New Journal Article: Visibility of Labour and the Aesthetic of Opulence in The White Lotus

A new peer-reviewed article by our associated researcher Astrea Nikolovska, has been published in Anthropology in Action as part of a special issue dedicated to anthropological reflections on the popular HBO series The White Lotus.

Titled “Visibility of Labor and the Aesthetic of Opulence: Representation of Work in The White Lotus,” the article examines how the series represents labor within the world of luxury tourism. It argues that the very imagination of luxury depends upon making much of the labor that sustains it disappear from view, while certain hotel workers, such as managers, spa workers, and entertainers, achieve what the article conceptualizes as “selective visibility.”

By examining the visual regimes through which workers appear and disappear on screen, the article explores how The White Lotus makes inequalities within the tourism industry effectively visible while leaving their underlying structures largely intact. In this way, the article uses popular culture as an entry point for thinking about labor, inequality, privilege, and the politics of visibility.

The article is published open access, in Volume 32, Issue 1 of Anthropology in Action: Journal for Applied Anthropology in Policy and Practice, published by Berghahn Journals.

Read the article: https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/aia/32/1/aia320105.xml