Comparison of Social Capital Among the Two Groups of Women with A History of Cosmetic Surgery and Without Performing Cosmetic Surgeries in Rasht

• Main Authors: Kobra Hajiabllo, Hoda HALLAJZADEH, Ebrahim Masoudnia
• Format: Article
• Language: fas
• Published: University of Isfahan 2018-12-01
• Series: جامعه شناسی کاربردی
• Subjects: Cultural Capital; Cosmetic Surgery; Incarnated Cultural Capital; Obtained Cultural Capital; Institutional Cultural Capital
• Online Access: http://jas.ui.ac.ir/article_23063_803054077cedcc4c3fd4a5bb533a085b.pdf
• ISSN: 2008-5745; 2322-343X

Introduction   <br />In recent years, researchers in social fields have paid a lot of attention to body analysis and have stated it as an aesthetic object. With increase in people’s awareness of beauty standards, the tendency to become closer to these standards has been increased. Interest in beauty is originated from our human nature. It is emphasized on beauty and physical attraction as a good feature because today we are in face to face interaction in our daily life. <br />In Contemporary society, the social-cultural norms convey this message that the social acceptance and value is based on physical beauty. The feature of being beauty promote the idea that women are not complete without cosmetics. Women like to think that their natural face and body are not lovely and the cosmetics will complete them. <br />Based on the announced statistics, Iran is one of the countries in which the most rhinoplasty cosmetic surgeries are done among the world. This was told by rhinology (nose surgens) researches of Iran and they also added that this surgery is seven times more than America. Guilan is the fifth province after Tehran, Isfahan, Fars and east Azerbayjan that contains more cosmetic surgery and the nose surgery is the most kind of that. If not considering the effects of this surgeries, we can say that many of these people became depressed because of not meeting the things they wanted and so they suffered from physical and mental problems until the years after doing surgery. The instruments such as management, paying attention to inner and outer physical form of the body for young people especially for girls, makes them keeping a clear image of personal identity and showing it to others. So the culture of the body conveys the increasing emphasis on the idea that body works as a center for human to rethink about himself. The body is a focus point to cultural and social recreation and presents power relationships and its effect on social differences and inequalities. Then, special attention and study should be done about cosmetic surgery as a social subject and the reasons of its effect including cultural capital have to be studied. The present study was done with the purpose of comparing the cultural capital factors between women with and without cosmetic surgery. <br />Material & Methods <br />The present study is done in the form of a post-event cross-sectional research. The data contains 383 people (191 women who did cosmetic surgery and 192 women who did not), of the age of more than 15 living in Rasht from Mehr to azar in 1395. Convenience sampling between the women who did cosmetic surgery is used to choose the required samples. These women attended in beauty clinics to do or receive the treatments related to cosmetic surgery. To choose samples between the women who did not attend in cosmetic surgery, the Convenience sampling is again used. The measurement instrument contains: a check list of social- demographic features and researcher made questionnaires of cultural capital. This questionnaire involved 38 questions which measured 3 dimensions of cultural capital i.e. obtained cultural capital, institutional cultural capital and incarnated cultural capital. All of these questions are scored based on a Likert of 5-degree spectrum.  Formal credit method in addition to expert opinions are used to assign the value of the questionnaire. Also, Cronbach Alpha Method was used to measure the reliability of the measuring instruments. The reliability coefficient for the whole cultural capital questionnaire was 0/87, and for factors of obtained cultural capital, institutional cultural capital and incarnated cultural capital were 0/86, 0/85, and 0/88 respectively. <br /> Discussion of Results & Conclusions <br />The results of this research shows that the total means of cultural capital among the people who did cosmetic surgery and for the ones who did not do a cosmetic surgery were 67/38 and 102/46 respectively. The significance level of the theory was 0/000 and less than 0/05 representing the existence of significant among two groups which means more total cultural capital for the people who did not do cosmetic surgery. Also, the means of capital incarnated among the people with and without cosmetic surgery were 21/08 and 32/73 respectively. The significance level of the theory was 0/000 and less than 0/05 which shows the existence of a significant difference among two groups. In other words, capital incarnated for the people without cosmetic surgery was more than the other group. The results showed that the means of obtained cultural capital among the people with and without cosmetic surgery were 28/88 and 44/17 respectively. The significance level of the theory was 0/000 and less than 0/05 representing significant difference between two groups and it means more obtained cultural capital for the ones who did not do cosmetic surgery. Finally, the means of institutional cultural capital for the people with and without cosmetic surgery were 17/41 and 25/54 respectively. The significance level of the theory was 0/000 and less than 0/05 representing significant difference between two groups and it means more institutional cultural capital for the ones who did don do cosmetic surgery. According to Bourdieu's idea, there is a relationship between cultural capital and body management. Cosmetic surgery is also one of the efforts that women do to manage their body. Research theory testing shows significant difference in all of the cultural capital dimensions (obtained, institutional and incarnated) and the total cultural capital between the groups who did cosmetic surgery and who did not do cosmetic surgery as the cultural capital among the people with cosmetic surgery are more than the ones and without that. Bourdieu believes that the cultural capital determines the cultural status plus other different class structures. People are always ranged based on a combination of economic and cultural capital. These environments are differentiated from each other according to their cultural level and size. In each environment, higher rank has higher culture and this results in legitimacy and mastering of the cultural capital owners. In other words, the people with higher cultural capital have usually an important role in partial legitimacy and differentiation. At last, we can conclude that the women who absorbed cultural capital more than others and received higher scores in cultural capital questions use the body capital to show power in social and cultural environments less than the others. Actually, cosmetic surgery in previous years was entered into the society as a new issue, the people with higher cultural capital used it as an instrument to partial differentiation and legitimacy to themselves, because it was not easily possible for all classes of people to do such surgeries. Today, the conditions changed prepared for other people too, so now the women of higher cultural capital are seeking new ways to self-differentiation. This can be the reason for the higher rank of cultural capital to be not interested in doing cosmetic surgery and increasing their erotic capital. These women use new methods to manage body such as doing exercise, improving nutritional pattern and using diets to increase their body capitals. So, it means they use the method that do not harm their health to show power and legitimacy to themselves. This can represents the critical view of women with higher cultural capital about the body to be commodity.