Socio-Cultural Approach (Routledge, London, 2006).

This article offers a contribution to ongoing philosophical, sociological, and feminist debates about osmetic surgery 1 and is part of a larger project that examines the spatial and temporal aims and effects of cosmetic surgery, using media analysis and interviews with recipients and surgeons. The mother project argues that cosmetic surgery is part...